Jake Paul is pulling a reverse Bob Arum. Yesterday he was telling the truth, and today he’s lying.
Here’s what Paul said last December regarding suggestions that he may fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr next:
“I want someone tougher [than Chavez] and I want a real belt, not just something that gets put up for entertainment value. … Honestly, he’s easy work and I want someone tougher to shut people up.”
Well, as it turns out, on June 28, Paul will fight that very same Chavez who wasn’t tough enough for him, whom he saw as “easy work.”
We know that Jake Paul knows exactly what this assignment is. We know that he knows he’s cherry-picking against a used-up former beltholder with a highly recognizable name.
And yet, in some corners, he’s getting away with it. He has both fight fans and people in the media helping him sell this “easy work” as a credible challenge, because, well, because Paul has done a masterful job of lowering the bar until people can’t even remember what a bar is.
It must be said that Paul’s career progression is unique and therefore challenging to process. There’s never been another boxer with anything approaching the combination of being this famous before they turned professional, taking the endeavor of boxing this seriously, building a record mostly against has-beens who competed in other sports, and then participating in the most widely viewed boxing match in decades.
Paul has walked a bizarre tightrope, wanting to improve his credibility and become a real cruiserweight contender while at the same time being perpetually capable of headlining pay-per-views in sideshow fights – and feeling pressure to take those sideshow fights, making everyone lots of money and also providing exposure for deserving undercard fighters.
It all peaked, of course, last November, when Paul, then 27 years old, squared off against Mike Tyson, then 58 years old. It was the most cynical of cash grabs, a nostalgia play, taking advantage of a public that has proven endlessly susceptible to gaslighting and memory-holing and that continues to cling to every feeling that Tyson made them feel almost 40 years ago.
By the time that eight-rounder was over – actually, by the time the first round was over – those who had been duped into believing it was a real challenge for Paul, or even that Tyson would knock him silly, were forced to come to their senses.
It was a mismatch. It was elder abuse. It was sad and sobering and a reminder that nobody can be elite at 58 in a sport that requires serious athleticism.
Paul did not exactly emerge from his 11th professional victory covered in glory, but memories are overwritten quickly and, as we’re seeing, he now benefits to a degree from the very things that made the Tyson fight so nauseating.
He fought a man in his late 50s who hadn’t had an official fight in nearly 20 years and was some 35 years removed from his prime.
And that’s precisely why so many people who should know better are giving him a pass for Chavez. The son of “The Lion of Culiacan,” after all, is “only” in his late 30s, is technically an active fighter and is “only” about a dozen years past his prime.
Graded on “The Tyson Curve,” Chavez looks like a legitimate foe for Paul.
Hats off to Paul for getting himself into a position where The Tyson Curve exists.
But shame on everyone who’s convinced themselves Chavez Jnr in any way resembles the boxer he was in 2012. That person is no more walking among us than the Tyson of 1988 is.
Let’s recall the Chavez trajectory.
Chavez, much like Paul, had to endure countless doubters in his early days. He had to prove he was more than just a famous name, and to a large extent, he did.
From 2010-12, he was beating solid opponents and real contenders in scheduled 12-rounders: John Duddy, Sebastian Zbik, Peter Manfredo Jnr, Marco Antonio Rubio, Andy Lee. To be sure, none of them was a pound-for-pounder. But it was a good run. Especially the seventh-round stoppage of Lee. That made Chavez perfectly worthy of a shot at the lineal middleweight champion, Sergio Martinez.
He came just a punch or two away from winning the Martinez fight and the legit championship of the world. But prior to the dramatic 12th round in which he knocked “Maravilla” down and nearly out, Chavez lost every minute of the fight.
In retrospect, Round 12 was the fluke, and rounds 1 through 11 the predictor of all that would follow.
Chavez next needed a controversial decision to beat Brian Vera in 2013 in what was supposed to be a safe comeback fight.
He got dominated and stopped in the ninth round by underdog Andrzej Fonfara in 2015.
He got one last shot at the big time two years later, in 2017, against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on Cinco de Mayo weekend, and lost all 12 rounds on all three scorecards.
It is reasonable to suggest that by this point, Chavez, 31 years old at the time, was already far enough gone that the current version of Jake Paul could have beaten him.
In 2019, Chavez, 33 years old, took on Daniel Jacobs and surrendered on his stool after Round 5. Surely, it was all over now.
Nine months later, he lost by unanimous technical decision after six rounds to club fighter Mario Cazares, in a bout stopped due to an accidental headbutt. Now there could be absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it was all over.
In 2021, Chavez, at age 35, lost an eight-round split decision to 46-year-old MMA fighter Anderson Silva. Not even the Nadia Comaneci of mental gymnastics could find a way to deny now that it was all over.
But Chavez came back. And he beat David Zegarra, who was 34-6 at the time and is 35-12-1 now, and oh, by the way, of Zegarra’s 12 losses, 10 are by KO, and Chavez is one of the two exceptions who needed scorecards to beat him.
Then Chavez took 31 months off and returned last July to decision Uriah Hall, a 39-year-old MMA fighter with one prior professional boxing match, a meeting with former NFL running back Le’Veon Bell.
And on the back of that win, Chavez’s only boxing match in the last three and a half years, we are told by some to believe that Chavez – nearly 40, slightly undersized at cruiserweight, notoriously difficult to convince to train seriously even when he was physically able, 13 years beyond his best win, 11 years beyond his last vaguely meaningful win – is a serious opponent for Paul just because he’s an experienced professional boxer who isn’t in his late 50s.
That is The Tyson Curve in action right there.
I don’t point any of this out as a criticism of Paul. We all have the option to watch or not watch his fights, and there are only so many directions he can go in for opponents who will enable him to sell tickets and pay-per-views now that he’s beyond the pure beginner stage – and while he surely knows deep down he will get annihilated by any actual cruiserweight contender.
There’s talk, for example, of Paul trying to position himself for a challenge of unified cruiserweight titleholder Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez, who takes on Yuniel Dorticos in the June 28 PPV co-feature. That is both a guaranteed loss for Paul and a threat to his physical well-being, and there’s no way he will do something like that until he has completely given up on his dreams of a payday against Canelo and is fully ready to cash out of the sport.
Paul is extraordinarily accomplished for a celebrity boxer and yet miles away from contender status. He exists in a virtually unprecedented middle ground, where he can fight non-boxers like Nate Diaz and Tyron Woodley, nobodies like Andre August and Ryan Bourland, shot fighters like Chavez, beyond-shot fighters like Tyson – or real boxers who range from “probably will beat him” to “definitely will beat him.”
And all the while, he can float names like 135-pound titlist Gervonta “Tank” Davis, yet another novel way to toe the line between intriguing and appalling.
This is the niche Paul has carved out for himself. And he’s now lasted more than five years past his professional debut. I applaud him for pulling this off. Whatever this is.
Just don’t try to tell me he’s testing himself against Chavez. Don’t try to tell me beating Chavez means anything.
Jake Paul knows it doesn’t, and he said that in definitive terms on a day when he was telling the truth.
He set the bar impossibly low when he fought against Mike Tyson. Let’s not confuse stepping over that bar with actually stepping up.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of and the author of 2014’s . He can be reached on , , or , or via email at [email protected].