Jake Paul is having his hands wrapped in the locker room as his older brother, Logan, who also became rich and famous on YouTube, speaks earnestly to him. “You’ve expanded your mind, your circle, your emotional intelligence and your capabilities,” Logan tells Jake.
“From making silly home videos to changing the entire landscape of combat sports. Everyone in this room knows just how powerful a being you are and that’s why we’re all here, including Netflix. One day, if I run for president, I’d be honoured to have you as my vice-president or maybe secretary of defence. You’ll be in charge of the red button. The all-powerful nuke that also happens to be at the end of your right hand.”
At least Jake laughs softly when his brother mentions the absurdity of running for president on a gleaming new Netflix documentary. It leads the splurge of content which Netflix hopes will entice millions of viewers to watch Jake Paul’s embarrassing fight against the 58-year-old Mike Tyson on Friday night in Arlington.
In this sun-kissed corner of north Texas, a week after Donald Trump sealed his return to the White House, the hype intensifies. Jake and Logan, two brothers from Ohio aged 27 and 29, are ardent Trump supporters and, like their political hero, they peddle a constant stream of bullshit in the knowledge that some of it will eventually stick.
Jake can be heard proclaiming that “I’m a professional boxer, knocking people the fuck out” and “I could become the next Muhammad Ali”. His big brother shrugs: “Of course he’s delusional. We all are. It’s why we are where we are – until it becomes a reality. That’s the beauty of Jake Paul.”
Delusions of grandeur can become a kind of grim truth. Maybe, with the world turned upside down, Logan Paul will become president one day. There is more chance of that happening than Jake becoming a great boxer. He has applied himself with some seriousness, and trains hard, but it is difficult to give any credence to Paul’s claims of boxing authenticity.
He has had 11 fights so far and only one of his opponents, Tommy Fury, was younger than him and a professional boxer. Paul lost that bout to an average scrapper whose boxing credentials rest on the fact that he is Tyson Fury’s younger brother. Tommy Fury is also famous for being a contestant on Love Island and, since beating Paul in February 2023, he has had only one further bout – against KSI, another YouTuber.
But there is a more meaningful story about Paul. In the Netflix documentary he alleges that his father was violent towards him. Greg Paul denies any wrongdoing but he also implies that his boys should be grateful that he was so tough on them. Logan agrees that Jake was traumatised by his childhood but, together, they began making YouTube videos as teenagers which soon drew in millions of subscribers.
“We’re fucking media whores who make content on phones, edit it on iMovie, post it on the internet and get people talking,” Logan says. Jake, meanwhile, suggests: “When they made the word ‘influencer’ they were talking about us.”
At 18, Jake was rich enough to buy a house worth $7.4m (£5.8m) but trading on his infamy wore him down. His brother and father were concerned that Jake might take his own life but then, in August 2018, boxing apparently transformed him. The Pauls launched YouTube boxing when they flew to England and Logan drew with his British rival, the big-talking KSI. Jake and Deji Olatunji, KSI’s brother, fought on the undercard.
Jake was being beaten up in front of a packed and baying Manchester Arena. He says: “I felt like I was dying … and I fucking loved it … some other element inside me took over.” He won the fight and, sick of making YouTube content and being hated, decided to become a professional fighter. “Boxing reinvigorated something inside me,” he said. “It made me feel alive again.”
Jake Paul seems sincere in appreciating the self-worth that boxing can instil and since then, while beating a series of former UFC fighters, he has built a 10-1 record which looks decent on paper and flimsy in a proper ring. But he is smart and grinned with delight when, having beaten the then 47-year-old MMA great Anderson Silva, he turned to the cameras to reveal that the pay-per-view buys had reached 1.3m at “$50 a pop”.
There are rumours that Paul could make $40m against Tyson, which is ridiculous money for a novice who has none of the talent or hard-won ringcraft of the world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk. But rather than getting angry it’s best to move on with a little nod in acknowledgement of Paul’s business savvy.
President Trump spews out racism and misogyny. At his recent election rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump was preceded on a stage by an aspiring joker who described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”.
Yet Paul loves living in Puerto Rico and he is also passionate about supporting women’s boxing. He promotes Amanda Serrano, a Puerto Rican woman born in New York, and her life has been transformed. She spent years earning peanuts and gaining little recognition, despite winning world titles at multiple weights. It is rumoured she will make around $8m on Friday night, with her great rival Katie Taylor earning a supposed $6m, as their rematch is the only fight which really matters on the Paul v Tyson card.
Jake Paul might be a limited fighter trying to feel better about himself, while raking in obscene amounts of money, but he can feel proud of that. He won’t be the next Muhammad Ali and, hopefully, not the vice-president of the United States either, but he has created a legacy of lasting significance for women in boxing. We can cling to that truth as the circus grinds on in Texas this week.
