Champion Boxer Floyd Mayweather, named by ESPN as the greatest pound-for-pound boxer of the last 25 years, dons his gloves again this weekend to fight, none other than…YouTuber Logan Paul. Another exhibition in a long line of farcical fights that is slowly destroying the brand of boxing.
I call farce, I call rigged and I call a lot of money and smiles regardless of the result. This result being, if the Tyson v Roy Jones Jnr fight is anything to measure off, a draw. 54 year old Tyson pulled himself back into shape for that fight last November and clubbed Roy Jones Jnr around the ring for eight rounds only for three celebrity judges to declare the bout an unofficial draw. Tyson reportedly pocketed $10 million from the fight, with Jones Jnr taking away $3 million. Happy days for all involved; no concussions and a lot of cash.
Adding further insult to the exhibition was the co-main event where Jake Paul, brother of Logan, fought ex-NBA player Nate Robinson and flattened him with a knockout one minute into the second round. The most publicity Robinson’s received and more decimals in both of their bank accounts. I’m not disputing Paul’s punch, but it was a punch landed on somebody who had a career in basketball, and not in any form of fighting – be it MMA or boxing.
Jake Paul went on to then fight ex-MMA fighter Ben Askren, known best for his wrestling. Askren was knocked down straight away by Paul but walked away with beer belly in tact and close to the same amount of money he accumulated over his MMA career. Regardless of the shape Askren was in, regardless of his experience more as a wrestler than a striker, you’re telling me that a man who ate punches for a living would go down that quickly?
Rigged.
The fact that Jake Paul was allowed to bypass standard procedure of working one’s way up in the boxing world is a joke in itself, as well as the fact that not one of his three fights have been against boxers, but at least the record stands at 3-0 with knockouts.
Logan Paul, who will now face arguably the greatest pound for pound boxer of all time, has fought only once, against another YouTuber, KSI, and he didn’t even win that. If technicality is anything to go by, KSI (Or maybe Jake Paul, why the hell not?) should be squaring up to Mayweather this weekend. But alas, rational and respect seem far gone in the last few years and so here we have the undefeated Floyd Mayweather back for his second biggest moneymaker since coming out of retirement to fight MMA superstar Conor McGregor in 2017. Not worth getting into that one, aside from arguing that it kickstarted this terrible trend.
Logan Paul is the furthest thing from deserving space in the ring with Mayweather and it is sad to think of the many good professional boxers who didn’t have the opportunity to face him, having followed normal boxing protocol and simply not been good enough. Paul is not good enough, but his brand is and his subscription base is.
Sadder than the occasion is the fact that when googling “Floyd Mayweather” in search of his statistics, every article on Google’s first search page has Logan Paul’s named belted across the headline. What a tarnishing touch to Mayweather’s nearly twenty year career.
Anyway, the stats deserve to be written again. The comparative numbers go as follows:
Logan Paul: Fights – 1, Wins – 0, Losses – 1, KOs – 0
Floyd Mayweather: Fights – 50, Wins – 50, Losses – 0, KOs – 27.
Mayweather also fought in five weight classes over his career, winning 15 major titles. As an amateur he won three US Golden Gloves championships in three different weight divisions, as well as a US National Championship and a bronze Olympic medal in 1996 (his second year of fighting).
So here is the crux of the rant, the advice amidst the anger. Don’t bet. By all means watch the circus. but don’t wager on it. Don’t support it. You are fighting not the odds of statistical history, or boxing capabilities – because then Logan Paul would be a lot further off than 7/1 – you are fighting the undeterminable variable which is that this has probably been rigged from promoter to fighter to trainer to deliver the boxing world another blow, and the bank account of some of the world’s wealthiest another boost.
I made the mistake of betting on the fact that the fighter in Ben Askren would survive the privilege prancing of Jake Paul. I didn’t wager on the the fact that Askren probably did what any of us would do for that amount of money and ate up a mitt, all smiles, and walked off into a lovely retirement.
Maybe a Mayweather loss would be too obvious, perhaps a draw can’t be orchestrated yet again. But I hugely doubt that Paul will be on the receiving end of half of the capabilities of a man named the greatest pound-for-pound boxer of the last 25 years. Keep your money safe, and refrain from financially contributing to this catastrophe.
