Is Jake Paul In Over His Head? Internet Expects Loss vs. Joshua

Summary:

Over the past five years, Jake Paul has transitioned from YouTuber to boxer, defeating former champions in controversial matches.
Critics question the legitimacy of Paul’s wins, suspecting a carefully managed rise to stardom for profit.
Facing heavyweight Anthony Joshua, Paul enters a fight where the prevailing expectation is his likely defeat.

Over the past five years, Jake Paul, the YouTuber-turned-boxer, has turned what began as a novelty experiment into a legitimate, if polarizing, boxing career. Along the way, he has beaten former UFC champions Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley, outpointed Anderson Silva, and most recently went the distance with Mike Tyson in a heavily watched Netflix event.

I hate watching Jake Paul fights because they all feel staged, but I continue watching in hopes one isn’t and he gets knocked out which is what we all want to see… pic.twitter.com/FFNgweHrxb

— ฿₳₮₮ⱠɆ ฿ɎⱤĐ (@BattleByrd) December 18, 2025

Those wins, however, have always come with caveats. Askren was a wrestler with limited boxing experience. Woodley and Silva were well past their primes. Tyson was 58 years old. For critics, the pattern fueled a belief that Paul’s rise was carefully managed, and for some corners of the internet, even staged or overly curated for maximum profit rather than competitive risk.

That skepticism has followed Paul into every fight, but it has intensified ahead of his bout Friday night in Miami against Anthony Joshua. This time, there are no qualifiers about age, inexperience, or crossover novelty. Joshua is a two-time heavyweight world champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and one of the division’s most powerful punchers of the past decade.

When Mike Tyson refused to punch Jake Paul in a fixed fight. #JakeJoshua pic.twitter.com/H6piR3qy2L

— James Becker (@BeckerBoxing) December 18, 2025

For the first time in Paul’s boxing career, the prevailing expectation online is not that he might surprise people, but that he is likely to lose, and lose decisively. The intrigue surrounding the fight stems less from whether Paul can win and more from how long he can last against a fully credentialed heavyweight operating within his own sport.