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Former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua knocked out YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in their controversial Netflix-backed bout in Miami on Friday.
The fight at the Kaseya Centre, which saw both men reportedly splitting a mammoth $184 million purse, had triggered alarm across boxing due to the gulf in physical size and class between Britain’s two-time former world champion Joshua and Paul, an internet personality who has forged a lucrative career through a handful of novelty boxing contests.
In the event, however, Joshua made hard work of defeating his vastly less accomplished opponent, before his superior size and power eventually told in the later stages of the eight-round fight, with a sixth-round knockout.
A lacklustre contest descended into farce at times, with Paul repeatedly dropping to the canvas and grappling with Joshua’s legs. At one stage, even referee Christopher Young appeared to be losing patience, warning the fighters in the fourth round: “The fans did not pay to see this crap.”
As Paul tired, Joshua began to land punches with more regularity, and after knocking down the 6ft 1in American twice in the fifth round, the end came swiftly in the sixth. Joshua backed the 28-year-old into a corner and, after teeing up Paul with a crunching left, delivered the knockout blow with a right to the chin that sent his opponent crashing to the canvas.
“It wasn’t the best performance,” Joshua, 36, admitted afterwards. “But the end goal was to get Jake Paul, pin him down and hurt him.
Joshua, meanwhile, praised Paul for lasting into the later rounds.
“I want to give him his props, he got up time and time again,” Joshua said. “It was difficult in there for him, but he kept on trying to find a way. It takes a real man to do that.”
Paul, meanwhile, his mouth bloodied from Joshua’s final assault, said he believed his jaw had been broken but was satisfied with his performance.
Friday’s made-for-streaming contest, which came just over a year after Paul fought a 58-year-old Mike Tyson in a much-derided Netflix fight, was widely panned in boxing, with many warning that Paul risked serious injury.
Yet the devastating first or second round knockout by Joshua that most had predicted failed to materialise as Paul scrambled desperately to stay outside of the 2012 Olympic champion Joshua’s range.
Joshua, fighting for the first time in 15 months, always looked the more threatening fighter, landing 48 of 146 punches, compared to Paul’s meagre 16.
The Briton is now turning his attention towards a money-spinning bout against compatriot and fellow former world champion Tyson Fury next year.
