Per Mark Eisner: Youtuber Jake Paul and reality TV personality Tommy Fury will battle it out in their celebrity boxing match tonight in an eight-round catchweight bout at 185 lbs on ESPN+PPV in the US and BT Sport Box Office in the UK on Diriyah Arena in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia Arabia.
Boxing News 24 will give live updates and results of the Diriyah action.
Although the Paul vs. Fury counts as a professionally sanctioned matchup in the cruiserweight division, it is seen by many as a glorious celebrity fight between two guys with a huge following on social media. It’s an internet celebrity prank. What can you say?
Jake is a rarity, showing that you can draw a lot of attention to your fights without actually fighting someone of quality. He did it by making noise. You can’t fault him for exploiting the sport if Jake can get away with it, as he’s proving; more power to him.
Full card:
Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury
Ilunga Junior Makabu vs Badou Jack
Ziyad Almaayouf vs Ronald Martinez
Muhsin Cason (10-0, 7 KO’s) vs. Taryel Jafarov
Bader Samreen vs. Viorel Simion
Adam Saleh vs Stuart Kellogg
You could argue that the best match on the card is the title fight between WBC cruiserweight champion Ilunga Makabu (29-2, 25 KOs) and 39-year-old former two-division world champion Badou Jack (27-3-3, 15 KOs).
The tie appears to have been put together without much emphasis on entertaining the fans.
It’s likely that they chose to put all their money on top with Jake & Tommy, and opted to save on the tieplaying basically anyone, knowing that the fans, many of them not boxing fans, wouldn’t mind.
With these types of Youtuber/social media fans, they probably wouldn’t notice even if the undercard was stacked, which it clearly isn’t. It’s a small team.
Seven years ago, Badou was one of the top fighters at 168, beating the likes of Lucian Bute, George Groves, Anthony Dirrell and Nathan Cleverly. However, after a war with Adonis Stevenson in 2018, Badou hasn’t looked the same, struggling ever since in losses to Jean Pascal and Marcus Browne.
Since suffering these back-to-back losses, Badou has moved away from quality opponents and faced five unnamed fighters in a row to get back to winning ways again.
Based on the low-level opposition Badou has faced over the last three years, he doesn’t deserve to fight for a world title, but he will have a shot anyway, likely based on name recognition.