By Mark Baldwin

JAKE Paul has dramatically changed the life of Amanda Serrano. The paltry and disgustingly low paydays are now no more. Serrano and Katie Taylor have just shared the richest ever fight purse for a female fight. 

Significantly higher than what they earned in 2022 at Madison Square Garden. And that payday was beyond the pale. Without Jake Paul, we would likely have not seen one Taylor/Serrano fight, let alone two.

A reported 50 million households watched their savage rematch on Netflix on Friday night. Over 72,000 fans entered the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Not all of them would have watched Taylor and Serrano trade blows for twenty pulsating minutes. But enough would have. 

Other fighters, to a different level, of course, would have benefited financially from being in the Most Valuable Promotions stable. Jake Paul deserves credit for all of the above. We should applaud him for that. Paul has shown the established how it should be done. Embarrassed them even. 

Taylor (L) and Serrano (R) produced another thrilling contest. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images for Netflix © 2024)

But if we are to critique the YouTube sensation on his own ring resume, that’s where the applause should stop. In truth, Paul should be embarrassed by it. Ashamed even. We should boo him. And extremely loudly. If the intention is to march onwards to a world title shot, then he is failing dismally. If the aim is grand WWE like events, then that is a completely different conversation.

“I plan on doing everything in this sport that there is to be done,” Paul says. But what does that mean exactly? I wonder if even he knows for sure.

Basketball players, candlestick makers, smaller and older. Dragging ‘fighters’ from another sport out of their retirement homes. Jake Paul is part of a great illusion. A magic trick that everyone knows and sees. We all can see what is happening. How it works. 

But in different ways, we all buy a ticket to watch it unfold. It is a great boxing heist that we are all too willing accomplices to. Jake Paul doesn’t have to wear a mask. He doesn’t have to. We all know what it is, what he is, but we watch it anyway. He takes us for fools because that is exactly what we are. Where is the curiosity if we know exactly what will happen? Jake Paul doesn’t care. Evidently, we don’t either.

A 58-year-old Mike Tyson played his part. You can’t blame him for that. But you can blame Jake Paul and the Texas commission that sanctioned the whole sorry carnival. It’s beyond cynical. A shameful act to feed the already over-inflated ego. It’s an old line, but that ego has well and truly landed and in a sport that allows it to grow. Tyson was what he was always going to be. Paul knew that. In truth, we all did. But yet we all handed out our money and invested our precious time in it. 

Paul is now laughing at us. All the way to the bank. You could say he’s been laughing at us since he started his boxing journey just under five years ago. He knows what he is doing. And he is doing it exceedingly well. We have to give him that, at the least.

A little bit of slap and tickle at the weigh-in was the best shot that Tyson landed. It wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be. Tyson stayed the course. Paul, despite his post-fight words of not wanting to hurt Tyson, simply wasn’t good enough to end it before the final bell. It could have been an absolute train wreck. It could have ended very badly indeed. But they just about got away with it. By the way, that is no cause for celebration.

Jake Paul might look at his record and smile when he sees the name of Mike Tyson on his resume. But he didn’t beat Mike Tyson. Certainly not in the truest and most honourable way. Jake Paul just beat a one-legged old man. It was nothing more than than that, and frankly, it is insulting to suggest otherwise. 

The crowd, whose enthusiasm quickly waned when they belatedly realised that they had been duped out of their hard-earned cash, booed what they were served up. But were they just booing themselves for buying into the land of make-believe? I have no sympathy. We got what we all deserved. Even those of us who heavily condemned it still watched it.

Tyson looked old because he is, at least in a boxing sense. But Paul yet again showed his limitations inside a boxing ring. He just isn’t that good. Even in a delusional state, Paul must know that also. 

We have to remember that Tommy Fury, who now resides in the Misfits world of entertainment, beat Paul not so long ago. For context, Fury was ranked outside of the top twenty cruiserweights in his native land at the time. And subsequently, barely beat KSI. That is the level that Jake Paul is at.

The Friday night extravaganza had a Wrestlemania feel about it. I did wonder if Mr. T and Hulk Hogan would storm the ring at some point. It was that kind of night. It was an undoubted financial success, but I wonder how many more nights like this Jake Paul can pull off. The reason why so many turned out and tuned in was because of Mike Tyson. 

Without a Tyson-like presence, who can possibly replicate what we got in Texas. Maybe Conor McGregor can be tempted. He certainly fits the selection process. Older, smaller, and from another sport. But eventually, the so-called YouTube sensation will have to pick on someone his own size and someone his own age and against a fighter who is a live threat to him. 

When that happens, Jake Paul will learn that even boxing will only tolerate so much of an elaborate illusion. You can only get away with so much. At some point, he will get found out, and boxing can return to something like normality. At least until the next circus act rides into town. And it will.