Love him if you can. Loathe him if you must.
But you've got to respect Jake Paul as a matchmaker.
The social media agitator has said all the right things while professing his love for boxing and insisting he's in it for the long haul, while simultaneously seeking out and signing up precisely the sort of opponents who'll strike the proper balance of name recognition and competitive irrelevance.
He kicked off with a fellow YouTuber and a former NBA player before graduating to ex-UFC stars familiar enough to generate interest, but either completely out of their element when limited to punches (Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley)—or old enough to be a 25-year-old's father (Anderson Silva).
The results were predictable: Six fights, six wins, four KOs.
Perhaps emboldened by a pristine start, the 26-year-old upped the ante with a lunge toward Tommy Fury—who'd surged to 7-0 against his own band of no-hopers, though his most significant boxing achievement was being born via the same father as heavyweight champion Tyson Fury.
The proximity to authentic ring greatness clearly helped, and Fury survived a late scare to win seven of eight rounds on two of three scorecards and knock his crestfallen foe from the unbeaten ranks and all the way back to the persona-restoring drawing board.
Too smart to chase a Fury rematch or engage another boxer with even a middling resume, Paul dipped back into the Octagonal pool and tossed a career lifeline to Nate Diaz—who'd played out his string with Dana White with an eye toward scoring a non-traditional payday.
Call it a smashing success for both.
Diaz gets a spotlight turn in the pay-per-view headliner spotlight, and Paul gets to feast on a wildly popular cage fighter who's as rough and rugged as they come but not nearly as proficient with his fists as he is with his jiu-jitsu and his mouth—which renders him little more than a loud punching bag.
Bottom line: Paul wins. Wins easily, in fact.
And it'll be a significant surprise if it even gets past the halfway point.
Prediction: Paul by TKO, Rd. 3
Lyle Fitzsimmons
