by By Eisner brand: YouTuber Jake Paul and reality TV personality Tommy Fury will face off in their celebrity boxing matchup tonight in an eight-round 185-pound bout on ESPN+ PPV in the US and BT Sport Box Office in the UK against the Diriyah Arena in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia.
Boxing News 24 will broadcast live updates and action scores from Diriyah.
Although the Paul vs. The Fury counts as a professionally sanctioned clash in the cruiserweight division, seen by many as a glorious celebrity matchup between the two guys that has a large following on social media. It’s an online celebrity match. What can you say?
Jake is an oddity, showing that you can get a lot of attention to his fights without fighting anyone of value. He did it by making noise. He can’t be criticized for using the sport if Jake gets away with it, which he proves; him more power.
Complete card:
Jake Paul vs. Tommy Fury
Ilunga Junior Makabu vs. Badou Jack
Ziyad Almaayouf vs Ronald Martinez
Muhsin Cason (10-0, 7 KOs) vs Taryel Jafarov
Bader Samreen vs. Viorel Simion
Adam Saleh vs. Stuart Kellogg
One could argue that the best matchup on the card is the title fight between WBC junior heavyweight champion Ilunga Makabu (29-2, 25 KOs) and 39-year-old former two-division world champion Badou Jack (27-3-3, 15 KOs).
The bottom card seems to have been thrown together without much emphasis on entertaining the fans.
They probably decided to tip all the money to the top with Jake and Tommy and went for it scrimp on undercardthrowing in basically anyone knowing that the fans, many of them not boxing fans, don’t care.
For these types of youtubers/social media fans, they probably wouldn’t even notice if the subcard was stacked, which it apparently isn’t. It’s a skeleton crew.
Seven years ago, Badou was the top contender at 168 pounds, defeating Lucian Bute, George Groves, Anthony Dirrell and Nathan Cleverly. However, after the war with Adonis Stevenson in 2018, Badou did not look the same, having struggled with losses to Jean Pascal and Marcus Brown ever since.
Since those losses, Badou has moved away from fighting good opponents and faced five more no-name fighters to claim victory again.
Based on the low-level opponents Badou has faced over the past three years, he doesn’t deserve a world title shot, but he has a shot anyway, probably based on name recognition.
