Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – YouTuber, content creator, entrepreneur, self-proclaimed face of boxing: Jake Paul has become a master of re-invention during his meteoric rise to fame and fortune. The 27-year-old from Cleveland, who defeated veteran heavyweight icon Mike Tyson in an eight-round made-for-Netflix bout on Friday, has parlayed his fame as an internet celebrity into a lucrative career in combat sports.
Paul, who is estimated to have a net worth of $80 million according to the Celebrity Net Worth website, first rose to prominence in 2013, posting short-form videos to the now-shuttered site Vine, garnering millions of followers and billions of views. He subsequently transported his knack for creating viral content to YouTube in 2014, launching his own channel which became renowned for controversies, practical jokes, and hip-hop. In 2015 he made a foray into television, signing for the Disney Channel in the teen series “Bizaardvark.” That relationship ended in 2017 amid increasing media attention on some of Paul’s YouTube stunts, such as setting furniture on fire in an empty swimming pool at his luxury home in Los Angeles.
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Paul gained wider attention, however, when he turned his hand to celebrity boxing, a trend started by his elder brother Logan Paul, who fought English influencer KSI in a pay-per-view amateur contest in Manchester in 2018. Though ridiculed by the traditional boxing world, that fight—where Jake Paul appeared on the undercard against English influencer Deji Olatunji—gained attention from the sport’s moneymen for selling some 1.3 million pay-per-view buys.
Two years later, Jake Paul made his professional debut in a fight against English YouTuber AnEsonGib, appearing as part of the undercard alongside a bona-fide world middleweight title bout. Paul has continued to fight sporadically in the years since, earning grudging respect from the boxing world after a split-decision loss to Briton Tommy Fury last year. Paul’s success in rebranding himself as a legitimate boxer has been driven by the millions of followers he already has via social media, guaranteeing eyeballs on events he takes part in and making him an attractive proposition for promoters.
“He’s in a position that most young boxers are never in,” said former welterweight world champion Shawn Porter, who now works as a television analyst. “He has hundreds of thousands to millions of people watching him, where most even Olympians, when we have our first 5-10 fights, there’s nobody in the stadium. We don’t have the same sort of audience. I think that’s the main thing – he’s a rookie who is getting true professional exposure.”
Paul’s brash style, though, is not to everyone’s liking. Press conferences promoting Friday’s fight against Tyson in Texas were invariably laced with profanities, while Paul appeared for an open workout on Tuesday wearing a bizarre feather headdress in the form of a rooster. “Jake Paul is a strange one, but I like what he’s doing for boxing,” British fight promoter Eddie Hearn said in a 2022 interview. “He’s putting the work in and he’s not terrible. But it’ll be a pleasant day when someone chins him.”
© 2024 AFP
