Money lured Anthony Joshua to circus fight but he could really hurt Jake Paul | Donald McRae
The unsurprising confirmation of “a colossal global showdown” between Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua arrived on Monday morning with a dull thud,That grand description of an eight-round scrap between a former YouTuber and a former world heavyweight champion was supplied by Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions, which also announced that the contest will be screened live on Netflix on 19 December and called Judgment Day,Boxing operates in a netherworld that appears to have sunk far beyond any fear of judgment, while Paul has always had delusions of grandeur as a novice pro,But even boxing may have to consider its own culpability should Paul be badly hurt and end up in hospital after this fully sanctioned bout with regulation 10oz gloves is held in Miami,Paul is a brilliant hustler and, until now, he has chosen his opponents with deliberate care to avoid excessive danger.
His most obviously successful stunt was to entice a 58-year-old Mike Tyson into the ring last November.It turned out to be the biggest “fight” of 2024, but it was an inevitable charade as Tyson was a shell of the great he had once been.Years of self-abuse, allied to severe depression, a stomach ulcer, a bad knee and acute sciatica, meant Tyson shuffled around the ring and took the odd punch for an astronomical purse.Joshua is 36 and he has kept a notably low profile since his crushing defeat by Daniel Dubois 14 months ago.His gaze had appeared fixed on a wildly lucrative showdown with Tyson Fury – who lost his past two fights against Oleksandr Usyk.
Last Saturday, before Conor Benn outboxed Chris Eubank Jr, Turki al-Sheikh, the chair of the Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority and the man who controls world boxing at its highest level, told 60,000 people at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium that he would put on two massive fights next year,He smiled knowingly when asked if the two-fight deal for Fury-Joshua had been sealed,Eddie Hearn, the promoter, had said Joshua was planning a tune-up against a journeyman in preparation for Fury,But the offer of a crazy amount of money to meet Paul has taken precedence and will serve as a gentle hit before the real business begins,Joshua, like Fury, is well past his prime, but he stays in terrific shape and has fought at the peak of the heavyweight division for the past 10 years.
He also hits very hard and, should he wish to make some kind of statement about the gulf between genuine fighters and YouTube “disruptors”, he could really hurt Paul.The suspicion remains that this will turn out to be a more controlled arrangement with Joshua choosing to avoid causing much damage to the man who is going to make him tens of millions of dollars.That gut reaction is confirmed by the fact that their contest has been limited to eight rounds.Sign up to The RecapThe best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s actionafter newsletter promotionJoshua said: “Whether you like it or not, I’m here to do massive numbers, have big fights and break every record while keeping cool, calm and collected.Mark my words, you’ll see a lot more fighters take these opportunities in the future.
I’m about to break the internet over Jake Paul’s face.”Paul responded with his customary swagger: “This isn’t an AI simulation.This is Judgment Day.When I beat Anthony Joshua, every doubt disappears and no one can deny me the opportunity to fight for a world title.To all my haters, this is what you wanted.
”That last line was a clear acknowledgment that if a proper fight breaks out it would be a shock if Joshua did not knock out Paul.After all, in his modest résumé of 13 professional “fights”, Paul has faced only one relatively competent contemporary boxer.But Tommy Fury is not really a boxer at all and he still beat Paul in a cruiserweight bout in 2023.Paul has since stuck to his usual diet of mock fisticuffs and, as a heavyweight, he was meant to meet Gervonta Davis, a gifted, but troubled world lightweight champion, in a bizarre exhibition this month.But it was cancelled after a lawsuit, citing domestic abuse, was filed against Davis by his ex-girlfriend.
Paul, who has been an admirable champion of women’s boxing, lambasted Davis and promised he would find himself a superior opponent.Joshua has stepped into the void.He and Paul will make a ludicrous amount of money, Netflix will record huge ratings and boxing will seem just a little more broken.Hopefully, there will be no need for Paul to be taken away in an ambulance and we can all find a way to feel a tad less grubby after the circus is over.
Spanish Armada-era astrolabe returns to Scilly after mysterious global journey
It spent hundreds of years languishing on the seabed off the Isles of Scilly in the far south-west of Britain before being hauled back to the surface by divers and setting off a circumnavigation of the world.Finally the Pednathise Head astrolabe – a rare example of a 16th-century navigational instrument once used by sailors to determine latitude – is back on Scilly after being rediscovered on the other side of the Atlantic.It turns out that after being sold and leaving the UK, the astrolabe passed through private collections in Australia and the US, its true identity forgotten along the way, before ending up in a museum on the Florida Keys.“It’s been on quite a journey,” said Xavier Duffy, the curator of the Isles of Scilly Museum. “We’re thrilled to have it back on Scilly and in the care of the museum
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The Running Man to David Hockney: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Stephen King’s dystopian novel gets an Edgar Wright reboot with Glen Powell, while the prolific British master is back with new paintingsThe Running ManOut nowEdgar Wright directs this reimagining of the 1987 sci-fi cult classic based on Stephen King’s 1982 novel, which envisioned a fictional America of 2025 sliding into totalitarianism. Glen Powell stars as the contestant attempting to survive a deadly televised game.Now You See Me: Now You Don’tOut nowThis third film in the magic-heist franchise reunites Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Isla Fisher as the Four Horsemen. Directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), the new instalment sees the gang target a massive diamond. Expect more sleight-of-hand shenanigans
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It was like something out of a movie. On the morning of 19 October, news broke of a heist at the Louvre in Paris: four thieves, disguised as construction workers, had made off with eight “priceless” pieces of French crown jewels from the 19th century. They also took a crown that once belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, but for some reason dropped it outside the museum. The haul has since been valued by a prosecutor at around €88m.The details of the case are astonishing, from the robbery itself – the thieves arrived in broad daylight, using a truck with a mechanical ladder to access the targeted gallery’s window, which they cut through with power tools – to subsequent revelations about the museum’s security measures
Seth Meyers on Trump: ‘The most unpopular president of all time’
Seth Meyers spoke about rising tensions within the Republican party with Donald Trump losing support from his base over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.The Late Night host spoke about yesterday’s dramatic meeting in the situation room to discuss Epstein, an ongoing crisis that has seen the president becoming “wildly unpopular”.Meyers said that Trump is “by all the accounts the most unpopular president of all time” and up until this point has only been “able to hang on to power because he has a tight grip on the Republican party no matter what he did or how bad things got”.But a new poll shows that only 33% of American adults approve of how the president is managing the government, a figure that’s down from March with the fall driven by Republicans or independents.Meyers called this “a meaningful and real development” and “it’s not coming out of thin air” with Trump “pissing off Maga” in multiple ways
Colbert on Trump and Epstein: ‘They were best pals and underage girls was Epstein’s whole thing’
Late-night hosts covered this week’s latest bombshell Epstein and Trump revelations and spoke about the president’s latest interview with Laura Ingraham.On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about the government shutdown likely coming to an end after “an historic impasse” (the shutdown later did end) and Democrat Adelita Grijalva being sworn in as a member of Congress, seven weeks after she won a special House election in Arizona.Colbert said she has been “reborn from the ashes” and will be the 218th and final signature needed to force a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.He joked that on her first day she was shown around and told “down there is the room where you’re going to topple the pervert cabal”.This week saw some new emails from Epstein released which suggest Trump knew of his conduct
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