Jake Paul received his flowers ahead of his next fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.
Once a YouTube and Disney Channel star, the 28-year-old Jake Paul is still largely disrespected in the combat sports community. Paul is coming off a decision win over the legendary Mike Tyson in November, with a controversial 30-year age gap between the fighters.
Before that, Paul defeated a number of UFC veterans, YouTubers and more recently, actual boxers.
After putting on the most-streamed fight in combat sports history against Tyson, Paul is set to face former WBC champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on Saturday night in Anaheim.
Days away from the fight, one UFC legend who has been critical of Paul in the past made a respectful admission regarding the boxer.
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Rampage Jackson says Jake Paul is the reason he started watching boxing again
Paul was a name Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson had on his hit-list for a while, taking him off said list after the retired boxer ‘Butterbean’ called out Paul.
The former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion wasn’t a fan of Paul knocking out former champions like Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley left and right.
Jackson told Paul this face-to-face, adding he ‘brought back’ the sport of boxing.
“Even though I hate on you for beating up MMA fighters, you the reason why I started back watching boxing,” Jackson said on the Jaxxon Podcast.
“Because it was boring…
“For real though, it was boring, then you brought it back.”
Jake Paul says his success ‘inspired’ other boxers to ‘sack up’
Paul generated quite a bit of interest in the months following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The YouTuber-turned-boxer made waves when he knocked out NBA star Nate Robinson in the co-main event of Mike Tyson’s return against Roy Jones Jr.
Paul kept racking up knockdowns and knockouts, defeating the likes of Anderson Silva, Nate Diaz, Mike Perry, and Tyron Woodley (twice).
Paul thinks his success was a wake-up call to the sport.
“The fact that I started doing these big fights because I was fighting anybody, anywhere, making the fights happen.
“I think that inspired a lot of other big fighters to be like, oh, this kid is making all this money in boxing, and he’s doing bigger numbers than us. I have to actually sack up and fight the toughest guy,” Paul said.
“You’ve literally seen since I’ve come into the sport, all the big major fights that we’ve been waiting years and years to happen, they started happening because I think people were like, oh, what the f—?
“How are we gonna let this YouTuber kid do bigger numbers than us?” Paul added.