On April 17th the YouTube Sensation, Ex- Disney Star and Rapper, Jake Paul beat the two-time NCAA champ, ONE FC Champ, Bellator Champ and Olympic wrestler Ben Askren through a technical stoppage made by the referee at the 1:59 mark of the 1st round.
The fight was extremely hyped up with performances from Justin Beiber, Dojacat, Icecube and Snopp Dogg just to name of a few. The pay-per-view(PPV) ended up racking up 1.5 million buys making it the 10th most bought PPV event of all time.
The fight was preceded by a lot of drama around Pete Davidson who made a mockery of the entire event with his childish and derogatory comments towards both the fighters.
The event was also met with a lot of criticism as the fans felt that the PPV was more of a"musical concert with intermissions as fights". The Steve Cunnigham VS Frank Mir fight was extremely enthralling. But, during this fight, the comments of former world champion and boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya were criticized. His comment of calling Steve Cunnigham's chin weak suggesting that he cannot take a punch because of his 9 losses in his professional career was disliked by the boxing community and fans.
The Justin Beiber performance was extremely good and was loved by everyone on the internet. This performance was followed by the main event, Jake"The Problem Child" Paul VS "Funky" Ben Askeww in Michael Buffer's words.
The fight began and Jake was seen to be more active. Jake Paul was landing good punches and was moving around the ring showing great ring awareness. He was landing clean punches and in one such exchange Ben Askren tried to counter but Jake's quick head movements made the punch just graze the surface of his head. The fight did not last long after this. Jake started using combinations to hurt Ben's body. On one such combination he hit a left jab towards Ben who moved his guard down to protect his body, and Jake, using his boxing IQ cracked Ben with an overhand right. Mind you, Ben Askren used to be hit with 4-ounce gloves to the head for a living and was never knocked down when fighting on his feet other than the Masvidal knee to the neck. But, Jake Paul knocked out Ben Askren in such a clean fashion that even though Ben got up immediately, his feet were not stable causing the referee to end the fight immediately. Jake dedicated his fight to his Late Security Guard Shameer known as "Shadow".
The fight, as great as it was, was followed up by criticism as people are never ready to give credit to Jake Paul when credit is due. People started saying that the fight was rigged because of a photo going viral of Ben Askren smiling after getting knocked out. I am 100% sure that this was not the case and Ben Askren himself confirmed the alleged rumours.
Now, people have no excuse but to proclaim Jake Paul a legitimate boxer. Comedian and now Podcaster Andrew Schulz even said"Jake Paul is the biggest fight in boxing right now, bigger than Canelo, bigger than Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua". With the amount of PPV buys he alone generated, it would be hard to say otherwise.
But the question is, what is next for Jake Paul? Is it going to be Dillon Danis, Dustin Poirer or Conor Mcgregor? Jake Paul said after the fight," The Conor Mcgregor fight just became more real". Now Jake Paul has a professional record of 3-0, with 3 KO's and has only been taken to the 2nd round once, that too with Nate Robinson who ended up being a meme.
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