Andrei Arlovski wasn’t impressed watching Jake Paul suffer a knockout loss to Anthony Joshua, but he hopes the YouTuber-turned-boxer learned a valuable lesson in defeat.
After starting his career with an 11-1 record largely built around beating MMA fighters and past-their-prime boxers like Mike Tyson and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Paul found out how the other half lives with his lopsided loss to Joshua in December. Paul lost every round on the scorecards including a 10-7 fifth round after Joshua delivered multiple knockdowns.
The end came in the sixth after Joshua connected with a brutal right hand that broke Paul’s jaw in two places, ending the fight via knockout. While Arlovski doesn’t begrudge anyone getting involved with combat sports, he believes Paul realized in painful fashion that there are levels in this game.
“I didn’t like it but Jake Paul had f*cking great condition for six rounds,” Arlovski said about the fight when speaking to MMA Fighting. “Obviously he ran around, it doesn’t matter. He got his broken jaw. It’s not good. Broken jaw in two places is going to take some time to heal it to get recovered. We’ll see.
“Hopefully maybe yes, maybe not he’s going to get back into boxing. But for now, he might understand people who spend 10, 15, 20 years in boxing and MMA, it’s not like you’re training hard like last month in a boxing gym or something or do MMA. People f*cking spend their lives over there.”
Paul has definitely carved out his own place in boxing since making his debut, although his journey has been far from conventional when it comes to gaining experience early in his career. He’s become one of the most talked-about and marketable athletes in boxing, but Paul hasn’t faced stiff enough competition to warrant consideration as a world-class fighter yet.
Arlovski hasn’t been a big fan of the Jake Paul experience, but perhaps losing to Joshua might finally set things straight for him.
“To me, it’s all the time it was kind of disrespectful to professional athletes, to boxers and MMA,” Arlovski said. “[He’s saying] ‘oh we spent the last year in the boxing gym non-stop!’ My guy, I spent the last 25 years non-stop in the f*cking gym and not once, two or three times a day.
“You think you’re superhuman, you can come [and take a shortcut]? I tried to watch my mouth, don’t say a bad word but it’s not cool. Let’s put it this way. It’s not cool.”
While he was in the middle of his career in MMA, Arlovski actually tried to crossover to boxing as well after inking a contract to join Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. At the time, Arlovski was potentially working towards a fight against either Wladimir or Vitali Klitschko, but the matchup never happened.
It took until this past November for Arlovski to finally get in the boxing ring when he made his debut at a Misfits event where he scored a brutal fourth-round knockout over an influencer named Kelz.
Arlovski has nothing but praise for his opponent, but much like Paul going against Joshua, Kelz was out of his depth challenging a fighter with much more high-level experience.
“He was super nice and I wish him all the best,” Arlovski said about Kelz. “But in the press conference, I remember him saying ‘the last year, everyday [I was in the gym].’ Come on my guy, let’s be f*cking serious. Everyday and not once but two or three times a day I’m at the gym and come on.
“I’m not going to try to play professional football right now because I’m big and think I’m strong and genius. Obviously not because you see people get hurt over there.”
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