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Philippines, 07 Jan 2026 |
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Jake Paul vs Anthony Joshua: The Biggest “Crossroads” Fight Ever! By Ralph Rimpell PhilBoxing.com Wed, 17 Dec 2025  This Friday on December 19, 2025, Actor, Influencer, and now professional boxer Jake Paul (13-1, 7KOs) will face Former 2-time unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (32-4, 25KOs) on one of the biggest streaming platforms in world, Netflix. Guess what? There is no professional boxing world heavyweight title at stake. What is at stake is that the winner will likely continue fighting on Netflix or some other large streaming service, earn tens of millions of dollars, and could possibly receive a world title opportunity. The loser of this fight may have to consider retirement. It’s rumored that both fighters are set to earn a guaranteed minimum whopping $92 million dollars each from Netflix! How did Paul and Joshua arrive at this point of notoriety and financial prosperity? Paul who fights in the cruiserweight (200lbs) and heavyweight (unlimited lbs) divisions had initially signed to fight WBA lightweight (135lbs) champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis and promote the event through his company Most Valuable Promotions (MVP). The “Tank” fight was intriguing because of the size disparity between him and Paul. The fight was supposed to have been an exhibition that was to take place back on November 14, 2025, last month. Because of some alleged legal trouble on the part of “Tank”, Paul cancelled their Netflix fight and eventually settled on fighting Joshua after choosing from a list of boxing’s top fighters in the sport. Boxer such as Terrance Crawford, Ryan Garcia, Edgar Berlanga, and Oleksandr Usyk were rumored to seriously be in the mix to replaced “Tank”. Why is the Paul vs Joshua fight the biggest "Crossroads Fight" ever for both fighters? Anthony Joshua won an Olympic gold medal in 2012. After winning the Olympic gold medal he became a professional fighter and won the IBF world heavyweight championship in his 14th fight by defeating Charles Martin. He partially unified his title by adding the WBA and IBO heavyweight titles by defeating Wladmir Klitschko in his 19th professional fight. In Joshua's 23rd professional fight heavyweight contender Andy Cruz Jr (a substitute for Jarell Miller, the original opponent who had failed a drug test) scored an upset of the year by shockingly knocking out Joshua in the 7th round to win the Heavyweight title! Six months later in a rematch Joshua defeated Ruiz via 12 round decision to regain his titles. The fight the boxing public was clamoring to see was Joshua vs then WBC Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder who was undefeated at the time. There was a rumored $100 million offer on the proverbial negotiating table for the two fighters to divide if they would fight. It appears egos may have gotten in the way so percentages of who would get what could not be agreed upon so negotiations fell apart. Wilder would go on to eventually lose his title to Tyson Fury and suffered additional losses. Anthony Joshua would go on to fight Oleksandr Usyk and lose his titles and failed to regain them in an immediate rematch. Since the Usyk fight, Joshua has been 5-1, 3KOs. In his last fight he lost to IBF heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois by 5th round knockout, which was his 4th career loss. In spite of the four losses on his professional record there is still talk of a Tyson Fury and a Wilder fight should he defeat Jake Paul this upcoming Friday. A loss to Paul would most definitely mean Joshua would no longer be in line for lucrative paydays and he would be relegated to “gate keeper” status in the heavyweight division for up-and-coming young fighters trying to make a name for themselves. Jake Paul began fighting in 2018. He fought MMA fighters and former basketball players who had no professional boxing experience. When Paul did increase his level of competition against an active actual professional fighter, Tommy Fury (Tyson Fury’s younger brother), he lost by split decision back in 2023. Since the Fury loss Paul has won six straight fights. Paul’s last two fight were against former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson (59 years old) and former middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. In the process Paul has become one of the highest paid and watched boxers in the world. Many people subscribe to Netflix to watch him fight. No matter what anyone thinks of Joshua he is by far (on paper) and likely in reality the best and toughest fighter Jake Paul will have faced in his 14 fight career thus far. Has Paul made enough progress as a boxer to defeat Joshua or is this a serious mismatch? Is Joshua’s career over after his 4th loss and he is the perfect opponent for Paul? Both of these fighters have a lot to lose with a loss and a lot to gain with a victory. These questions will no doubt be answered on fight night this Friday. In light of all of the aforementioned, Paul vs Joshua is truly the “Biggest Crossroads fight” ever in this Writer’s opinion. This Writer picks Joshua to knock out Jake Paul in devastating fashion within 2 rounds on Friday night. Boxing Notes Reports by certain Boxing Podcasters occasionally indicate that former unified welterweight champion Errol Spence will return to boxing based on a short interviews when Spence attends fights. Spence has not fought since losing to Terrance Crawford back in 2023. Reports are Spence would likely fight at 154lbs upon his return to boxing. The 154lbs division is currently a “hot division” in boxing where there are no doubt multimillion dollar paydays to be earned. Sebastian Fundora is the WBC jr. middleweight champion and the man to beat in the division. Jaron Ennis, Vergil Ortiz, Jermell Charlo, Keith Thurman, Tim Tszyu, etc. are all elite fighters in that division. There are plenty of opponents to choose from if and when Spence truly wants to make a comeback. Until Spence makes and announcement that a press conference is being held to announce his next fight Podcasters should let Spence enjoy the time he has with his family while he is away from boxing…The lightweight (135lbs) division is a very “hot division” as well. Gervonta “Tank” Davis is the WBA lightweight champion and Shakur Stevenson is the WBC champion. Shakur will challenge WBO 140lbs champion Teofimo Lopez next month and return to the 135lbs division after the fight, or so he says. There are other exciting fighters in the division such as O’Shaquie Foster, Floyd Schofield, Andy Cruz, Pitbull Cruz, and Lamont Roach. “Tank” has a lot of excellent options should he decide to fight again. “Tank” was rumored to earn a $50 million payday against Jake Paul until the fight was cancelled for alleged legal problems. Hopefully “Tank” can be offered close to the amount of money he would have made against Paul for him to fight one of his Peers. The fight on the horizon that could conceivably give Tank an enormous payday could be against living legend Manny Pacquiao. Let’s see what happens in 2026. ***Ralph Rimpell is a writer based out of New York and is a Boxing Correspondent for Philboxing.com. Ralph holds an undergraduate degree from City University of New York. He has been a Boxing Writer for over ten years having written for several top boxing websites on the World Wide Web. Before becoming a writer, Ralph's passion was for professional wrestling until he realized professional wrestling was entertainment and not a real sport. It was at that time the 1984 US Olympic team made up of future stars such as Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor, Pernell Whitaker, etc. entered the professional ranks and signed with promotional outfit Main Events.It was also at that time a young exciting Heavyweight originally hailing from Brooklyn named Mike Tyson also turned professional and became the face of boxing. Young boxing fan Ralph just couldn't get enough of boxing as a large part of it was being broadcast on "free TV". As time went on, Ralph felt boxing writers were not being forthcoming with their boxing coverage, opinion pieces, interviews, etc. So Ralph decided to write an article and submitted it to a Boxing website thinking it would be deleted and ignored by the Editor. To Ralph's surprise his article was posted on their website and the readers embraced it. The rest is history. "I thank God for the Internet because it has created opportunities for writers like myself who likely would not have been given an opportunity to write for print publications. I hope someday soon to expand my role in Boxing on different levels." -- Ralph Rimpell Contact Writer: RLuvsboxing@aol.com Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ralph Rimpell.  |
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