Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury – Sunday, 9:30pm
Bragging rights will finally be settled on Sunday night as fierce rivals Jake Paul and Tommy Fury meet after two previous curtailments.
Action from the eight-round contest in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is expected to get underway at 7pm on the night and is on BT Sport pay-per-view for £19.95.
Main event ring walks are expected at around 9:45pm in the UK with the action set to start at 10pm.
This scrap, and it will be exactly that, has been billed as a 50-50 pick ’em in many quarters. But the bookies don’t see it that way and have American former Disney star Jake Paul as the steady, odds-on favourite.
While boxing purists have snarled at the pay-per-view status, Paul, and to a lesser degree Fury, will take the sport beyond its regular audience.
With that in mind, the huge pile of money involved is justified. Paul is in line for a guaranteed purse of £2.6m and then 65% of PPV sales.
Fury will take home £1.6m and 35% of the PPV sales, according to SportsZion.
YouTube star Paul has won the first six professional fights of his boxing career against the likes of MMA stars Anderson Silva and Tyron Woodley.
Paul, 26, won his last fight against the powerful Silva via unanimous decision after eight competitive rounds. He weighed in at just over 186lbs in October against the 47-year-old and looked powerful against his limited opponent.
He was caught with some shots early on and managed to walk through them before knocking his opponent over in the eighth. The shot that dropped Silva looked dubious to say the least and the conspiracy theorists were out in force.
It was a bar-room brawl at times as Paul swung and missed wildly, but it was certainly a better warm-up than Fury got against limited Pole Daniel Bocianski.
There is no doubt that Fury will be the best opponent Paul has been in with. But similarly Paul will be the most dangerous opponent of Fury’s fledgling career.
Fury, 23, walked through his fight with Bocianski, who did not have enough power to trouble the Brit in April 2022.
Fury knocked Bocianski over twice and was close to stopping his rangy opponent with a big right hand in the fifth which shook the Pole to his boots.
Bocianski, to his credit, showed his toughness and saw out the eight rounds, all of which he lost.
The unanimous victory featured Fury’s piston-like jab, but he carried his right hand low, which Paul may well be able to take advantage of.
Bocianski was a step up in opponent after a string of nobodies had been put in front of the former Love Island star Fury.
To put his 8-0 (4 KOs) record into context, three of Fury’s previous opponents, Callum Ide, Genadij Krajevskij and Scott Williams had never won a fight.
While Paul has been disposing of aging martial arts fighters, Fury has been knocking out no hopers.
The half-brother of Tyson Fury, who weighed in at 175lbs last time out, remains a million miles away from a British title and a defeat to Paul would leave him lost.
The pressure is on the Brit, despite being the underdog with Tyson Fury claiming he will make his brother retire if he loses.
Meanwhile, Paul will receive an official WBC ranking if he picks up the win, which could be a launch pad to serious tilt in the sport.
There’s no doubt that both men carry significant power and the contest looks like being more about brawn than finesse.
Paul’s training camp has been intense; he has reportedly sparred with some good cruiserweights and his trainer BJ Flores insists his man hits harder and has a better boxing IQ than Fury.
Flores claims the fight will not go three rounds and Paul agrees.
“Me and Tommy will be around three rounds max,” Paul said. “He’s just not going to be prepared for the moment or what I’m bringing to the table.
“I’m trying to knock him out with a hook actually, I want him to be the first person I knock out with my left hand so we’ve been working on that… I think the first round will be chill and then I’ll start to figure him out after 30-45 seconds.”
Fury also hits hard, according to Commonwealth light-heavyweight champion Lyndon Arthur.
“This was years ago so he’s probably a completely different human being from five, six years ago or whenever it was. He’s good, I tell you what he’s probably the hardest person I’ve been punched off,” Arthur told BBTV Boxing.
“He was [heavy-handed] back then and I don’t think much has changed.”
It’s almost impossible to draw any parallels to each man’s career to date. But with the rivals both genuinely believing they are the superior fighter it could be a ding-dong from the first bell.
Neither fighter has a record of getting rounds under their belts. Paul went eight last time out, while Fury has done six, but Sunday’s clash is unlikely to go that far.
Neither man has a particularly tight defence and covering up will not be top of the agenda for either man. Both will look to impose their power from the off and the fight may just depend on who can keep their cool and land the knockout blow.
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