David Haye says he’s worried about Jake Paul’s life for his eight-round fight against Anthony Joshua on December 19th at the Kaseya Center, Miami, Florida. He states the Joshua-Paul fight “shouldn’t” happen, and hopes that “Paramedics” are nearby.
Jake Paul’s Risk Factor
This is a fight that could blow up in Joshua’s face, with him getting sparked out by the younger, faster, more active, and still hungry Jake Paul.
The retired former two-division champion Haye doesn’t believe the YouTuber-turned-boxer Paul (12-1, 7 KOs) has any chance of winning against Joshua (28-4, 25 KOs). He predicts an ugly outcome if AJ traps the 28-year-old Paul and tees off on him with shots at some point in the fight.
Given the age difference and the way the 36-year-old Joshua looked in his last fight against Daniel Dubois on September 21, 2024, Haye should be concerned with his safety. Joshua was in trouble from the opening minute against Dubois, who is hardly a world beater.
That’s the only decent fighter that AJ has fought in the last three years since suffering back-to-back defeats against former undisputed cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in 2021 and 2022.
Joshua’s only four wins in the last five years, since 2020, have come against these bottom feeders:
- Francis Ngannou (March 8, 2024) – 2nd round KO
- Otto Wallin (December 23, 2023) – 5th round stoppage
- Robert Helenius (August 12, 2023) – 7th round KO
- Jermaine Franklin (April 1, 2023) – 12-round unanimous decision
“If Jake Paul is left with Anthony Joshua unloading on him, it could be the end for him. It could be his last day on earth,” said David Haye to Sky Sports Boxing, predicting a potential bad ending for Jake in his eight-round fight against Joshua on December 19th in Miami.
AJ’s Recent Decline
Some fans would argue that Joshua was never that good a fighter from the jump. Like Tyson Fury, he carved a career out of beating 40-year-old Wladimir Klitschko and using a victory over the former King of the heavyweight division, along with a controversial 2012 Olympic gold medal, to make a vast fortune.
If AJ is the artificially manufactured fighter that some believe him to be, Jake Paul has an excellent chance of beating him and putting the spotlight on his limitations.
Whatever Joshua once was, he’s not that fighter anymore, and his punch resistance appears to have abandoned him entirely at 36. Jake has the punching power to do a similar job on Joshua that Dubois did last year by knocking him out within five rounds. It could be quicker because Paul is more athletic than Dubois and not robotic like him.
“It shouldn’t go ahead. There’s no reason for it to go ahead,” said Haye, voicing his view that Joshua vs. Paul shouldn’t be happening. “There’s no reason for it to go ahead. It’s going to be brutal. I hope they’ve got good paramedics close by.”
One wonders if Haye is envious of Jake getting the opportunity to fight Joshua instead of himself. He never got that fight during his career, and it would have been a massive one.
With the money that Joshua is going to get, which his promoter Eddie Hearn said is in the same region as the $80 million+ he received for his rematch with Andy Ruiz Jr in December 2019, why wouldn’t he take this fight?