A 24-year-old YouTuber has flipped the sport of boxing on its head, and the boxing purists are mad. Jake Paul, a former Disney star with a YouTube following of 20.4 million and counting, is doing all the things you shouldn’t do to become a successful prizefighter.
He is, perhaps, the only boxer in the sport to “make it” without going through the drudgery of beating twenty to thirty low-to-mid-level boxers and padding his resume before finally being recognized by the establishment as a success. Paul has done all that after just five fights and less than two years of professional training under his belt, winning all but one of those bouts via highlight-reel KO.