Can a YouTuber beat the greatest boxer of his generation? Tune in Sunday to find out! (The answer is no)
Floyd Mayweather Jr (50-0, 27 KOs) faces Logan Paul (0-1, 23 million subscribers) in an 8 round exhibition bout. Knockouts will be allowed but will be the only way to win, as there won’t be any judges and should the fight go the distance, no winner will be announced.
The fight obviously holds no sporting interest since Mayweather is the best boxer of the last 25 years and Logan Paul is someone who, to his credit, looks like he’s really trying to get good at boxing but isn’t. The question is whether Mayweather will stop him despite the size difference. Given the skill gap between them eight rounds is more than enough for Mayweather to stop him but he might also just decide to toy with him. Anyway, people are watching to see Paul get embarrassed and that is most definitely gonna happen.
There is some relevant boxing on the card however, with former WBA and IBF super-welterweight champion Jarrett Hurd (24-1, 16 KOs) making his middleweight debut. His opponent will be Luis Arias (18-2-1, 9 KOs). Hurd, an exciting high volume pressure fighter lost his belts in an upset to Julian Williams in 2019 but recorded marquee victories over Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout prior. Arias is at a do or die stage in his career. Losing to Daniel Jacobs fresh off the loss of his belts isn’t anything to be ashamed about but Arias followed his first loss with a draw with veteran Gabriel Rosado and an upset loss to the unheralded Luke Keeler in which he went down twice. A win for him is capital if he wants to avoid derailing his career completely. Unfortunately for him he seems like the perfect opponent for Hurd to shine in a new weight class. He likes to fight on the front foot but his offense is limited mostly to big wide hooks and his defense is seriously lacking.
Hurd should look good here and with the middleweight division in somewhat of a transition state with Canelo leaving for higher weights and a lot of the division’s top fighters getting up there in age there should be opportunities at the weight for a fighter as talented as him.
Former super-middleweight and light-heavyweight titlist Badou Jack (23-3-3, 13 KOs) was supposed to rematch Jean Pascal (35-6-1, 20 KOs) to whom he lost in 2019. The fight would have been for the WBA title and was to be the most relevant fight of the card. Unfortunately, Jean Pascal popped for a cocktail of roughly every steroid known to mankind and a dash of EPO in the pre-fight drug test. Thus, Jack finds himself fighting late replacement Dervin Colina (15-0, 13 KOs). Colina is a 33-year-old Venezuelan fighter who spent his entire career fighting dreadful opposition in Colombia and Venezuela and shouldn’t be much of a threat even for an aging Jack at the tail end of his career.
The last notable fight of the card (off-TV) is the return of Puerto Rico’s Jean Carlos Torres (18-0, 14 KOs) to the ring after 18 months away. Torres is a big athletic superlightweight that has shown some punching power but also some technical limitations. He is already 30 so is in dire need of a step up in competition if he is to make something of his career. His opponent Zack Kuhn (10-7-1, 5 KOs) lost 5 of his last 6 by stoppage so obviously that step up isn’t this week end. But one hopes a quick win sets him up for bigger things, though I have doubts about his ceiling once he’s facing competition he doesn’t hold a tremendous athletic advantage over.
Mayweather vs Paul airs on Showtime PPV and Fanmio PPV at 8:00pm ET / 5:00pm PT.