Jake Paul may already be feeling the physical effects of his transition to combat sports.
Paul hasn’t been a boxer for all that long, having gone pro vs. a fellow YouTube star in January 2020. Hell, Paul didn’t fight an actual combat sports athlete until he dusted Ben Askren in April of this year, and he didn’t really get hit clean until his first fight vs. Woodley back in August!
Despite a relatively small amount of punches absorbed in the ring, Paul admitted on “In Depth With Graham Bensinger” to feeling the effects, noting memory loss and slurred speech among his primary symptoms.
“I notice it in conversations with like, with my girlfriend or friends, like, not remembering something that I should be able to remember that happened a couple days ago,” Paul explained (via TheWrap). “Sometimes in my speech, where like every hundredth or two hundredth word, I’ll mess up or, like, slur. Which I didn’t do that before.”
Paul doesn’t entirely blame boxing, however. Instead, the 24 year old points to the impacts absorbed from playing football in his youth, explaining that a brain scan showed damage even prior to his amateur boxing debut in 2018. Even if he’s been relatively untouched inside the ring, shots absorbed in the gym definitely count, and Paul has worked with some very talented boxers.
“The doctor told me there’s a lack of blood flow from the concussions I had when I would play football, into certain areas of my brain, one of them being the frontal lobe which is partially memory,” Paul said. “After my first year of boxing, I went back and it was worse.”
It only takes a single hard connection to do irreparable damage, which is why Paul’s foray into boxing deserves at least some respect. At the same time, Paul definitely has other options to fall back on — the former Disney star was wealthy prior to stepping in the ring.
Someone like Tyron Woodley, piling up losses at nearly 40 years of age, likely does not.