A wild claim regarding Paul s. Woodley 2 took hold on Twitter.
Jake Paul knocked out Tyron Woodley over the weekend with a thunderous right hook. The punch sent the former UFC welterweight champion to the canvas like a fallen tree. The win gave Paul a 5-0 pro record and his most impressive result to date.
Despite the fight obviously not being fixed and Woodley clearing being knocked out for real, conspiracy theorists on the internet believe they know something the rest of us don’t. Those observers are claiming that Woodley took a dive. Their proof, an innocuous twist of the wrist from Paul before he landed the fight-ending punch.
This claim, along with “people don’t fall like that when they are knocked out” is littered all over social media. Below is one of the tweets that garnered some of the most engagement, racking up almost 700 likes and close to 200 retweets.
Rigged? The twist of the hand to let him know it’s time to flop? pic.twitter.com/0BqOo8rqll pic.twitter.com/6ZWqJdsEyh
— @@@@@@@ (@jakeverysmalld) December 19, 2021
It doesn’t really need to be stated, but anyone with more than a casual interest in combat sports can tell this was a genuine knockout. It’s also absurd to suggest that Woodley would be more interested in a pay-off to lose than he would be in a win over Paul.
Rigged fight claims pop up all the time, sometimes with less ‘evidence’ than this one. This particular claim is reminiscent of one we heard back in 2013, involving Vitor Belfort and Luke Rockhold. Back then some claimed that Belfort’s spinning heel kick KO came after Rockhold nodded at his hated rival, supposedly signalling now was the time to end things.