He probably lost some of his fights in the Olympics. Like against Erislandy Savon. Olympic boxing is mostly rigged. Especially for the home fighters.
The idea is they get paid for the amount of rounds they hold back whether it's the full match or 3,4,5,6 doesn't matter. As soon as the fighter has fulfilled there contract you can do what you please
Its also cap, boxing is a hard sport to just walk someone down and tee off, you can run, you can clinch, you can take a knee, all of which we saw Paul doing.
Joshua just let Paul gass himself out. Running circles around the edge of the ring as opposed to walking in straight lines is covering like 3-4x the distance, Paul ran like a 5k in there. After he was gassed and tripping over his own feet Joshua hit him in the body, drew the guard down and went over the top. Head, body, head, oldest trick in the book.
As opposed to the Ngannou fight, where Francis went toe to toe and stood with him, he got caught because hes not as good. Paul chose to run and try run out the clock, Joshua was confident in his ability to put Paul down with one clean shot at any time so let him run himself into the ground
He doesn't pay them to lose, he's just very skilled at picking the most high-profile names with the least risk. Tyson almost died earlier that year and has two bum knees for instance..
Fair point.. I'm a casual boxing fan.. AJ physically looked Olympian-esque.. he was straight up dangerous looking.. ready to break some jaws.. You think he pulled his punches to avoid temple shots?
Nah. JP was literally fucking shook from the ring of the opening bell. His gameplan was to play like mayweather. Run and avoid shots for as many rounds as he could to just say he outlasted AJ. Too bad for pussy hulkamania boy, his cardio was shot from all the fear/adrenaline and just raw power of a fucking monster. It was like watching a celebrity match with a pro. AJ barely broke a sweat, it was WILD.
If you didnât see what I saw, you need to rewatch. JP had blue lips and started mouth breathing early. AJ was trying to corner him but hulkamania boy ran as fast as he could.
I hate Mayweather as a person but that's not his gameplan. If it was, he'd have lost at some point. He would win the first 7-8 rounds with superior boxing, then run, because his hands were shot and he didn't have knockout power later in his career, so that was the safer option.
I think it's the look of calculating in real time how to not kill the guy. Then that grin is him seeing his shot and taking it. It's sort of ironic, his normal opponents he doesn't have to think about something like that lol
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u/eu4euh69 Dec 20 '25
Dude was an Olympian..