Sports
Tim Bradley delivers his final verdict on Jake Paul’s performance against Anthony Joshua
Jake Paul has received credit for surviving six rounds against two-time heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, but Tim Bradley remains unimpressed and has explained the major flaw that Paul and his team made during the fight.
Joshua stalked Paul from the get-go in search of a show-closing shot, but it took ‘AJ’ five rounds to first get to and drop the American, before dispatching of ‘The Problem Child’ in the sixth and breaking his jaw in two places.
Despite being knocked out, some fans suggest that Paul’s stock has risen in defeat, for being able to last as long as he did in the fight.
However, on his YouTube channel, two-weight world champion Bradley refused to applaud Paul’s efforts, instead believing that he showed too much fear and respect to Joshua in the fight.
“Before the fight I said ‘they [Paul’s team] are going to run and that is the worst thing they can do’. When you are facing a bully, you have got to stand up to the bully. You have got to send a message early on.
“We talk about fighting for dominance or getting respect – that was the issue, Jake didn’t get respect early on.
“If I was in his corner I would have said, ‘listen, man, we are here. You are getting paid 94 million dollars, we are here to fight, we are not here to survive, we are here to fight. You have got to go out there and hit this man as hard as you possibly can in the first round.
“If you put AJ on his back foot and you keep him defensive, AJ is not as great of fighter off his back foot as he is when he is coming forward. AJ is the type of guy that feeds off when I guy respects or fears him and AJ felt, because of the experience that he has, like ‘this dude fears me’.
“That boy [Paul] looked like a runaway slave, didn’t he. That boy looked like a fish out of water. That boy looked like a lion was chasing his a**, like a lion and a gazelle. I thought I was watching National Geographic.”
Joshua now seems set to take on Dutch kickboxer Rico Verhoeven in early 2026, in order to tee up a long-awaited showdown with Tyson Fury for the second half of the year.
