I wasn't really planning on doing this, but here I am. It's almost 1 am during my winter break and I'm about to write a post about how Jake Paul knocked former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley out cold. I almost can't even believe I'm saying that. I don't anticipate this post being that long, but I feel like I have to say something after what we just saw. I'm just going to get into it in a similar style to my traditional fallout posts.
Look, I'm not really a huge boxing fan and I'm not afraid to admit that. I say that every once in awhile whenever it comes up, but for anyone new here, keep that in mind. I'm in no way a boxing purist and quite frankly, I'm far from it. All of that to say, I've never had a problem with Jake Paul entering the boxing realm. He's not taking food out of anyone's mouth and if anything, he's making money for the other fighters on his cards. For me, boxing has just never had the same level of excitement as MMA for me, which is kind of a weird thing to say. Combat is combat and boxing is a significant portion of your average MMA fight, but just a standard boxing match has trouble getting my attention these days. The only boxing matches I watched this year other than Jake Paul fights were Fury vs Wilder and the last Terence Crawford fight against Shawn Porter. I think Jake Paul is injecting some life into the sport that it's been lacking in some respects, especially in the younger age demographics. One thing that boxing hasn't tried to adapt from MMA is the card building method. MMA and the UFC in particular will attempt to build up the entire card and sell the entire event instead of just making it all about the main event. I think the Jake Paul cards have a done a decent job at that. Amanda Serrano is a top 3 pound for pound women's boxer in the world right now and while it wasn't a great fight, Frank Gore vs Deron Williams at least provided intrigue. Anyways, in the 6th of the scheduled 8 rounds, Jake Paul landed an overhand right on the chin of Tyron Woodley that dropped him in scary fashion. The fight was pretty slow and uneventful up until that point, but one shot was all it took. On a night where Derrick Lewis set the UFC record for knockouts, the knockout of the night came at the hands of a Youtube personality. I know Woodley isn't the same version of himself that held the title, but at the same time even in the worst of his end in the UFC, he wasn't getting slept like that. He went to a decision against Gilbert Burns, suffered a weird rib injury against Colby Covington, and then got submitted by Vicente Luque. That really proves to me that Paul at the very least has very real power in his right hand. Knocking out a retired Nate Robinson who's never been hit before is one thing. Knocking out an older and very out of shape Ben Askren is a step up, but given the way he looked, still isn't an insane thing. Having Tyron Woodley out cold on his feet really opened my eyes and honestly, I'm really interested to see how far Jake Paul can go. Now, I don't think he's going to be champion, I'm not stupid, but I would love to see just how high up the ladder he can get before he gets beaten. I do love that he is sort of sticking it to all of the older boxing fans who can't stand that these events do well. As for who's next for Jake Paul, we know it's going to be someone with name value who can build a big event and sell some fights. A lot of people want to see him fight Tommy Fury because he's a "real boxer", but when he fought on the undercard of the last event, I wasn't all that impressed with him. The one thing that he has going for him is that he is the same size as Jake and not all of these former 170 lbs guys coming up to his size. At this point, I just want to see who can stand up to his power. He called out Jorge Masvidal, which we know won't happen as long as he's under contract in the UFC, so that one is out. It does seem like Nate Diaz is actually intrigued by the idea and honestly, I don't hate the idea completely. We all love the Diaz brothers, but it's not like Nate is actually ever going to compete for a championship again and he knows that. It seems like the Poirier fight may actually have some legs to it, which would be the last on Diaz's contract. To never get the trilogy with Conor would be criminal, but I have a feeling that everyone would put hard feelings aside if Nate left for one boxing match then came back to the UFC after with the amount of money everyone would make in the Diaz vs McGregor trilogy fight. Whoever is next for Paul, I'll be watching and am intrigued to see who it is.
As for Tyron Woodley, you'll probably see a lot of people saying all kinds of things about him. I'm not going to be the guy to kick someone while they're down. First of all, I hope Tyron is ok because that was a horrible knockout. He seemed alright and he responded to Ariel's question in the ring, but I hope he has all of his health in order moving forward. If Tyron sent me a DM on Instagram and asked for my opinion, I would say that I would personally like to see him call it a career and get out while he's still healthy. Tyron Woodley has done everything someone can do in combat sports. He's made a lot of money and he's been a world champion. As a fan, I don't want to see legends of the sport out there being knocked unconscious by much younger and larger athletes. It is ironic that Tyron suffered this loss on the same night that his former business partner and title challenger Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson also had a pretty rough night, but I don't want to rub this in Tyron's face. It was a bad loss, but Tyron has a whole life to live beyond this. His future with his family is more important than him trying to chase one more win. The look on his face in the ring was just heart breaking for me. He looked so genuinely upset. He took the fight on short notice and all credit to him for that. There's a time and a place for legacy questions and that's not within a couple of hours of the loss. I just want Tyron to be happy with the career he's laid out in front of us and be secure enough to move on and enjoy all of his hard work. He's put in years of work for so long now and he's made a bunch of money, especially in these two fights with Jake Paul. Stephen Thompson let it leak in his interview with Ariel Helwani that he and Tyron were doing something for the show Cobra Kai, so I hope to see him in more roles like that and maybe even in a commentating or analyst type role sometime in the future. If for some reason Tyron Woodley or someone close to him sees this and actually reads this far, I hope they know that everyone respects what Tyron has done and we only want the best for him moving forward.
I think that's it for me guys. What do you guys think? What was your opinion of the fight? Who do you want to see Jake fight next? What do you want to see Tyron Woodley do after this? Leave any and all thoughts and opinions in the comments and thanks for reading.
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