The Circus Rolls Through Cleveland: Paul vs. Woodley, 8/29/21

I have an affinity for extremely stupid sports hypotheticals. I own, and have read, Andy Roddick Beat Me With A Frying Pan, which is a book all about one guy’s attempts to empirically test extremely stupid sports hypotheticals to the fullest (reasonable) extent — things like “would a morbidly obese person be a good hockey goalie because they can block the entire goal” (tested by having a sumo wrestler show up at an NHL team’s practice), or “would a team of midgets be the best baseball team because they would get walked every plate appearance” (tested by having a minor league team let the author use a circus troupe of midgets for an inning of at-bats). (The baseball chapter is also notable because the author briefly consults Nate Silver — who, at the time, was essentially a random niche statistician for Baseball Prospectus — about the viability of this idea. 538 has been too cowardly to revisit it; for shame.) Most of the hypotheticals in this book, however, center around some variant of an age-old question: how would an amateur athlete fare against a professional one? What affordances would need to be made for this to be a fair competition?

The Paul brothers are conducting an experiment in this particular field right now — live, televised, on Pay-Per-View in front of millions of people — and it is absolutely fascinating, because the further we get into it, the more data points we gather, and the more nuance we get to our answers to the above. Here is the setup: what if you took a reasonably athletic individual in their physical prime, and got rid of the obligations plaguing most of our daily lives — time, money, etc. — allowing them to focus nearly entirely on training for a specific sport? How long would it take them to beat a professional athlete in that sport? Could they even win against a pro? If not, with what caliber of athlete could they reasonably compete?

This kind of question has been thrown around for a while, but usually it was in the form of a would-you-rather begging the answer: would you rather (e.g.) spend a minute in a boxing ring with Mike Tyson, or try to hit a Major League fastball? There were a couple other variants, but the gist remained the same: you have no shot at this (and you probably wouldn’t pick Tyson, because of the legitimate chance of traumatic injury). Generally, that’s the conventional wisdom, and hell, I was reasonably confident that most average people wouldn’t be able to hang with most pro athletes in nearly any sport, not just the one in which the athlete was actually professional. When Jake Paul fought Nate Robinson, I texted my friends “all in Nate Robinson” prefight: dude had a decade+ long NBA career despite being super undersized, which puts him well within the top fraction of a percentile of athleticism worldwide. “I know he’s not a pro boxer, but no way he would lose a fight to a random YouTuber;” thus spoke the fool, as Nate Robinson proceeded to come out in a weird crab-like stance and get his ass beat.

From then on, my interest was firmly piqued, as Paul started cherry-picking further opponents — who weren’t boxers, but were gradually getting closer to resembling them, if you squinted a little. I’d learned my lesson from the first fight; it was “all in Jake Paul” as he tossed aside former MMA fighter Ben Askren (the easiest bet of the bunch, really — I knew nothing about MMA, but 30 seconds of reading things from people who did revealed that I am likely better at hitting people with my fists than Ben Askren), then lined up another PPV fight with aging MMA fighter Tyron Woodley — a professional fighter who could actually throw a punch. Progress! (Meanwhile, his brother skipped straight to fighting the best boxer of all time, losing predictably on points in an extremely boring fight; to be fair, that’s also pretty much what happened in Mayweather’s last 20 or so fights with real opponents.) By this point, the hypothetical was getting to be must-see TV. I was 100% fascinated by the outcome, ready to make a night of it on an otherwise uneventful Sunday; “not tonight, babe, the Jake Paul fight is on.”

I tuned into the undercard midway through the ringwalks for the second fight. To give the event the appearance of legitimacy, the undercard fights were mostly actual boxing. Even the clearly overmatched opponents had reasonable records, and the matchups were really the order of the day in conventional-boxing-land: hometown up-and-comer fights aging journeyman with a semblance of prestige (he had a belt once, somewhere!); legitimate prospect fights tomato can, boosting his profile; champion fights reasonable opponent, who looks tautologically overmatched, because they are fighting the champion.

Montana Love vs. Ivan Baranchyk

The first fight (at least the first from when I tuned in) was Love vs. Baranchyk — a classic “hometown fighter on the undercard” ordeal, where a reasonable sort-of-up-and-coming fighter from the host city (in this case Cleveland’s Montana Love) gets to look good by fighting a guy who isn’t a total can, but who is eminently beatable. I tuned in during Montana Love’s walkup; his rapper entourage appeared not to know the words to their own song. Good start. Love’s trunks looked something like a Christmas ornament — or maybe a Santa hat, or one of the decorative fur things you put on a mantelpiece. He’d nicknamed himself “Too Pretty,” and his crew were wearing custom-made shirts with his face and “Too Pretty” emblazoned on them. All of this was ostentatious, but actually fair, in a way; when you’re the big fish in the small pond, you might as well flex on the smaller fish. Baranchyk, in comparison, was mostly understated and relatively businesslike, apart from the fucking giant lion tattoo covering half his chest.

The fight itself was a style clash, which actually made for relatively entertaining combat. Baranchyk appeared to have never heard of a jab or a body shot. Without looking it up, I seriously doubted he had ever won a fight on cards; his entire repertoire appeared to be extremely slow, telegraphed power hooks to the head. Knockout or bust it was; to quote my midround notes: “this guy is spamming falcon punch in real life.” Love, conversely, had real boxing fundamentals, and a little bit of home cooking; the one time he got caught by a Baranchyk hook, the referee immediately stepped in. Slightly questionable, but who knows if the gesture would have been reciprocated; Love bizarrely denied this opportunity when he landed a combination on Baranchyk and, instead of following up (and possibly meriting intervention), stepped backward to showboat to the crowd with his gloves up. Somehow I suspect that this behavior will prove costly against a better opponent, but hey, being the big fish is pretty enjoyable sometimes.

Baranchyk was not a very good fighter, but he did have heart, and a chin; after some early fireworks where he managed to connect a couple solid hooks, he mostly ate punches, got staggered or downed, then soldiered on. He looked the part of the unstoppable killing machine who just wouldn’t die, only he was mostly too slow to do any real killing. His corner actually stopped the fight by throwing in the towel between rounds, saving the machine from itself. He was consoled by his wife after the fight, who had long nails, a huge gold watch, and looked very Russian; he’ll be all right. Montana Love, conversely, brought out his (6ish year old?) daughter for the postfight interview; hilariously, she was outfitted in a Versace shirt and giant sunglasses (which she ended up pushing up on her forehead, so she could actually see). (His daughter’s name is Cali Love, apparently, which — if you’re keeping track — is two states worth of love, neither of which is Ohio, where they are from.) Idly, I wondered — if he had lost, I guess the sunglasses just stay in someone’s pocket? Somehow, I suspect they hadn’t considered that possibility; after all, this was their home pond.

After the Love fight, the camera panned to show someone in the front row who had a sign with the name of their YouTube channel, begging for subscribers. I had briefly lost myself, but — yes, right, the main event here was a circus sideshow featuring a YouTuber. It’s probably a credit to Love and Baranchyk to say that they temporarily distracted me into thinking I was watching a boxing match.

Between fights, the production would give a few minutes to two Barstool commentators, which was about the right level of idiocy for this atmosphere. (Really, we need more Pete Davidson yelling extremely stupid garbage, though.) Their job seemed to mostly be promoting their proprietary gambling service. In a hilarious subplot that ended up running all night, they also gave a handpicked bet before each fight, and they got every single pick wrong; I made a note to save this information for future productions, so as to employ my hyper-advanced Costanza betting gambit.

Daniel Dubois vs. Juiseppe Angelo Cusumano

I was pretty sure I knew who was winning this one well before the fight started, without any betting information, or ever having seen either of these guys before, really. Cusumano was 10 years older than his opponent, apparently had changed his name to “Juiseppe” (from “Joe”) after moving to Sicily, and had his own name tattooed across his stomach in a bizarrely awful-looking font. Usually, guys with this kind of aesthetic are random terrible no-names that have been plucked out of relative obscurity to serve as the appetizer for some hungry newcomer looking to build a resume before their first real fight. Once in a while, they are, instead, the world champion. (See: McGregor, Conor.) Cusumano was on the undercard, and also — again — I had never heard of him, which did not bode well for his chances. A further bad omen: despite entering in robes covered in the colors of the Italian flag (in the time-honored fighting tradition of building your identity on tribalism) and changing his name to “Juiseppe” (keeping it going), his entrance song failed to commit entirely to the nationalist double-down bit, instead opting for maybe the most generic ringwalk song possible (ACDC’s Thunderstruck) and, honestly, betraying his lack of confidence. If he’d walked out to some Italian opera or folk song, I would have given him even odds; instead, my prefight notes were “big question: will this guy last a round?”

His opponent, Daniel Dubois, came out to a TikTok meme song (“what you know about rolling down in the deep”), which, to be fair, kind of slaps. This also meant that Dubois apparently shares musical tastes with Barack Obama, which was probably a good sign. The prefight commenters described Cusumano as “knockout-minded,” which I think is how you amicably describe someone who is about to be on the receiving end of an ass whooping unless they manage to luck their way into the punch of their lives. As a spoiler alert to you, dear reader: Cusumano did not pull this off. Instead, he got knocked down three times in the first round and the fight was stopped. (The first time, it looked like he was in the middle of saying something to Dubois while he got cracked in the face by a straight right; deciding to (probably?) trash talk while your opponent’s fist is literally in motion, on its way to your head, is a world-record speedrun for comeuppance.)

I couldn’t really tell anything about Dubois — who is supposed to be a legitimate prospect, of sorts — from this fight. It was immediately obvious that he was better at nearly every aspect of boxing than his (slow, mostly flailing) opponent; I’d love to see him in a real fight, but this one wasn’t.

Amanda Serrano vs. Yamileth Mercado

This was another fight where I didn’t need to see the betting odds to tell me the winner beforehand. The Showtime promotional piece before the fight literally only talked about Serrano, who had apparently been training with Jake Paul in Puerto Rico. I noted a few things from this video:

• if your bio is “super decorated female boxer from Brooklyn by way of Puerto Rico,” you’re a badass, and it’s weird that her promo story arc was “hunting for legitimacy”
• it is very weird to see Jake Paul training in the same room with this person
• if you are training with the primary main event fighter and you are also on the card, you are winning your fight

This fight got co-main event billing, which was clearly an oversell, since this was an actual boxing match. Both fighters appeared amicable during their ringwalks; Serrano was very into her intro music, stopping to dance at the beat drop, and Mercado was basically smiling and laughing for the entirety of her entrance. I wondered how Mercado could be so calm, considering she was likely about to lose, until the commentators rattled off Serrano’s litany of championship belts, at which point I understood: she was fighting one of the GOATs, meaning there was absolutely no pressure. If she lost — hey, so did nearly everyone else. If she won, she would become an instant legend. (Mercado nominally had a championship belt of her own, in a different weight class, which wasn’t up for contest — so, again, low stakes.)

One minute into the first round, it was immediately obvious that Serrano was the best boxer on the card, by quite a bit. She showed off some incredibly quick head movement and nearly supernatural reflexes, her punches were aimed and precise, and — perhaps most notably — her entire body had very little to no wasted movement — a big contrast from not only the prior fights (which, as mentioned, involved a lot of flailing), but also her opponent, who compulsively bounced around — head bobbing back and forth, seemingly not to dodge or feint, but rather mostly to burn vital energy reserves, likely in a quixotic pursuit of staying “loose and ready.” This is not to say Mercado was a bad fighter — she could definitely throw and take a punch. For some reason, she didn’t really want to throw anything but hooks, but unlike Baranchyk’s from earlier, they weren’t incredibly slow, nor telegraphed.

As the fight wore on, Mercado trended more toward the taking of punches than the throwing; she clearly wanted to exchange inside, but nearly every time she moved forward, she’d eat a combination body shot and right hook to the cheek, or just a straight right to the head. Doing this occasionally allowed her to land a hook of her own before Serrano backed away, but that made her going exchange rate for punches roughly 1:2, which seemed suboptimal. Toward the later rounds of the fight, Serrano became more of the aggressor; halfway through round 6, she smiled while backing down Mercado, which was fucking terrifying — a shark-toothed grin. You knew who the predator was, and — for maximum swag — she was wearing Air Jordans.

The fight in aggregate made a reasonable argument for extending the length of women’s boxing rounds, which are 2 minutes (instead of the men’s 3), almost certainly for outdated, sexist reasons. Serrano and Mercado could clearly go 3 minutes at a time without gassing out, but the 2-minute bells essentially propped Mercado up; by round 8, my notes read “this fight is extremely over”, but repeatedly — just when it looked like Serrano’s attacks might lead to a knockdown (or something that would merit a status change), the bell would ring and Mercado would retreat to her corner. (I would say this allowed her to regain false hope, but her corner was helpful neither in strategy nor encouragement — their advice was roughly translated to “go get it! just win!”, which, sure, wow, really unfortunate that she hadn’t considered that before.) Round 9 had a fight start in the stands, which I wish they had shown on-broadcast, instead of the actual fight in the ring: at that point, half of Mercado’s face was bloodied, and she was mostly just eating combination shots without throwing anything in return. This was hard to watch. Mercado was clearly tough as nails, but by that point it was proven to pretty much everyone watching; trotting back out for round 10 just let her get punched in the face for 2 more minutes. (I have no idea how she didn’t get knocked out in this round, considering the number of direct power punches she took.) Post-fight, despite Serrano winning, they did hang a medal around Mercado’s neck. I have absolutely no inkling what this was for. She definitely deserved it for spirit, but boxing is generally more merciless than to stoop to awarding participation trophies.

After the fight, the broadcast commentary mentioned that Serrano had to moonlight in MMA for a while because nobody wanted to box her, which was extremely understandable given what I had just witnessed. Perhaps the only knock on Serrano was her cornerman/trainer, who sucked; in the post-fight interview, he was intent on talking over her (?) and calling out her opponent for being a Mexican (??) with no heart (????? — or, alternatively, did this guy watch the same fight as everyone else?). Serrano herself was humble and respectful, but even as the ring announcer signed off with a “Thank you, Amanda”, her trainer leaned in to try and get the last word. It was rather impressive that, in all of about two minutes, he managed to firmly solidify his status, in my view, as “super wack.”

Jake Paul vs. Tyron Woodley

The network coverage had obviously been showing promos for this fight interspersed between the matches from the rest of the card. One of them showed a shot of Woodley running in slow motion, which prompted me to write down: “form terrible. Feet super pronated. Glad he’s not a distance runner.” Fortunately for Woodley, he would, in fact, be competing in his primary sport tonight, which is definitely a true statement and not a sarcastic joke. As for Jake Paul, it is very disorienting to see random vlogs in a boxer’s promo — not “vlogging my training regimen,” literally just “Hi YouTube/Jake Paulers, it’s me, Jake Paul, in my mansion.” Regardless of whether or not this was the broadcasting future Marconi envisioned when inventing wireless radio communication, here we were.

It did not take long for the commentary to abandon the last vestiges of actual boxing talk. One talking head’s description of Jake Paul’s foray into the boxing scene was that Paul “will be laughing all the way to the blockchain” and that “it reminded” (the commentator’s) “nephew of a video game.” We were firmly within the confines of the circus tent now, but, of course, that was why I was watching in the first place. For an attempt at edifying, actual-fight-analysis commentary, Showtime brought out two renowned experts in combat sports, one of whom was an undefeated featherweight MMA champion; the other was Jake Paul’s brother. (To be fair, one of these people has, in fact, fought Floyd Mayweather.)

Woodley entered the ring with a rapper (OT Genasis, I think) performing something that sounded awful, because apparently it’s impossible to get vocal mixing right in a boxing arena; the vocals were clearly audible and not in sync with the backing track, which also had vocals at the same volume. The cumulative effect of this mix was that you heard every rap twice, which was really not a good call, considering the song’s chorus already repeated itself several times over. At least OT Genasis knew the words, unlike Montana Love’s guy from earlier. I suddenly had a newfound respect for Moneybagg Yo, who had done Mayweather’s ringwalk in the Mayweather/Logan Paul fight, and somehow made his song sound good.

I was curious to see if Jake Paul would do something stupid during his entrance, but it was actually pretty muted, besides some ridiculous air raid warning sound clips or whatever while he was still in the tunnel. Say what you will about the contents of the actual Mayweather/Paul fight, but using your ringwalk to flash a PSA 10 Charizard chain is an extremely good and entertaining meme, and set a bar that, disappointingly, was not nearly approached by anything on display here. (My personal suggestion: Jake Paul should enter to “It’s Everyday Bro,” and while I understand that this is a bad and impractical idea when you are about to fight another human being and need all your spare energy, he should also rap it himself.)

The actual fight started off pretty uneventfully. Woodley hardly punched at all in the first round; he had one scary looking right, I think, that didn’t come particularly close to landing. This trend continued throughout the early rounds: Paul clearly won each of the first three, mostly by virtue of actually attempting to punch his opponent, which Woodley — for whatever reason — steadfastly refused to do. In round 4, Woodley finally — and successfully — decided to attack, then instead of following up, showboated by gesturing to the crowd, gyrating his right hand around in the air. Somewhere, Montana Love shed a tear of happiness, probably.

In the middle rounds, however, a funny thing started to happen — a boxing match started to take shape. (Between two bad boxers, but still.) Jake Paul was clearly tired, and when he wasn’t keeping his hands down, he would flail some combinations at Woodley — leaving his face open for a counterattack both while guarding and punching, a weakness that would get exploited by a competent fighter. Woodley remained in defense mode, looking to counter with a power shot, if he could find the opportunity. (It was not a particularly good defense, as his high hands-up guard had glaring holes — a weakness that was already getting exploited by a barely competent fighter, as Jake Paul’s wild jabs managed to slip through these cracks repeatedly.) Style and strategic clashes are what fights are made of, even if you can pinpoint gross incompetence in their execution. (Midround notes: “Amanda Serrano would pick both these dudes apart.”)

Entering the final round, it became obvious that — barring a knockout — Jake Paul was going to win on cards/by decision, which was probably the funniest possible outcome, because it perfectly satisfied the “emerging boxer” narrative. In the career of a real boxer — if you’ve only knocked people out in early rounds, there’s a stigma that you need to get “tested”, in a fight that goes the distance — this proves that you have technique and stamina, and aren’t just a power one-trick pony. If you had no idea about the context surrounding Jake Paul, you would be led to believe that he was hitting all the career arc touchstones of a real promising up-and-comer. They should give him the title shot, really; I’d tune in.

After the fight (which Paul did, in fact, win on cards), Woodley shit-talked, angling for a rematch that would serve mostly to pay for college for several generations of future Woodleys, but which may or may not happen — we saw you fight, bro, and you kind of sucked. (Jake Paul tentatively/sort of agreed to this plan, conditional on Woodley getting an “I love Jake Paul” tattoo as per a prefight bet they’d made, which is admittedly hilarious.) Jake Paul, meanwhile, decided to deliver a bizarre anti-bullying PSA out of nowhere. I wondered what context I was missing, or maybe there was none, and you can say what you want if you win; if ODB had won at the Grammys and told the audience that Wu-Tang was for the children, they would have smiled and nodded.

I got what I wanted out of this fight, and likely you did too, no matter your viewing proclivity. Woodley, unlike Ben Askren and Nate Robinson, didn’t totally embarrass himself; he wasn’t good, but baby steps for these moonlighters. Jake Paul got clocked in the face a few times; he also won, solidifying a data point in our collective, ongoing research: conclusively, the amateur is better at boxing than a reasonable MMA fighter. We get to keep going until we find out exactly where the talent cap equalizes, or, in other words: the circus remains on tour. Get your tickets while you can.