Jake Paul lends his fame (some of it) to Olympic boxing

In one of Jake Paul’s recent Instagram stories, he expressed his displeasure to his nearly 27 million followers over a decision made by a panel of boxing judges at the Paris Olympics. An American boxer had lost by a split decision in a semifinal match, and Paul called the result an “absolute robbery.”

A few slides later, he posted a video on Instagram of himself holding an Olympic medal next to a deodorant stick from his new line of personal care products.

The scene perfectly sums up Paul’s partnership with USA Boxing: an unpaid, vaguely defined arrangement between an influencer who has disrupted the sport and a program looking to regain its luster.

The partnership has been mutually beneficial so far. For Paul, 27, a YouTube star turned professional boxer, the partnership allows him to connect with the prestige of the Olympics and engage with it as he sees fit. USA Boxing, a national governing body for the sport, and the U.S. Olympic team have access to Paul’s millions of followers.

“This is what I’ve done my whole life, tell stories and get people interested in things,” Paul said in an interview in May at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where he had come to promote a now-rescheduled bout against boxing legend Mike Tyson. “I’m a marketer at heart, a salesman at heart. And I think I’ve brought that to USA Boxing and just continuing to put them in the spotlight..”

The agreement resulted in a 11 minute documentaryfeaturing clips from Paul training with the U.S. Boxing Team in Colorado and snapshots of the fighters’ stories, as well as a smattering of social media posts. The results underscore a union that had few parameters or requirements — “We’re building the plane as we fly the plane,” USA Boxing Executive Director Mike McAtee said in May — but it could be the start of a long-term partnership the entities hope will be mutually beneficial.

“The sport will continue to grow and I believe I have already contributed to that,” said Paul.

Paul and USA Boxing announced the agreement in December, calling it “a unique partnership.” In it, Paul was expected to guide the boxers in marketing themselves and highlight their achievements on his social platforms.

Boxing was a more respected sport at the Olympics half a century ago, having featured the likes of Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. But it lost its status in the 2000s as top prospects abandoned the amateur circuit and went straight pro for the chance to earn millions of dollars. No American man has won an Olympic gold medal in boxing since Andre Ward in 2004; Michigan native Claressa Shields won back-to-back golds, in 2012 and 2016, in the women’s division. Only one American boxer, Omari Jones, has won a medal this year.

The professional landscape is also fragmented. Bickering between rival promoters often causes negotiations to stall over timely fights that fans want to see. Established broadcasters associated with boxing, such as HBO and Showtime, have given up, leaving the sport primarily to streaming services, such as DAZN.

As promoters continue to search for relevance and mainstream engagement, “sweet science” has become a spectacle. The undefeated Mayweather and the brawny Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Conor McGregor, a mixed martial arts star but a novice boxer, faced off in a lucrative bout in 2017, and other celebrities, internet personalities and retired athletes began to enter the ring.

The environment allowed Paul and his older brother Logan, who both rose to fame as child social media influencers, to flourish as they embraced combat sports in recent years. Logan Paul boxed Mayweather in 2021 and is now a World Wrestling Entertainment figure. Jake Paul, who has a 10-1 record as a professional boxer since 2020, co-founded a fighter promotion company with business partner Nakisa Bidarian. The firm, Most Valuable Promotions, has raised Amanda Serrano’s profile and brought attention to the less-publicized women’s boxing scene.

Paul’s involvement in boxing has created enemies, however. He is often criticized because most of his opponents are mixed martial artists, not boxers, and are past the prime of their careers. Still, McAtee said he and other USA Boxing leaders had followed Paul’s career with interest and that the organization approached Bidarian and Paul about working together. McAtee said family members who had no interest in USA Boxing contacted him when the organization announced Paul’s involvement, which he said is a testament to Paul’s influence.

“People who are in the boxing world might not understand, and that’s okay, because everyone’s entitled to their own opinion,” McAtee said of Paul’s critics. “But at the end of the day, it’s like, ‘Well, maybe they don’t like Jake Paul, but do they watch him?'”

Paul trained with the U.S. Olympic team in Colorado in March, where he led sessions for fighters on skills like meditation and marketing. The lessons ranged in simplicity from making sure the cell phone camera was clean before shooting video to understanding the best time to post content. While Paul was there, a camera crew collected footage for the documentary, which chronicles Paul’s journey and a handful of the fighters’ backstories and has been viewed 1.5 million times. He said he would make another film after the Olympics.

“He emphasizes amateur boxers and the work we put in,” Joshua Edwards, a boxer on the U.S. team, said in an interview. “It feels like us amateurs are being forgotten.”

Much of Paul’s energy in recent months has been focused on training for and promoting his fight against Mike Perry, a mixed martial artist and bare-knuckle boxer he fought in July after Tyson withdrew. He is scheduled to face Tyson in November.

Compared to the activity of rapper Flavor Flav, who attracted celebrities to U.S. women’s water polo matches and posted about them daily on social media, Paul’s promotion of the U.S. boxing team during the Games was minimal. He released the documentary on his YouTube channel on July 23 and has since posted about American boxers four times on the X platform. Paul arrived in Paris during the second week of competition, when most of the American boxers had already been eliminated.

After Italian boxer Angela Carini withdrew from her fight against Algerian Imane Khelif, sparking controversy over Khelif’s fitness, Paul offered Carini a place in his promotional company so she can “show the world her talents on a fair platform and not against a man.” The International Olympic Committee has strongly stated that Khelif is a woman and condemned online harassment against her. Carini has since apologized to Khelif.

When asked if Paul still stands by his online comments about Khelif, Bidarian said in a statement that Paul is passionate about “fairness in competition, both in and out of the ring.”

Paul and McAtee said they would like to continue working together for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. In the meantime, they will work with Paul’s nonprofit organization, Boxing Bullies, which promotes self-confidence in youth, Bidarian said.

Stephen Espinoza, the former president of the Showtime Sports network, said a host of factors beyond Paul’s control led to the current status of boxing at the Olympics and that Paul could not fix them alone. But he said the partnership was a start.

“There’s a huge upside for USA Boxing and the amateur boxing community in terms of potentially being able to leverage Jake’s involvement for more exposure,” Espinoza said. “Now the proof will be in the pudding at this point in terms of actually activating all the different mechanisms that Jake can do.”