The Beltline: Tommy Fury, Jake Paul, and how boxing became the OnlyFans of the sporting world

LIKE a boxer who develops a defensive style to compensate for past damage and newfound vulnerability, a die-hard boxing fan or purist these days must choose their fights carefully. This is important because you only have so many brain cells and in boxing you never know exactly when a punch or a ridiculous fight is going to be one too many.

For example, last weekend we had a situation where Tommy Fury not only defeated Jake Paul, but the entire audience lost as many brain cells as the two contestants in the ring. Because of this, I decided to sit it out and preserve the brain cells that I have left. Better still, I discovered there was no fear of missing out, nor a desire to catch up on what I missed the next morning. In fact, the only clip I saw of the fight was shown on the BBC’s six o’clock news on Monday, where the presenter asked, “Is that a sign boxing is changing?”

The change, I wanted to tell her, has already happened, but yelling at a TV screen is as pointless an exercise as complaining about boxing influencers these days, and you end up wondering: are they the crazy ones or is it me? I? All I know is that a lot of people have been talking about Fury and Paul “boxing” over the weekend and a lot of people seem to want to see them boxing again, which they no doubt will do in the near future.

Beyond that, I know very little about what’s going on. On Monday I was emailed a picture from the fight to post with our report and in it I saw the word ‘Bambi’ on Fury’s pants and was immediately more intrigued by it than the report itself. At first I didn’t know if Whether it was a new nickname, a penalty for a lost bet, or the promotion of a new live-action movie, I set out to research and soon found a clip of Jake Paul giving Tommy Fury a gift for his newborn daughter. It was, it seemed, the culmination of one of those tiring head-to-head bouts that are so commonplace in boxing today, and observing the body language of Fury and Paul it was clear there was no real dislike between them at all. Apparently uncomfortable with animosity, they struck me, at least, as two guys separated by their love for the same woman, only to one day meet and realize they have a lot in common.

That made the prospect of them fighting all the more ridiculous. If you don’t even have real hostility driving a fake fight like this, then what’s the point of it? Forced rivalry in boxing is nothing new, but at least in previous cases involving actual boxers, we could be almost certain that two pros would put on a good show regardless of a pre-fight script. With Fury and Paul, however, there was no such guarantee.

For most viewers, of course, that hardly played a role. All that Really Importantly that night, fans of these two men saw them shirtless and naked, both at risk of humiliating themselves in front of cameras. Famous people fought (again), it was frankly irrelevant that neither can fight very well, nor did it matter that, despite the presence of the WBC version of a dentist sucker, the fight meant absolutely nothing in an area that wasn’t complete ruled by ego and money. Rather, OnlyFans was about boxes. It was just two men with a massive following (built outside of boxing) who took advantage of their students’ blind loyalty by giving them access to something no one who follows them would have expected a few years ago (back when Jake Paul Pranks on YouTube and Tommy Fury filmed). was on island of love).

Together, working together, they were able to produce their juiciest content yet and where better to film it than in a boxing ring? Besides, who better to target than boxing fans, the pay pigs and reply guys of the sports world, the basement dwellers, the creeps, the perverts? Apparently, judging by the sudden influx of influencers and other circus geeks, we have low standards and no taste and nothing better to do. We leap at the first sign of skin or violence, and our thirst for blood and clout makes us obvious prey.

What also probably helps is that boxing is a simple sport. It’s easy. Anyone can do it. You take off your top, put on a pair of swim trunks and gloves and go swing your arms until you can’t swing anymore. This makes it an easy sport to get into and an easy sport to sell, and these days, shaky as its infrastructure is, there’s every chance the sport will welcome you with open arms rather than protecting its own ( fighter, integrity, reputation). Just as some people believe that boxing in the Middle East is being used to launder questionable human rights practices in the sport, it could be argued that boxing influencers are being used to cover up the sport’s ailing health.

Still, it’s best not to worry about it. Better stick your head in the desert sands, which is what many boxers have chosen to do. From that position, with their heads buried, those speaking positively about fights like Fury vs. Paul gravitate towards those who have a financial interest in the movement – currently or, they hope, in the future – or those who do crave attention or those who do see an advantage in being on the site with the influencers. For them, it’s all a bit of fun. Relax, they say. What is the problem?

Well, it’s not a problem if you see money as both the root of happiness and the yardstick by which you will be measured as a successful person. But when you take all of the things that make boxing so noble – competition, skill, incredible feats of heroism – and then sacrifice them all in the name of so-called entertainment (not boxing entertainment but social media entertainment), what exactly is that? the purpose of sport for the future?

Because make no mistake, these things are sacrificed. They will continue to be sacrificed as long as this recipe for (financial) success is championed by people within the sport who should know better.

Of course someone like Jake Paul, a tourist, doesn’t know any better. That’s why I find him the least shameless of the many chancellors involved. For example, when he filmed himself boasting about making $30 million from the Fury fight, one scene was reminiscent of an empowered woman posting her OnlyFans receipts to prove to skeptics they’re not lying, and Proving to himself that it was all worth it was hard to knock Paul, even though such a boast can be any of those things at once: impressive, admirable, uncouth, sad.

In all of this, we have to remember that Jake Paul didn’t create this movement. He was just using a service and an audience that already existed. We must also remember that, like feminism, it should not be confused with morally bankrupt capitalism, nor should a successful boxing promotion be confused with a heist in a desert.