How and why is Jake Paul fighting former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua?

Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua face off on December 17 ahead of their fight. (D.A. Varela/Sipa/AP via CNN Newsource)

Jake Paul facing Anthony Joshua in a professional boxing match is a scenario that no one could have ever seen coming even five years ago.

Back in 2020, Joshua was still flying high at the top of the heavyweight division having won his world titles back off Andy Ruiz Jr. the year before and retaining them in a demolition of Bulgarian challenger Kubrat Pulev.

In stark comparison, that same year, Paul was making his professional debut as YouTube boxing started to catch fire.

Paul won his first fight against fellow YouTuber Ali Eson Gib, in a performance that showed some sort of promise, albeit against an opponent who was unorthodox at best.

Both men, though, seemed worlds apart. But, in a bizarre twist of fate, they were on a collision course that will come to a head in Miami on Friday.

Here is everything you need to know.

When and where is the fight?

The fight will be held at the Kaseya Center in Miami on Friday night, with ring walks for the main event expected at around 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

The contest, a professional bout sanctioned by the Florida Athletic Commission, will consist of eight three-minute rounds with both men wearing 10oz gloves.

The showpiece will conclude a stacked undercard, which features some of the best female fighters in the world – notably American world champion Alycia Baumgardner.

The main event will be aired exclusively on Netflix, as the streaming service continues its foray into live sports. The platform previously showed Paul’s fight against Mike Tyson which attracted 108 million viewers.

Both Paul and Joshua are expected to earn extraordinary sums of money from the fight, despite the official figures not being released.

Both men met again at the pre-fight weigh-ins on Thursday night, with Paul acting somewhat erratically at points – screaming to the audience on occasion during the official weigh-in.

Joshua, unsurprisingly, was much heavier than Paul. The British heavyweight tipped the scales at 243.4 pounds, while the American came in at 216.6 pounds.

How the fight was engineered

For a long time, Paul has publicly stated his lofty ambitions in the “sweet science.” He says, and maybe genuinely believes, he could be a world champion.

For the last five years, he has locked himself away in Puerto Rico where he lives and trains as a professional boxer. It’s an approach which has seen results and he’s now a far better pugilist than he was five years ago.

But take his extraordinary profile out of the equation, and Paul’s boxing CV doesn’t quite live up to his own hype – with his record of 12 wins and one defeat being somewhat misleading.

Most of his fights have been against former UFC fighters who were past their prime. More recently, he fought boxing legend Tyson and breezed to victory against a man approaching his 60th birthday.

His only defeat came against a professional boxer, when Tommy Fury – cousin of world famous boxer Tyson Fury – dispatched Paul on points.

But Paul remains a lucrative personality in the sport, able to draw in record-breaking audiences around the world.

He and his company, Most Valuable Productions, partnered with Netflix again this year to initially fight unbeaten lightweight world champion Gervonta “Tank” Davis, who is significantly smaller than Paul.

It was set to be a battle of styles; could Paul’s superior size and power overcome Davis’ elite world champion speed and skill?

However, the fight was scrapped in November due to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge against Davis, meaning the scheduled show on Netflix was without a main event.

That’s when attention then turned to Joshua – a man much bigger and far more powerful than Davis.

The Brit, 36, is one of the best British heavyweights in the sport’s history. He’s a former two-time unified world champion with an Olympic gold medal to his name. But, in truth, he’s likely past his prime as a fighter now.

He had been looking for a way back to the ring after taking a year out of the sport following his defeat against fellow British heavyweight Daniel Dubois in 2024.

That loss saw many question whether Joshua should keep fighting, with the former world champion looking a shadow of his former self.

But Joshua had initially planned to take a tune-up fight in November as he looked to rebuild his career, with all eyes on a potential clash against Tyson Fury in 2026 – a fight many fans have been calling for for years.

So, when Paul came knocking, it was a no brainer for both Joshua and his long-term promoter Eddie Hearn.

“But we just couldn’t turn it down,” Hearn wrote in a column on BBC Sport this week.

“No boxer in their right mind would have said no. Anyone who says they would are completely lying through their teeth.

“We took a fight that we believe will be very straightforward, will give AJ a huge profile in America and one of his career-high paydays.”

What has Paul said?

Paul is never short of confidence – it’s a personality trait that he’s built his entire empire on.

And the 28-year-old, whose eye-line reaches Joshua’s chest, has continued to tell anyone who will listen that he has the skills to beat his gargantuan opponent who stands five inches taller than him.

It’s quite the turnaround given Paul was preparing to fight the much-smaller man in Davis until relatively recently. Now, the roles are reversed and he’s tasked with slaying the giant.

The mismatch physically has seen some from the sport question whether it’s even safe for the fight to go ahead, but Paul remains confident he can shock the world.

“This is not as a one-sided fight as people think,” Paul said at the press conference last week.

“I have power, I have the ability to put people to sleep so that’s why I took this challenge. I know it’s crazy, but I’m excited. I’m genuinely excited.”

What has Joshua said?

The mismatch, though, still has many critics looking for a catch.

Some critics, particularly online, find it hard to believe that Paul would put himself in the way of Joshua without there being some sort of agreement for the Brit to take it easy.

Both camps, though, have trashed such claims and Joshua, with the weight of expectation on his back, has promised an early stoppage.

The two fighters had been largely respectful of each other in the buildup to the event, but things turned nasty in the final press conferences before the fight this week, with Joshua doubling down on his claim that he might “kill” Paul.

Threats of such violence are usually looked down upon in boxing, not least with the two men being so different physically and the sport’s tragic history of deaths caused in the ring, but Joshua said that’s just where he mindset is at.

“I just don’t look at it from a physical standpoint,” Joshua said in a face-to-face meeting with Paul earlier this week. “I know the person standing in front and I know I’ve got to take his soul. It’s not just physical. I’ve got to take your soul in the ring.

“I’ve just seen in fights when I can see someone’s energy, frequency, leaving their body. That’s what my goal is: to do the same to you. You have that instinct, you can see it when you’re fighting, you can just see a small glimmer of someone that’s just about to start fading and you just keep exploiting that until some people give up, some people get knocked out.

“For me, it’s not just going in there and dominating physically. I want to break him down spiritually and mentally.”

There is one limitation for Joshua, though. He must weigh no more than 245 pounds at the official weigh-in on Thursday night – the first time the heavyweight has ever had to make weight in his career.

What’s on the line?

First, a lot of money.

The official figures have not been released yet, but both men are expected to earn tens of millions of dollars for the event which is set to break yet more viewership records on Netflix.

From a boxing perspective, many have called on Joshua to “save” boxing’s credibility by quickly dispatching Paul.

It’s also a question of legacy for the British icon – who has helped the heavyweight division become so popular in the last decade. A loss to a former YouTuber, some say, might take away from everything he’s done in the sport.

For Paul, there is just his safety to worry about. Few, if any, truly expect him to be able to hurt Joshua, so he’s got nothing to lose in that respect.

He has, of course, always got a puncher’s chance and it’s that element of doubt that will likely draw millions to the screen come Friday night in Miami.