There is something hollow about the whole “save boxing” brigade lining up behind Anthony Joshua on December 19th.
They are not cheering for the man. They are cheering against the kid who made them feel old. That is the truth. They are not backing skill or heart or legacy.
They are backing fear dressed up as tradition. And that fear smells worse than a three-day-old gym bag.
These are the same voices who wrote Joshua off after Usyk schooled him twice. The same ones who called him chinny after Ruiz sparked him cold. The same ones who said he was finished when Dubois folded him like cheap furniture. Suddenly he is the last line of defence for “real boxing” because a YouTuber is across the ring. That is not loyalty. That is panic.
Rooting for Joshua this time is not about believing he is still elite. It is about praying the twenty-eight-year-old from Cleveland does not walk through him and prove the old guard has been lying to itself for years. If Joshua wins they get to pretend the sport is still safe. If he loses the mirror gets held up and nobody likes what they see.
The emptiness of rooting for Anthony Joshua against Jake Paul
Joshua knows it too. Watch his face when the cameras are off. He hears the chants of “just don’t lose to the influencer AJ.” That is the bar now. Not greatness. Not another title run. Just basic survival against a man with ten pro fights. He is not fighting for respect. He is fighting so the keyboard warriors can keep their fantasy alive for another six months.
Paul does not carry that baggage. He is not trying to save anything. He is trying to burn the house down and build a bigger one on the ashes. That is why his shoulders stay loose while Joshua’s keep creeping higher every press conference. One man is hunting. The other is hiding behind a smile that fooled nobody after the first Usyk loss.
The emptiness comes from knowing that even if Joshua wins it changes nothing. A thirty-five-year-old with four defeats scraping past a YouTuber is not a victory for boxing. It is a stay of execution. Paul only needs to land one clean combination and the whole myth collapses. Wembley disappears. Klitschko disappears. Every highlight reel gets replaced by a ten-second clip of Jake Paul standing over the fallen king.
Rooting for Joshua on December 19th in Florida is not hope. It is desperation wearing a Union Jack. The second that bell rings the Netflix lights come on the mask slips and everyone sees the truth: the man they want to save boxing is the same man who lost it years ago. Paul is not the villain here. He is just the messenger. And the message is brutal.
The sport moved on and the old guard never noticed. Now they pin all their dreams on a fighter who has not looked dangerous since 2020. That is not pride. That is sadness. And on December 19th the sadness either gets a temporary band-aid or it gets buried for good. Either way the emptiness stays.
Paul vs Joshua is a fight that has split people down the middle.
