Anthony Joshua took longer than anticipated to dispatch Jake Paul at the top of a Most Valuable Promotions card streamed on Netflix, fighting at the Kaseya Center in Miami on December 19.<\/p>\n
Joshua entered the bout as a decorated Olympic gold medalist and former two-time heavyweight world champion, boasting elite victories over the likes of Wladimir Klitschko, Joseph Parker and Alexander Povetkin. Given the vast disparity in pedigree and experience, many questioned the matchmaking, with Paul having never faced opposition of Joshua\u2019s calibre.
\nHowever, those fears proved somewhat overstated on fight night. Paul not only survived the early rounds but enjoyed brief spells of success before being dropped twice in the fifth round and ultimately stopped in the sixth.<\/p>\n
Anthony Joshua Finishes Jake Paul
\nPaul adopted a safety-first approach \u2014 far from crowd-pleasing, but arguably the smartest route to hearing the final bell of at least the opening round. He circled constantly, staying light on his feet, picking his moments with single shots from range and forcing the larger Joshua to chase.<\/p>\n
Time and again, Paul repeated the tactic, even theatrically hitting the canvas to slow the pace and buy himself precious seconds. If the aim was to last longer than Francis Ngannou, whom Joshua demolished inside two rounds, then the plan succeeded. The same could be said when compared to Otto Wallin. Paul even enjoyed flashes of success, landing the occasional uppercut \u2014 impressive given Joshua\u2019s five-inch height advantage \u2014 and throwing the odd two-punch combination.<\/p>\n
That said, Joshua will feel he could have been more ruthless. He might have cut off the ring with greater urgency or pressed the action earlier. Still, the outcome felt inevitable. As Paul began to fade, Joshua\u2019s heavy shots started to land with increasing authority, and once they did, the end was only a matter of time.<\/p>\n
It may have taken longer than expected, but when Joshua\u2019s right hand finally connected cleanly, it proved decisive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anthony Joshua took longer than anticipated to dispatch Jake Paul at the top of a Most Valuable Promotions card streamed on Netflix, fighting at the Kaseya Center in Miami on December 19. Joshua entered the bout as a decorated Olympic gold medalist and former two-time heavyweight world champion, boasting elite victories over the likes of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":56874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/boxing_joshua-vs-paul-rules-explained.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56875,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56873\/revisions\/56875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eplbanter.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}