Jake Paul’s recent loss to two-time unified heavyweight world champion Anthony Joshua has sparked online criticism, with some alleging the fight and Paul’s other bouts were rigged. Paul said he plans to take legal action against those making the claims.
Many believe that Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul’s fight was rigged
As Blavity reported, the bout took place on Friday at the Kaseya Center in Miami and streamed on Netflix. The fight went six rounds with Joshua defeating Paul, who later suffered a broken jaw. Some critics have since questioned the outcome, citing Joshua’s experience and suggesting the fight was fixed.
On Monday, MVP co-founder Nakisa Bidarian appeared on Uncrowned’s The Ariel Helwani Show, where he pushed back against the allegations and said he would also take legal action against those who spread them.
“Our lawyers are actively going after a number of people,” Bidarian told Uncrowned, according to Yahoo! Sports. “One who claims to be a lawyer himself online. I don’t remember the name or the handle, but it was something that had like 200,000 likes. Basically, this post said there was an agreement for ‘AJ’ not to knock out Jake, but ‘AJ’ disregarded the agreement and decided to mitigate his payday but knock out Jake Paul. So it’s pretty astonishing what people say.”
What did Nakisa Bidarian say about Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua’s fight?
Bidarian spoke about one critic in particular, fellow boxing promoter Lou Dibella, who made a series of posts on X about the fight. He made a post on Friday after the fight, stating that the bout was not” legit” while calling out Bidarian to sue him over the claim.
“Nothing legit about this, Nakisa … even if everything’s “legal”. Go ahead and sue me. No, this isn’t good for #boxing, sports, or entertainment. Goodnight. #PaulJoshua,” DiBella wrote.
As Yahoo! Sports reported, Bidarian responded to DiBella’s remarks on the show and said, “Lou DiBella, I saw him put up a bunch of ridiculous things, and even said, ‘Nakisa, go ahead and sue me, but this wasn’t a real fight. [Joshua] was pulling punches, he wasn’t giving it his full effort.'”
‘Haters being haters’
Bidarian also addressed allegations that Joshua intentionally waited until the sixth round to defeat Paul to make him appear more competitive. He said such behavior has never occurred in Paul’s career, per Yahoo! Sports.
“There’s never once in Jake Paul’s career been any talk of that sort of [thing], anything to do with the fight being anything but a real fight. That’s exactly the same situation as any real fight. That’s exactly the same thing here for the Anthony Joshua fight,” Bidarian said, according to Yahoo! Sports.
Bidarian’s talk about taking legal action against critics is something Paul initially mentioned in an X post in June after his fight against 39-year-old Julio César Chávez Jr.
“After years of letting it slide as just “haters being haters”, I have asked my team to vigorously go after anyone who makes up lies about my boxing career. Expect to get served you pigs,” he wrote.