In recent years, YouTuber Jake Paul has diversified into becoming a professional boxer, to the scorn of fans everywhere. There are many cries of He’s not a real boxer and accusations of cherry-picking supposedly easy opponents run rampant (though, tell Tyrone Woodley to his face that he’s an easy opponent, and let me know how that turns out). However, Jake Paul’s actions are nothing new to the sport and are much more a reflection of the nearly century-old incentive structure behind boxing, which is similar to a dear passion of mine, college football. In a very literal sense, let’s not hate the player and opt to hate the game instead.
Boxing has long favored undefeated fighters, with fighters that have a lengthy undefeated record securing the lion’s share of career opportunities, branding, money, endorsements, and so on. This trend was identified and explored in-depth in a Netflix documentary called Counter Punch. Undefeated boxers that lose even a single match can see their prospects diminish significantly (though not completely, assuming there is enough acceptable context).
This is similar to what we see in college football. Both in the old BCS selection days and in the modern playoff brackets; being undefeated is essentially an unwritten requirement. A one-loss team is able to make the college football playoff, given that their loss was a close game to a highly ranked opponent. However, the road to the college football playoffs is a significantly smoother ride for the undefeated teams than it is for a one-loss team. Even a one-loss team has a lot of explaining to do.
Boxers with two loses almost always face diminishing career prospects. Manny Pacquiao, George Foreman, and Deontay Wilder are notable exceptions to this rule, but that is only because they were widely known household names with exciting matches. For the lesser-known fighters with two losses, especially early on in their careers, they face an uphill battle in their quest to even be taken seriously. The much more likely path is that they now become the easy opponent (a dubious term thrown around by obese men sitting on bar stools or pseudo-tough guys in a cardio gym) for more marketable and undefeated fighters.
Again, similar to the fighter with two losses, a college football team with two losses basically has no chance of ever making the college football playoffs. A lot of stars would have to align, every other team in serious contention (and I exclude non-Power 5 conference teams) would have to have two losses in order to entertain that idea. The odds of that happening are abysmally low. A two-loss season for a team that was hoping to seriously compete now has to motivate their players to finish a failure of a season.
Three or more losses in either sport causes the fanbases and the media to stop taking you seriously. Unfortunately, a boxing record is permanent while a college football team’s record washes anew every September. Therefore, there is a very careful selection process an undefeated boxer has to go through to not take any more risks than needed, lest they lose their undefeated streak and hence their vast economic opportunity. This risk does need to be balanced against the public perception of avoiding difficult opponents. To a lesser extent, college football has a similar problem; marketable teams will negotiate contracts with non-Power 5 conference teams. This is done to pad win totals in an effort to look good in front of the selection committee.
Jake Paul is a rational player who is following the incentive structure laid out before him, much like Floyd Mayweather, Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis and countless others throughout history have done. Therefore, hating Jake Paul is a poor solution to the problem. A better solution is to change the culture/business model of boxing so that choosing difficult opponents and risking a precious record doesn’t vastly dwindle career prospects in the event of a loss. Avoidance is the reason we got Mayweather versus Pacquiao when both men were a nearly decade past their primes. I find it difficult to believe that a boxer who took career risks and decided to test himself against the best opponents he could and has three or more losses as a result deserves to be unemployable or relegated to fodder status.
Another reason the Jake Paul hate-train is a bit misguided is the claim of all of his opponents had no professional boxing experience. Correct, and neither did Jake Paul. Both contestants were of a similarly low experience level. A hypothetical Top-10 ranked fighter with a record of 20-0 has little to gain by beating an inexperienced fighter and, as discussed earlier, a lot to lose in the case of a loss. So, what was Jake Paul supposed to do, given that the current top fighters in the world of his weight class are disincentivized to fight him?
While I personally wouldn’t change the unofficial “be undefeated” requirements of college football, the same outdated mentality in boxing should change. Boxing is NOT college football, nor should we expect the boxers or governing bodies to act like college football. It is absurd that we expect fighters to stay undefeated indefinitely while also admonishing them for not taking risks, and then punishing them so harshly for losing. Until that changes, we will continue to see boxers act like college football teams and do whatever it takes to stay undefeated. Just like many other aspects of life, once you change the incentives, you’ll change the behavior.
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