YouTubers in boxing has been a major topic of conversation in recent years, with personalities from outside the sport generating huge interest with their ‘novelty’ fights.
This weekend in Manchester we get two bouts which are generating enormous publicity as Tommy Fury locks horns with KSI and Logan Paul meets Dillon Danis. Furyjoshua.com looks ahead to the big night, and attacks the major talking points.
Q) Let's get right into it. Is Tommy Fury risking his reputation as a legitimate boxing prospect by doing this again, or is this his level/market now?
Given the family name, and the fact his brother Tyson is the WBC heavyweight champion of the world, a lot of people feel Tommy is wasting his career by fighting YouTubers. There is a school of thought he is kissing goodbye to any notion of being a reputable boxer/champion and just chasing wealth with this kind of fight.
However, at the age of just 24 he has hardly thrown his best years away just yet, especially given that cruisers and heavyweights often peak later than fighters in smaller weight classes. His fight with Jake Paul was probably the richest eight-rounder in history and he is getting eye-watering sums again for this fight with KSI. Professional boxing is essentially prizefighting, or showbusiness with blood. So let’s have it absolutely right here, Fury’s low-risk, high financial reward CV to date will be the envy of 95%+ of aspiring pros around the world.
KSI v Fury: Big fight details
- Venue: AO Arena, Manchester
- Date and time: Saturday, October 14, 2100 BST
- TV Channel: DAZN pay-per-view, £19.95
- Sky Bet odds: KSI 11/4, Fury 2/7; Paul 1/8, Danis 5/1
That said, in December he will have been a professional for five years. For some context, Manny Pacquiao turned pro in January 1995 and won his first major boxing title - the WBC flyweight title - by knocking out Thailand's Chatchai Sasakul on December 4, 1998.
The inimitable Mike Tyson’s ascension was faster still. ‘Iron Mike’ turned pro in March 1985 and by November 1986 he had Trevor Berbick staggering around the ring like a drunk as he took the WBC heavyweight after less than two rounds of extreme violence.
Fury claims he wants to be a world champion. However, they say that the hottest fires forge the strongest steel, and if he keeps taking assignments that do not test him or bring him on as a fighter, he may be found wanting when he eventually does step up in grade.
Q) Did the February Jake Paul v Fury fight prove there is a PPV appetite in this country? Are we expecting this fight to sell out and just as importantly are hard-core boxing fans interested?
‘Problem Child’ Paul claims his fight with Fury garnered an uber-healthy 775,000 PPV purchases (those figures would be total buys, not just UK buys), and if that figure is accurate then whatever your opinion of them, the YouTubers are going to be around for a while yet.
Joe Markowski, CEO of North America DAZN, said last week “Tickets for this landmark event have completely sold out”. However, do a quick search and you will discover there are at least some tickets still available at the time of writing.
Tickets have been on sale since August, with prices ranging from £40 to £2000. In these uncertain financial times, they will do well to sell out the AO Arena - which has a capacity of 21,000 for boxing. The live gate will be important, but the PPV numbers are where the real money will be made.
By combining celebrity with fisticuffs, novelty boxing can attract a lot of people into stadiums and new eyes to the sport watching at home who might not previously have been interested. Ergo, the theory goes, the sport itself will benefit by increased exposure, opportunities and revenue.
However, the supporting fights to these cards are often awful, with little evidence of the ‘Sweet Science’. That casts doubt as to whether these ‘new’ boxing fans can legitimately fall in love with the noble art to the extent that long-term relationships are formed with them as paying consumers.
More hard-core fans and those who love the sport than not feel boxing should never be reduced to being an influencer's vanity project, and so these type of events are yet to win everyone over.
Q) The odds compilers have Fury chalked up as a pretty warm (best price 4/11) favourite. You rarely see a poor bookie so do Tommy’s odds feel about right?
They do. It has been largely forgotten now but Fury was a 5/4 betting underdog to beat Jake Paul. At the time, it seemed like the ‘Camel Coats’ had made a rare error of judgement. However, in hindsight, with Tommy only getting over the line via split decision, those odds do not seem quite as ludicrous.
Fury only had a dozen fights as an amateur and did not really win anything of note so has been learning on the job. He has a KO ratio of less than 50% to this point as a professional and given that controversy sells, would an outrageous points win for KSI - and an inevitable lucrative rematch with a Fury redemption storyline - really be the worst result in the world for all parties?
Q) The fight has been made at 185lbs. Does this help or hinder KSI?
That’s a tough question to answer as ‘The Nightmare’ has never had an extensive amateur or pro career so we don’t really know what his ideal weight is. KSI weighed in at 193.4lbs for Logan Paul and came in at 177.6lbs for Fournier. That would suggest that 185 should not be a problem for him.
It seems a good fit for Fury, who was a ripped 184.5lbs for the Jake Paul fight, and he will likely be in the same sort of shape for this one.
Q) Is KSI a ‘better’ boxer than Jake Paul and if so does KSI pose a tougher test for Fury than Jake Paul did?
It is really interesting that while Jake Paul has distanced himself from the "PR stunts" of other YouTubers in boxing, KSI seems to be on X (formerly Twitter) and other social media platforms so much, you wonder how he finds time to do anything meaningful in the gym?
Paul seems to be taking his boxing career seriously and by all accounts is dedicated to his craft. You can never tell, as ‘styles make fights’, but Fury should have fewer problems against KSI than he did against ‘The Problem Child’.
Tommy Fury himself seems unimpressed by KSI, saying on The MMA Hour last year "You look at KSI and I don't see a fighting man, I see a pretender, plays FIFA on YouTube, whatever he's famous for, I don't see anything."
With this in mind, complacency could be a factor, but based on what we have seen in the ring to this point KSI’s boxing skills seem very limited so if Fury is fit and focused he should take this without much fuss.
Q) If KSI upset the odds and got his hand raised in Manchester, how far do you think he can go in professional boxing?
Unlike Paul, there is a nagging feeling that KSI is not in this for the long haul - whatever the result in Manchester. He is 30 years old and is a very, very wealthy man due to his position as an influencer.
Part of the intrigue around him I suppose is that nobody is quite sure what we are actually going to see, but on the evidence so far in the ring he would struggle to get beyond domestic level. Put it this way, we would snap a bookmaker’s hand clean off if they would offer even money that he never wins a British title.
Q) What does Fury’s future look like if he A) loses or B) wins this fight?
The pressure is all on Fury. If he wins, he will surely look to try to get himself into a position to fight for a British - or at least an English - cruiserweight title in 2024. Mikael Lawal is the British champion and if they fought in the next 12 months, Fury would have his work cut out against the useful Lawal.
On the world scene, the main man is Aussie Jai Opetaia, who defended his IBF and Ring Magazine titles with a brutal fourth-round win against British cruiserweight Jordan Thompson at Wembley's OVO Arena recently. That fight showed there are levels to this game. Thompson was hopelessly outclassed despite going into the fight with a 15-0 record, and Fury is nowhere near ready for the likes of Opetaia as things stand.
It is actually a hot division domestically with Chris Billam-Smith, Richard Riakporhe and Lawrence Okolie all UK fighters who are world level, so Fury’s team won’t be rushing their man but he needs to start facing opponents who will test him sooner rather than later.
If he loses this fight, he would in theory be young enough to regroup and come again. However unless it was a controversial decision his pride would surely take a huge hit. The Furys pride themselves on being ‘Fighting Men’ and so a defeat against a musician / FIFA player / co-owner of Prime Hydration could be disastrous enough to make him believe - certainly privately - that he does not have a future in the sport.
He came across well on the recent Netflix smash ‘At Home with the Furys’, so even if the boxing does not work out he is unlikely to fade away from the limelight anytime soon.
Q) The Fury vs KSI fight has been somewhat overshadowed by Logan Paul and Dillon Danis - who will face off in the co-main event. Is the beef between these two for real?
Logan Paul’s fight against Dillon Danis, an American mixed martial artist who has not fought for three years, has generated plenty of headlines. Alas most of them have been negative. The beef is certainly real but the vile rhetoric about Paul’s fiancée Nina Agdal has been truly shameful and does the sport no favours.
Worryingly comments made by Danis and sneers by Paul about Danis’ late father have not just been confined to social media - which would be bad enough – but unbelievably have also been aired by DAZN (who broadcast the fight) as part of their promo material. Is this where we are now at in 2023? Reduced to ‘revenge porn’ lawsuits and snipes about dead parents in an effort to sell a fight?
Muhammad Ali was the king when it came to pre-fight hyperbole and trash talking. However, ‘The Greatest’ often spoke with his tongue firmly in his cheek, unless he was addressing Joe Frazier. This feels far more sinister, but a key issue here is accountability.
If either or both protagonists were English footballers, you would expect the FA to come down heavily for bringing the game into disrepute. However, boxing has always been the Wild West of Sports, so neither Danis nor Paul have received any sort of sanction or financial punishment for the things they’ve said or the way they’ve acted in the build-up.
Sadly, it will likely generate more interest and therefore add to the respective bank balances of both fighters, for as English essayist William Hazlitt once said: ‘When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest’.
Q) Danis claims he is heading for the UFC after taking care of business in Manchester. At the age of 30, how realistic is it that he can mount a title run with Dana White’s crew?
Anything is possible I suppose, but it would be quite the story if he did anything in the UFC given his inactivity and injury issues over the last few years.
The 30-year-old can certainly fight. He started training in jiu-jitsu at the age of 15 and is a black belt who honed his craft under the respected Brazilian grappler Marcelo Garcia.
He has not competed in many fights as an MMA fighter, but has an unbeaten record of 2-0 - winning both of his bouts by submission. He is no joke, so it is rather surprising to see him as an 11/2 outsider in the betting on Saturday. Obviously he won’t be able to showcase his jiu-jitsu in Manchester, but if he catches Logan clean he could go. The bullish US influencer does not seem worried however, threatening to "destroy his entire life" when he steps into the ring with Danis this weekend.
It is a fight Danis could definitely win. Whether he is mentally and physically strong enough to compete with the best in the world in the UFC is another matter entirely.
Q) Finally in terms of the future of boxing, is it a worry that these ‘fights’ are not sold on the value/skillset of those actual fighting, but rather the level of outrage that can be caused by those involved?
It is a huge concern, with many worried that the sport is already going down the WWE route. In January, KSI and Misfits boxing confirmed a deal with DAZN Boxing, which will see the two buddy up for the next five years. The numbers so far have been impressive.
However, what price quality? There are a ton of viral clips online proving that the quality is still seriously lacking. People are jumping in the ring to fight on some of these cards who have no business being anywhere near a boxing ring.
KSI has no intentions to rise through the pro ranks and fight for meaningful titles. Surely this is just another venture - like his energy drinks business and music career - to bolster his bank account.
One wonders what will happen if this ‘crossover’ boxing has its first serious injury? Or worse? Will the YouTubers stand firm? Or will they take their bags of cash and move onto the next vanity project?
KSI v Fury: Running order and under card
- CO-MAIN EVENT: Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury, Logan Paul vs Dillon Danis
- Salt Papi vs Slim Albaher
- Deen the Great vs Walid Sharks
- King Kenny vs Anthony Taylor
- Whindersson Nunes vs My Mate Nate
- Alex Wassabi & NichLmao vs Luis Alcaraz Pineda & BDave - tag team match
- Swarmz vs Ryan Taylor
- Astrid Wett vs Alexia Grace
