Anthony Joshua completed his mission.
The two-time heavyweight champion defeated Jake Paul by 6th-round TKO.
In front of a capacity crowd at Ksaeya Center in Miami, Joshua (29-4, 26 KOs) landed 48 of his own 146 punches. He started off slow, although he had every conceivable advantage.
Paul (12-2, 7 KOs) landed only 16 shots on Joshua, and spent most of the early rounds trying to evade his opponent before he got caught with a devastating right hand.
While he admitted that it wasn’t his best performance, Joshua praised Paul for his performance.
“What I could have done better is a lot of things, 100%. In the fight game, you’ve seen the amazing fighters that have graced us over the last hundred years. The expectations that we put on ourselves are immense, but I tried my best,” Joshua said.
“Jake [did] well while it lasted….I wish that I could have knocked him out at the start, but as we saw tonight, Jake has spirit,” Joshua continued. “He has some heart. He tried his best, and I take my hat off to him.”
Paul shared that he was not surprised that he lasted almost six rounds with Joshua.
“I just got tired, to be honest,” Paul said. “It was just so much handling his weight. I think if I could have had better cardio, I could have kept it up and kept on fighting. But he did amazing, he hits really hard. I just did my personal best.”
During the fight, Paul’s jaw was broken in two places by Joshua. Instead of speaking at the post-fight press conference, he drove himself to a local hospital.
In the co-main, MVP’s undisputed super featherweight world champion Alycia “The Bomb” Baumgardner (17-1, 7 KOs) delivered a dominant performance over Leila Beaudoin (13-2, 2 KOs). Baumgardner retained her unified WBA, WBO, and IBF world titles.
Also on the main card, the greatest MMA fighter of all time, Anderson “The Spider” Silva (4-2, 3 KOs boxing, 34-11, 22 KOs MMA) defeated American MMA champion and combat sports icon Tyron Woodley (0-3 boxing, 19-7-1, 7 KOs MMA). Silva stopped the bout at 1:33 of the second round, earning a TKO victory.