Jake Paul is hungry – literally. With just four pounds left to cut before Saturday night’s fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, he’s already visualising every jab, every round, every outcome and claims the Mexican is simply a stepping to his world title.
‘I am a little bit hungry,’ Paul says in an exclusive interview with Mail Sport. ‘I’ve got four more pounds to go but other than that my energy is the best it’s ever been going into a fight. Make no mistake though, cutting weight requires extreme discipline. You have to rid yourself of any temptation.
‘It’s a very tough challenge but it’s fun to be honest. If you frame it that way and think about it as a good challenge you can get through it. But, the only bit that sucks is the last couple of pounds when you’re in the sauna.
‘It really feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re in the middle of the desert and desperate for water. You watch movies when people are starving to death and it’s absolutely brutal, that’s what it feels like.’
It’s the kind of quote that sounds over the top until you remember who’s saying it. Paul built a career off of extremes. But in boxing, a sport that has seen its share of showmen, he’s no longer just a viral distraction. Against Chavez Jr, a former world champion and the son of a legend, Paul is fighting not just for credibility but for something closer to conviction.
The YouTuber-turned-professional fighter claims that both the WBC and WBA are prepared to give him a world ranking if he defeats Chavez Jr at the Honda Centre on Saturday evening, meaning he will be one step closer to that world title he is longing for.
As for the fight itself, Paul insists that what happens in the ring on Saturday is already written, at least in his mind.
‘I do that visitation ceremony before every fight,’ he explains. ‘I go into the corner of the ring. I sit exactly where I will be on fight night, and I start the process. It’s breath work, meditation, and visualisation all mixed into one. It can get pretty intense.
‘I’m very big on manifestation and creating images in your head of the result you want to happen and seeing yourself executing it. It means when you’re actually in the room the synapses fire faster and you’re actually calling in a higher reality.
‘It’s also all about getting in touch with God and clearing out any negative energy. You have to align your mind because boxing is arguably more mental than it is physical. Not being able to manage your emotions and fear is not good for the sport.’
Paul’s obsession with the mental side of boxing has grown in tandem with his ambition. While most fighters work on their world-title goals in quiet, Paul declares his loudly and unapologetically.
‘When you’re putting those sound vibrations into the universe you’re actually making that reality happen faster,’ he says. ‘So, the faster you put your goals out to the world the faster they will come to you. It’s a simple law of attraction.
‘I’ve been doing it since I was young. It works. You have to be a believer too. Some people just expect things to happen though, but you have to put in the work for things to happen as well.’
That belief has been met with plenty of doubt, and not just from fans but former fighters and media experts. But Paul insists he’s moved past the fear that plagued the early days of his boxing career.
‘I wouldn’t say I had imposter syndrome in the early days but I had a lot of fear getting into the ring. That was because I didn’t know what I was actually capable of. I didn’t know that I could beat a lot of these guys.
‘A lot of the fights I went into in the early days were 50/50 fights. So there was a lot on the line and that brought a lot of fear. It was more so just managing that and how to perform while having that fear.’
Fear, he says, still exists. But now it’s weaponised – especially the fear of failure, of embarrassment.
‘My fear was more about failing publicly than the physical fear of actually being knocked out. I think fear is a good thing though. You have to put pressure on yourself. It makes you become greater in every day life.
‘I’m almost backing myself up into a corner that I have to fight my way out. If I’m saying these things I have to hold myself to a higher standard. So, a lot of the times I’m saying these things but I’m actually saying them as a challenge to myself. That’s a big part of it. There is also fear of whatever happens in the ring and what can happen to me physically if things didn’t go according to plan.’
Preparation has become an obsession. He recently spent time at a $39million ranch he purchased with the proceeds from his Mike Tyson fight, where he built a pop-up gym to refresh his camp.
‘We were mostly training in Puerto Rico but we’ve been training there for five years so I wanted to change it up a bit for a week or two,’ Paul says. ‘I went to my investment property, built a pop-up gym and did a bit of training there. It was a nice change of pace.’
Day to day, the grind is brutal. Under strength and conditioning coach Larry Wade, Paul’s regime is relentless. ‘Training with Larry Wade is very intense and very tough. He’s psychotic. He listens to Halloween, killer, intense music before going into the training to rile himself up and then he projects that onto you. It’s like Michael Myers theme song.
‘It’s very intense and we usually have to pass mile stones like 100 unbroken press ups and 1,000 abs crunches at different points in the camp. It gives you a baseline so you know where you’re at and what you’re capable of. Especially when you head into the fight you know you’re ready and can think of those milestones.’
While Wade told DAZN: ‘If you can give me 100 push-ups straight, that means not only do you have the strength you need, but you also have the conditioning to support it. That means when it’s time to throw hands, you ain’t gotta take a break.’
He went on to add: ‘That said, the workout Jake talks about the most is the 800, 400, 200, 200 workout,’ says Wade. ‘He’ll run 800m, then 400, then 200m and another 200, all with a minute of rest [in between].
‘Depending on where we are in camp, we can do that a minimum of two times to a maximum of four times.’
To stay focused, Paul has learned to shut the world out. Sometimes literally. ‘I used to get a brand new phone before every fight, as there is people nagging you all the time. I’ve stopped getting a new phone but I don’t respond to people.
‘There is so much attention being pulled away from the main goal and the main focus and you don’t even realise it. You don’t realise how tiring being on your phone and being on social media is. So, I’ll go put my phone in a drawer and raw dog life.’
What’s perhaps most telling ahead of the Chavez Jr fight is not Paul’s talk of tactics or weight cuts or even belts, it’s the way he talks about perception. For years, he’s been cast as boxing’s pantomime villain, a role he once embraced. But at 27, the act appears to be evolving.
‘As I get older I don’t necessarily want to be that villain I have been painted as. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I still enjoy being that s***head at times. I was always the class clown so I can play into that but there [are] people that read deeper into what it is that I am doing know that drama sells.
‘People made me into the villain and hated on me since I first started YouTube so I kind of had to embrace it. I think the tide is changing though. 50 per cent of the people out there in the world see me for the person I am. It’s the people who just read the headlines and the clickbait that compile this hatred and jealousy towards me.’
Still, the edge is never far. He talks almost gleefully about the idea of fighting Anthony Joshua in front of 100,000 fans in the UK next year, nearly all of them booing him. ‘I think Wembley is the most iconic venue for that fight.
‘I think [it] would be one of the craziest fights and moments of all time. I would literally be walking out into the Lions Den. 100,000 people chanting ‘f*** Jake Paul’. There is something about that, that just excites me. I actually can’t wait.’
It’s classic Jake Paul – equal parts chaos and calculation, self-awareness wrapped in spectacle. But if he beats Chavez Jr on Saturday night, the noise may finally begin to fade. And what’s left might not be a gimmick, but a contender.
Jake Paul vs Julio Cesar Chavez Jr will be streamed exclusively on DAZN PPV, Saturday, June 28. Buy the PPV now here.
