'I'm here for the circus': Matt Brown defends Jake Paul seeking out freak show fights like his matchup with Tank Davis |
09/09/2025 15:00 -
Jake Paul continues to claim he wants to be taken seriously as a professional boxer, but after beating 58-year-old Mike Tyson and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in back-to-back fights, the always outspoken social influencer is now scheduled to face Gervonta "Tank" Davis on Nov. 14 in a fight where he'll likely outweigh his opponent by 100 pounds.
Now there's no doubt that Davis is a legitimate championship level boxer, but he's spent the vast majority of his career competing under 135 pounds while standing all of 5-foot-5 tall. Meanwhile, Paul is 6-foot-1 and weighed just over 209 pounds for his latest win over Chavez.
But UFC legend Matt Brown understands why Paul pursued a fight like this rather than facing some no-name cruiserweight that might actually get him closer to an actual title shot.
"I'm here for the circus," Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. "Jake Paul sold me. Maybe it's the marketing, maybe it's the bullshit. He sold me. I'm into it. I want to see it now. The fact that it's Tank Davis, I love watching him fight. I want to see him fight him now.
"I'd rather see Jake fight somebody real, just like everybody else — 'yeah, fight somebody your size that's real good.' He's trying to sell tickets. He don't give a f*ck. He's selling tickets to the circus, and I'm going to the circus. I want to see it."
In similar fashion, Logan Paul engaged in an exhibition boxing match against Floyd Mayweather back in 2021, and the fight earned monster ratings with approximately 1 million pay-per-views sold. But at that time, Mayweather was long since retired, and he was pursuing exhibition bouts as a way to earn a hefty payday with no real threat to his undefeated record.
Because the fight was an exhibition there was also no winner in that bout after it went to decision.
The same goes for Paul vs. Davis but Brown believes there really is a world where the smaller fighter not only wins but scores a knockout finish, which makes the matchup even more intriguing to him.
"I tell you what we're going to learn, if Tank Davis takes it serious, Tank Davis is going to beat his ass," Brown said. "I just don't know if Tank's going to take it serious. Mentally, I don't know how checked out he's been for a while, to be honest. We see what's going on in his personal life, he's talked about retiring. He seems when you follow him on social media or his career, he seems to not be interested in doing this job and not really enjoying what he's doing. I don't know where he's at mentally.
"But if he's at the top of his game mentally, he should destroy Jake Paul easily. I say that because Tank has amazing defense. He's little and he's way faster. Jake is not good enough to catch him. Like Tank should be able to run circles around him and touch him up. He may not knock him out. He's got 100 f*cking pounds on him but [Tank] is going to touch him and he's going to hurt him. He should not really get hit much in this fight."
No matter what he's said publicly, Paul has repeatedly embraced these kinds of bizarre fights that earn him a hefty payday and get a whole lot of attention.
He's even teaming up with Netflix again with the streaming service footing the bill for the fight rather than putting Paul vs. Davis on pay-per-view.
Like it or not, Brown says Paul has found a niche to exploit in combat sports and all he's doing is keeping people interested enough to continue watching his fights.
"Have you watched the Fight Circus shit that I do over in Thailand? You love it, it's f*cking great," Brown said. "Jake Paul's the American Fight Circus without the d*ck kicking. It's f*cking great. We just have to see it for what it is. It's a f*cking circus.
"There's nothing legitimate about this match. If he goes out and knocks out Tank Davis, he's going to jump on the ropes and put his arms up and scream like he's a bad ass. You do have to say something to be able to knock out somebody of Tank's caliber, I don't care how big you are. That is something. It's a circus. It's kind of cool."
No matter the result in November, Paul is almost assuredly going to continue touting himself as a future champion with aspirations to become one of the best boxers on the planet.
But words aren't actions and Brown believes Paul is really just drawing people into his orbit with these continued promises about a serious boxing career and then he'll deliver another blockbuster main event against an opponent who probably shouldn't be in there with him.
"I just imagine being Jake Paul and kind of strategically planning all of this from the beginning," Brown said. "I'm going to dupe everybody into thinking that I'm going to be a pro boxer.
"I'm going to go fight f*cking washed up MMA fighters until I beat all of them and then I'm going to go fight championship level boxers that are 100 pounds less than me. I guess I have a certain level of respect for that level of marketing and strategy."
