UPDATE: Paul vs. Silva became official on Tuesday.
Joe Rogan thinks Jake Paul deserves praise if he ends up boxing Anderson Silva.
Paul, the YouTube star-turned professional boxer, is expected to face former UFC middleweight champion Silva in a Showtime pay-per-view headliner on October 29. Silva was officially granted a professional boxing license to fight in Arizona, clearing the way for the matchup.
And if the fight with Silva does materialize, Rogan thinks it’ll be Paul’s sternest test to date.
“I love it,” Rogan said on his most recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “If Jake Paul really decides to fight Anderson, that’s a very, very, very tough fight.”
He continued, “Anderson, if he just went straight into boxing, would have been a f*cking world champion.”
Paul is 5-0 as a pro boxer with knockouts of former MMA champs Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley. His most recent win was a sixth-round knockout of Woodley in December 2021.
Rogan thinks Paul’s popularity through YouTube is likely harming him more than benefiting him when it comes to his boxing career.
“Jake Paul is one of the smartest marketers that the f*cking sport has ever seen,” Rogan said. “And he can fight. The thing is, people think he’s this YouTube guy, and he can’t fight. The way he knocked out Tyron Woodley? Come the f*ck on.
“I’ve said this multiple times: If that guy was just a boxer and you never known anything about his background on YouTube and you saw him knock out Tyron Woodley with one shot, you’d be like, ‘Holy sh*t, there’s this new guy coming up, and he’s a bad motherf*cker. He’s really legit.'”
That’ll be put to the test against Silva, 47, who has defeated Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. by split decision and knocked out fellow ex-UFC champion Tito Ortiz in just over a minute in 2021. “The Spider” also defeated Bruno Machado in a boxing exhibition bout this past May.
