Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul will clash in a professional heavyweight fight next month after the Brit stepped in to replace Gervonta Davis
Anthony Joshua and Jake Paul exchanged text messages agreeing to a heavyweight showdown.
Joshua will fight for the first time in 15 months when he takes on YouTuber Paul in Miami on December 19. Paul had been due to face Gervonta Davis but the lightweight world champion was accused of kidnapping by his ex-girlfriend and the bout was scrapped.
Joshua has stepped in for what he sees as a warm-up fight for a blockbuster double-header in 2026. Assuming he does not suffer a humiliating defeat by Paul, the former two-weight world champion will return to the ring in Saudi Arabia in February before a planned showdown with Tyson Fury in September.
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And Paul’s business partner Nakisa Bidarian revealed Joshua and Paul took matters into their own hands to ensure a deal could be done. “They definitely texted,” he told Mirror Fighting. “Jake said, ‘Do you wanna do this?’ and AJ said, ‘Yeah’ so that helped a lot. We agreed with Netflix to focus on a certain number of fighters because you have to focus on several avenues to get to one outcome that makes sense for all parties.
“I went to Eddie Hearn and said there was an opportunity and would he entertain it? I told him Jake and AJ had talked and that AJ wants to do it. To Eddie’s credit, he was focused on what AJ wanted to do. Jake had said in March he wanted to fight AJ and people laughed. Eddie said it was clout chasing and Jake just wanted some clicks.
“He said that if he wanted to fight Joshua it would be this year but I said we would do it in 2026. I said we would do it in April next year; things changed, but there had already been talks so it was a good starting point.”
One major hurdle to a deal being struck was Joshua’s exclusivity to streaming service DAZN. But Bidarian added: “Our provision of services is with Matchroom. We pay Matchroom a sum of money and they present to us that they have obtained the rights to allow AJ to appear on Netflix.
“We have a great relationship with DAZN; they said no in terms of Ryan Garcia, pretty quickly, but they said yes to AJ. My assumption is they believe Jake could beat Ryan Garcia and that wouldn’t have been great for an asset they have in Ryan Garcia. My assumption is they believe AJ is going to kill Jake Paul so they agreed to let it happen.”
