Ryan Garcia discusses the influx of social media stars into the sport of boxing, noting he feels it makes the sport a little more like WWE.
Over the past few years, boxing has seen an influx of social media stars who have picked up the sport, fighting against one another and in Jake Paul’s case, working his way up the ladder to fight names such as Anthony Joshua and more.
While speaking to Igmob TV in a new interview, Ryan Garcia spoke about the influx of social media stars into the sport of boxing.
“It made it bigger and made it possibly a little bit more WWE, right? I mean, you got the likes of Jake Paul that gets opportunities that some fighters don’t get. But, you know, again, I tell people sometimes it’s working smarter, not harder, and he did put in the work, too, so we can’t take that away from him. But he did take a fast track, and I think if you have the ability to do it, why not? I mean, it’s there. He took the fast track. I mean, it felt fast, but also he did fight a lot of YouTubers before he got to the main stage. You know, he fought, what, AnEsonGib, and then he fought Nate Robinson, and just kind of kept growing naturally in the lore of can he do it, and then he started beating MMA fighters. To the public, they’re like, ‘whoa, he beat a professional MMA fighter. Like, wow.’ So they started believing he was a good fighter and shit, and then just he lost to Tommy Fury. People didn’t care. So he fought one real boxer before he lost to Anthony Joshua and lost. But, again, people were so infatuated that he was beating MMA fighters that it really made them believe that he was actually like them.”
In November of last year, Garcia’s team offered Jake Paul a fight. You can read more about that here.
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