Jake Paul interview: Tommy Fury underestimating me will be the biggest mistake of his life

Afterhours at the lavish Kamani Club gym deep in Al Quoz 3, and Jake Paul is busy plotting his next, potentially pivotal, move as a professional boxer.

It is the Friday before fight week, a day out from Paul and his sizeable team transferring to Saudi Arabia, where the YouTube-sensation-cum-boxer will finally face long-time nemesis Tommy Fury in the headline bout at Diriyah Arena on the outskirts of Riyadh.

The fight, between two unbeaten but still-emergent pro pugilists, has been almost two years in the making, scheduled previously for Florida and then New York’s Madison Square Garden, both times falling out because of issues – the injury, the visa problem – on Fury’s side.

Inadvertently, it has provided Paul plenty of time to study his rival.

At Kamani, as the sweat streams from inside his sweatsuit while he warms up on the treadmill, Paul’s gaze is focused on the huge television screen on the far wall directly in front, where a collection of Fury’s past few fights play on loop.

Paul, 26 and entering his seventh pro boxing bout since his debut in early 2020 – six wins, four by knockout – clearly takes this part of his expanding and extensive empire seriously. Fury has been studied, picked apart even.

“We watch that film a lot,” Paul tells The National, little less than one week later, from his Saudi base. “Over and over and over again. Just to engrain in my own mind exactly what he does, when he makes certain movements and motions, which punches he throws when he’s backing up, coming forward, what combinations he likes to go through.

“This whole thing’s the sweet science and it’s an art. It’s a chess game. So I’m hunting my prey. That’s why you see that focus locked in on the treadmill like that, because this is life