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The YouTuber-turned-fighter's mouth gaped agape, his expression turning to wide, stunned circles as he sank to the canvas in shock and awe following a devastating right hand from Anthony Joshua. It appeared as if Paul was attempting to say "Wow!" as the severity of the impact registered to his scrambled senses.

"The audience didn't spend money to see this crap," said the referee, summing up the sorry affair much more succinctly than any observer else managed to.

Pinned in a neutral corner of the ring in the middle of the sixth round, Paul could not run or hold on to Joshua's legs in a desperate clinch as the gravity of the sweet science enveloped him. Instead, as he attempted to withstand the punch that broke his jaw in two separate places, Paul was caught in an completely stunned moment.

So that is what it is like, and appears, to be hit hard by a real boxer, an Olympic champion and former world heavyweight champion. "Goodness" is indeed the appropriate term.

It was the fourth time the social media star had been knocked down, but the result of a proper punch ensured Paul could not get up and waggle his tongue defiantly before the referee waved the contest to a halt. As blood began to trickle from his mouth, and a dull ache radiated through his jaw, Paul finally grasped how hard, grueling, and dangerous boxing is at a decent level of professionalism.

An Unimpressive Commanding Win for the Victor

Anthony Joshua, it must be noted, was far from convincing amid the bedlam. After his hollow victory, he performed a throat-slitting gesture that hinted at a clinical and lethal finish when, in reality, Joshua had cut a frustrated figure for the majority of the fight. Rather than exuding intimidation or displaying an iron certainty, Joshua had seemed hesitant and awkward for almost five stanzas.

Paul's poor fitness, which is a basic essential in elite boxing, dictated the result. Lacking the stamina to escape any more, and resorting to slipping to the canvas as frequently as he could for a breather, Paul was left defenseless by fatigue. Joshua applied the brutal finish, but, up to that point, he had seemed a sad shadow of the fighter he had been in 2017.

The Winner's Aftermath Assessment

"That was not the finest performance," Joshua conceded. "The end goal was to catch Jake Paul, pin him down and do damage. That has been the plan, and that's what was on my mind. It took a little more time than expected, but the straight right finally found its destination."

Joshua commended Paul's courage but he offered an excuse for his own stilted performance. "He faced a real fighter tonight that's had a fifteen-month hiatus," Joshua said, mentioning his last loss. "We dusted off the rust, and I can't wait to roll into 2026."

What Comes Next: Faded Forces and Rising Stars

In the press conference afterwards, a jovial Joshua tried out a poor imitation of his domestic rival as he called for a scrap against the presently inactive boxer. Joshua will likely get his wish, but that matchup comes far too late in their professional journeys. Both fighters are on the downward slope of the hill.

In contrast, the most interesting big men in the world are Oleksandr Usyk and Moses Itauma. Usyk remains the undoubted ruler of the weight class, having beaten both Joshua and Fury on two occasions. Meanwhile, Itauma is a rising talent. The youthful British heavyweight would probably have needed less than half the number of three-minute periods that Joshua needed to send Paul into a suitably astonished stupor.

The Defeated Fighter's Defiant Reaction

But the public gets what the public wants, and that undoubtedly means additional pitiful crossover contests. Paul seemed genuinely satisfied and brash to have had his mandible fractured by a hammer-like right. In the wee hours of the next day, he shared an X-ray, with the two fractures marked in red.

That jokey nod to Saúl "Canelo" Álvarez, a far greater boxer than Joshua but a similarly diminished force, showed that Paul's brazen audacity remains unbroken. It may not be Canelo, but Paul will soon find someone else with whom he can make more than $50 million.

While he was being interviewed, before leaving for the medical facility, Paul spat a tracer of blood onto the canvas. It was one more bleak summary of the evening as Paul mixed blunt truth with blood-flecked bullshit and said: "I think my jaw is broken. It's certainly broke. A nice little beating from one of the best to ever step in the ring. I love this shit and I'm going to return and keep on winning."