Former UFC fan favorite Matt Brown isn’t buying the recent wave of predictions tipping Jake Paul to upset Anthony Joshua and he’s calling it exactly what he thinks it is: noise.
With Paul set to meet the former heavyweight champion in a professional boxing bout, most credible analysts expect Joshua to handle business. Still, a handful of fighters and personalities have gone against the grain, backing Paul to shock the world. Brown sees those takes as disingenuous.
“Here’s the thing when some of these people make these predictions like ‘Jake Paul’s going to beat him’ or whatever. I think it almost has to be a cop out,” Matt Brown said during an appearance on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “It’s kind of a win-win situation. If Jake Paul goes out and beats him, you f*cking called it—you’re the man. If he doesn’t beat him, you say, ‘You really think I thought that?’”
Brown compared the trend to the hype that surrounded Conor McGregor’s crossover bout with Floyd Mayweather, arguing that bold predictions are often made for attention rather than substance.
“If you’re wrong about it, nobody remembers,” Brown added. “But if you make the prediction and it somehow hits, everybody remembers it like, ‘Oh wow, you must be the fight expert!’”
The longtime welterweight didn’t mince words when addressing the logic, or lack thereof, behind picking Paul to win.
“You are not a fight expert for calling Jake Paul to win,” Brown said. “You’re going against everything a fight expert would ever take into account. There is zero reason whatsoever to believe Jake Paul has a chance against Anthony Joshua.”
That doesn’t mean Brown thinks freak outcomes are impossible. He acknowledges the chaos inherent in combat sports, but he insists that relying on randomness isn’t analysis.
“Punches come fast and random things happen,” Brown said. “Could Jake Paul wing a punch and something weird happens? Sure. Joshua could have a bad night of sleep. Anything can happen. But that’s not a logical reason to believe Jake Paul is winning this fight.”
Brown also pointed to the massive gap in experience. While Paul has worked to legitimize himself as a boxer, his résumé pales in comparison to Joshua’s.
“Anthony Joshua has fought and beaten very good, even great professional boxers,” Brown said. “He beat Klitschko. Jake Paul is not Klitschko. Get that out of your head.”
He also referenced Joshua’s emphatic knockout of Francis Ngannou, a former UFC heavyweight champion who had already proven he could hang with elite boxers.
“Joshua didn’t make the mistake of underestimating Ngannou,” Brown noted. “He dismantled him. That matters.”
At the end of the day, Matt Brown believes the conversation itself has drifted into the absurd.
“It’s a silly conversation,” Brown said. “We talk about it because it’s news, but there’s no logical reason to believe Jake Paul is winning this fight. Either you don’t really think it, or you’re just being dumb.”
As fight night approaches, Brown’s stance is clear: bold predictions might grab headlines, but reality and boxing fundamentals, still matter.
