Why Jake Paul called out Canelo Alvarez before Mike Tyson fight

Jake Paul is predicting he can knock out Mike Tyson when the two meet in a ring Friday as the headliners of their Netflix boxing event at AT&T Stadium, and Paul already knows the opponent he plans to call out in the ring if he beats Tyson. For anyone who has followed over the past year or so, the name should come as no surprise.
“It’s Canelo,” Paul declared, referencing boxer Canelo Alvarez during an appearance on the TimboSugarShow podcast with MMA stars Sean O’Malley and Tim Welch released this week ahead of the Tyson fight.
Alvarez currently holds the WBC, WBA and WBO super middleweight titles and owns a 62-2-2 career record with 39 knockouts. Paul, a YouTube star who has leveraged his fame into a lucrative and increasingly successful boxing career, said it would be a fight to determine the “face of boxing.”
Alvarez’s trilogy of matches against Gennady Golovkin was among the top revenue generators in boxing history. His May 2021 win over Billy Joe Saunders featured an announced crowd of 73,126 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, breaking the record of the largest indoor attendance for a boxing event in the United States. Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks previously drew a crowd of 63,350 for their rematch in 1978 at the Superdome in New Orleans.
“This moment will prove I’m the face of boxing, the largest attraction,” Paul said about his fight against Tyson, “and me vs. Canelo at 200 pounds for the cruiserweight championship of the world is the biggest fight, arguably even bigger than me vs. Tyson, and it makes so much sense.”
“Canelo is on his way out,” added Paul, who has a 10-1 career record. “He’s going to want a payday and I want to show the world all the (stuff) I’ve been talking about beating Canelo is actually true and I’ll have the biggest upset in the history of boxing. We’ll fight to really see who is the face because after this event, I’m going to be claiming it.”
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Paul has been attempting to line up a fight with Alvarez for a while and none of his approaches have worked thus far, although this much-anticipated clash with Tyson will provide Paul with perhaps his biggest platform yet to convince Alvarez to get in the ring with him.
Alvarez, 34, showed little interest in engaging with Paul as recently as last April after the Tyson vs. Paul matchup was first announced. Alvarez has had two fights over the past year, beating Jaime Munguia by unanimous decision in May and Edgar Berlanga by unanimous decision in September.
“I think Netflix is good for boxing, but that special fight, I think Netflix is doing something wrong there,” Alvarez said in an interview with TMZ when asked about his interest in the Tyson-Paul fight. “Netflix being involved (in boxing), yes, it’s good, but not in that kind of fight. I think it’s more show than a fight.”
Paul, 27, is boxing as a heavyweight for the first time against Tyson, noting on the podcast this week he’s eating as much as 4,000 calories per day to maintain his weight around 224 pounds. He’s hopeful going down to the cruiserweight division (200 pounds) will be a compromise that can entice Alvarez to change his mind.
“He will want his, I guess it will be his fifth weight division championship. He wants the cruiserweight belt.” Paul said. “If everyone remembers, he was going to challenge (Ilunga) Makabu to become cruiserweight champion, so he wants to conquer that division to be able to call himself a cruiserweight champion and that’s where the fight makes sense because I can’t make 175 (pounds). This fight should be for a belt and it makes the most sense at cruiserweight.”
It won’t make any sense unless Paul actually beats Tyson, the 58-year-old former heavyweight champion. Here’s more information on the fight Paul must win before he can take another shot at Alvarez:
As of Wednesday, Nov. 13, BetMGM set the following odds for the fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul:
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The Tyson vs. Paul fight was initially announced last March and scheduled for July 20. Tyson’s health issues forced the event to be postponed until Nov. 15.
Most Valuable Promotions has progressively announced six other matches for the fight card, beginning last April with the announcement that Taylor and Serrano would serve as the co-main event. Their first bout in April 2022, which Taylor won by split decision, was the first women’s boxing match to headline an event at Madison Square Garden.
Here’s what the full card looks like as of Tuesday, November 12:
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