Jake Paul will take on former middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chávez Jr. in the influencer-boxer’s next bout on June 28 at Anaheim’s Honda Center.
Paul (11-1, 7 KOs) and Chávez (54-6-1, 34 KOs) will have a 10-round fight at a 200-pound catchweight limit, promoter Golden Boy announced Friday.
Paul has mostly fought fellow YouTubers and mixed martial artists since beginning his wildly lucrative boxing career five years ago. He fought 58-year-old Mike Tyson last November, winning by unanimous decision.
Paul negotiated extensively for a bout against Mexican star Canelo Alvarez earlier this year, but Alvarez spurned the bout for a rich four-fight deal with Riyadh Season, the boxing promotional arm of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority. It’s unclear whether Alvarez was serious about fighting Paul or simply leveraging the Internet star for a bigger payday.
The 39-year-old Chávez has been somewhere in between a serious boxer and a showman for many years.
He had a long, lucrative career of his own, but it was largely built on Mexican fans’ unconditional love of his famous father. The younger Chávez was best known for lacking discipline and frequently missing weight, although he also managed to win the WBC middleweight title in 2011 and defend it three times before Sergio Martinez took it away in 2012.
Chávez has also resorted to fighting mixed martial artists in recent years, and he infamously lost to former UFC star Anderson Silva in 2021. Chávez has fought only twice since that defeat, and he narrowly beat former UFC fighter Uriah Hall in a six-round bout last year.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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