YouTube boxers are not “real fighters” according to Kell Brook.
Speaking to Safe Betting Sites (quotes sourced from Daily Star), the 36-year-old former IBF welterweight champion said:
“They’ve not dedicated their life to the sport like us [real fighters], who have done it since we were kids and learned the craft for years. It’s everything, we put our life and soul into the sport.”
Drawing a distinction between fighters who “live and breathe it” and the YouTubers who Brook describes as “having millions of subscribers and jump into the sport and take it like it’s a game”, he, not sounding wholly unlike Floyd Mayweather, had this warning for the latter:
“Boxing is not a game. [As they start to fight better quality opponents] they could pick the wrong opponent and you never know what’s going to happen in the sport of boxing.”
Brook, who has been out of the ring since defeating his long-term foe Amir Khan in February, and who is not officially retired, then suggested, without any irony, that he would happily share a ring with preeminent YouTube boxer, Jake Paul.
“It’s about excitement, it’s about the money, and it’s obviously about being appealing for the fans. So, of course, if it makes sense, I’d get in with Jake Paul.”
What is undeniable is that YouTube boxers such as Jake Paul and KSI have brought fresh audiences to boxing as well as innovative attitudes to event marketing and self-promotion.
In a sport that often prides itself on the ‘size of the purse’ and the attendant viewing numbers, a cross-over bout such as Brook vs Paul is not as unrealistic as it would initially appear.
In a succinct encapsulation of boxing decision-making, inasmuch as describing the future likelihood of any contest taking place, Kell Brook, by way of final word, clichély summarises:
“If it makes business sense [to get in the ring with Paul], [then] of course [I would].”