Who are we rooting for? Neither.
Yes, Logan Paul lost. Yes, it was eight rounds of watching his punchable face actually take punches. But the issue was his opponent: Floyd Mayweather.
While the common adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is tempting to apply here, and while it can be easy to want to root for the purported "lesser of two evils"… in this case, they're both so terrible that none of this brings me any sort of comfort.
In most cases, the clear villain would be Logan Paul. Despite his abundance of scandals, he still manages to be one of the richest YouTubers. In fact, his long list of controversies has actually made him more famous and more rich.
His slew of outrage-inducing incidents includes: posting a video of a dead body in Japan's "suicide forest," tasering dead rats, claiming to "go gay" for a month, and of course the obligatory racism, sexism, homophobia, and fatphobia of any cis white social media guy. While Paul has been embroiled in a wide array of scandals, he has emerged mostly unscathed. To make matters worse, he's just an asshole.
Jake and Logan Paul might be famous for being YouTube stars, but to anyone but their questionably loyal fan base, the brothers are notorious for being literally the worst.
They're the worst kind of people, reminiscent of the kinds of kids that took gym class really seriously in middle school — odiously arrogant but so overhyped that nothing will ever knock them off their self-made pedestals. Not even a literal punch to the face. In fact, they invite those.
It seems like a waste that when the siblings with the worst ever case of "punchable face" actually do get punched we can barely enjoy it, because it's happening in a televised boxing match for which they're being paid obscene amounts of money.
When the pair started their gratuitous foray into the boxing world, boxing devotees were angry, fearing that they were sullying the sport.
They have quickly become the most hated duo on pay-per-view. However, the vitriol translates into viewers — enter the recent series of high profile fights scheduled to enable the obtrusive obnoxiousness of YouTubers like the Pauls.
It was clear, when Floyd Mayweather challenged Logan Paul to a fight, that he was the favorite. As an actual career boxer, fans of the sport were excited to watch an actual boxer put Logan Paul in his place.
Now kiss
The Pauls, however, have been emboldened by their past wins — and the unfailing delusion of the ego, ostensibly — so Logan Paul actually thought he had a chance.
Skip to the fight on June 6th, and literally no one won. Good. The fight lasted eight rounds — to the relief of viewers who paid for the fight with the slight worry that it would end in the first round like his brother Jake's match against Ben Askren — and since they went the distance, no official winner was announced.
But what most press fails to mention is that Mayweather is not a beacon of morality, and being the favorite against Logan Paul does not right any wrongs. Mayweather has so much problematic baggage of his own that many wonder why he still has a career and a platform at all.
Most notably, Mayweather has a history of domestic violence allegations and has been accused of violence against women since 2002. He has been charged and plead guilty for multiple incidents and was even charged to a 90-day prison sentence in 2010 after hitting one of his ex-girlfriends in front of their two children.
Yet, here he is on our screens: making millions.
While I love to see Logan Paul losing, I'd also like the same for Mayweather. However, the entertainment industry will keep doing what it always does: act in its own self interest.
And with the hype around the fight, the fervor of the boxing fanatics eager to see Paul put in his place and the notoriety of both fighters, there was no way they would pass up the opportunity to get that much attention for the sake of...what? Morals?
For the sake of this match, the many transgressions committed by Paul and Mayweather were swept under the rug, and instead the narrative was that of the novice fighter and the vet, with Paul as the overconfident newcomer who would either emerge the victorious underdog or be humbled. And the question was who will win and what that would mean for boxing.
But the story should be this: Why do we glorify and reward literally the worst people? Even if we're watching them beat each other bloody, we're still watching them, funding their extreme lifestyles, and giving them a platform for their terribleness.
So if you're desperate for athletes to support, actual Disney princess Naomi Osaka is still receiving support from fellow athletes (who, you know, have talent and fame and aren't problematic) after withdrawing from the French Open due to her mental health , which we love to see.
Somebody stop this man's reign of terror. Please.
