Top-ranked UFC contender Joaquin Buckley has seen enough of Jake Paul, and he says his days of tuning in are over. Speaking with Parry Punch, the UFC welterweight athlete said watching Paul’s heavyweight clash with Anthony Joshua felt like “a waste of time” and vowed he will “never watch Jake Paul fight again.”
Buckley admitted he went into the Netflix main event like many combat sports fans: waiting for the YouTuber‑turned‑boxer to finally get iced. He ran through the hits, from Tyron Woodley to Anderson Silva to Nate Diaz, saying fans kept hoping “they gonna be our saviors and knock him out,” only to be disappointed each time.
UFC contender Joaquin Buckley slams Jake Paul fight as “nonsense,” vows never to tune in again
That changed when Paul signed to fight Joshua, a former unified heavyweight champion with an Olympic gold medal and wins over names like Wladimir Klitschko and Otto Wallin, plus high‑level bouts with Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois. “We just knew, okay, this has to be the end,” Buckley said of the Joshua matchup.
On fight night in Miami, Paul lasted six rounds before Joshua finally closed the show with a knockout that left the American with a double fracture in his jaw and titanium plates inserted during surgery. Buckley said that early on he was “very critical of Anthony Joshua,” wondering how a seasoned heavyweight with that résumé wasn’t able to get Paul “out in two rounds.”
But his view shifted as he watched Paul lean on survival tactics: clinching, falling into quasi‑takedown positions, and backing off exchanges. “When you’re fighting somebody who’s constantly trying to run away, constantly falling into positions where you can’t get a clean shot off, it’s not easy,” Buckley explained, adding that you can’t just expect a single punch to end it when the opponent is doing everything to avoid a fight.
Ultimately, Buckley gave Joshua credit for breaking Paul’s jaw “in two” and suggested the injury might be serious enough that “Jake Paul can never box again,” echoing reports of Paul’s double jaw fracture and surgery after the bout. He also conceded that Paul has clearly been training and “isn’t some average Joe off the street,” a point Joshua himself has nodded to when recognizing Paul’s preparation and willingness to face elite heavyweights. “In my opinion, Anthony Joshua did his job that night. Period,” Buckley said.
Even with that grudging respect, Buckley’s patience for the Jake Paul show has run out. He said Paul “wasted our time sitting there and watching that nonsense,” arguing that the drawn‑out nature of the bout, with all the holding and spoiling, killed the fun for viewers who came to see a clean finish.
For Buckley, Joshua only truly delivered once Paul slowed down, stopped diving for clinches, and finally got clipped: “Once Jake Paul slowed down, lost energy, stopped shooting takedowns, AJ caught his shot, and that one shot put Jake Paul down for the count.” The result may have satisfied the record books and Paul’s surgeon, but in Buckley’s eyes, it was the last Jake Paul fight worth sitting through.
