Mike Tyson v Jake Paul: How the YouTube ‘Problem Child’ became a stadium boxing star

Paul seems to enjoy ruffling feathers, prioritising clicks over what people think of him.

“My brand has become the comments section, which is full of hate, accusations, lies. It has become all of these things but they don’t see the underlying genius in it all, which is that I’m just an entertainer having a blast,” he says.

But dig a little further and you will find a more complex individual.

Paul says he extracted “super powers” from trauma suffered by a tough upbringing. His father, Greg, denies ever hitting his sons.

“The super power is the resilience, the hard work, the ambition and all of that stuff,” he explains.

“When your parents are hard on you it can create a lack of self love and insecurities. You just have to squash the bad parts and then keep the good parts of trauma.”

When Paul says “it’s all a game and I’m playing the game better”, you get the feeling he is not just referring to boxing.

But controversy follows him just as closely as his vast fanbase.

Paul was dropped from Bizaardvark after neighbours complained of the “living hell” caused by parties and noise at his Californian mansion in 2017.

In June 2020, Paul was arrested during protests following the death of George Floyd, with charges of criminal trespass and unlawful assembly later dropped. Two months later, the FBI were seen carrying firearms out of his house.

There were also allegations of sexual assault in 2021 made by fellow TikTok star Justine Paradise, which Paul denied.