Jake Paul landed a first-round knockout in his professional boxing debut despite struggling with his game plan

Jake Paul’s boxing career started out with an incredible win, although he struggled with putting his plan into action on the night.

The YouTube star made the transition to boxing in 2018. Jake Paul’s boxing debut was against fellow YouTuber Deji, where the bloodied Paul won a fifth-round retirement.

Since then, the controversial star has gone on to fight numerous fighters, including Paul’s wins over former champions like Mike Tyson and Anderson Silva.

Paul’s next fight is a clash with former world champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, and he will hope to emulate his previous performances by defeating him on June 28.

Those incredible wins were a far cry from his first professional fight, which showed a much different Paul in the boxing ring.

Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Jake Paul knocked out AnEsonGib on his professional boxing debut

After an amateur win over Deji in his debut fight in 2018, two years of training saw Paul take on another YouTuber in his first professional boxing match.

As the co-main event of the WBO world middleweight title bout between Demetrius Andrade and Luke Keeler, Paul battled AnEsonGib in both men’s first foray into real fighting.

It was clear from the first round of their fight on January 30, 2020, that neither of the fighters had much experience in the ring.

They both fought with a very unorthodox stance, with Gib falling over multiple times in the first round due to his unbalanced style of boxing.

Paul’s jab pushed Gib back on multiple occasions, his immense power advantage becoming obvious as the first round went on.

The end of the fight was rather anticlimactic and pointed more towards the lack of talent in Gib rather than an impressive performance by Paul.

A right hook connected after numerous missed punches, sending Gib stumbling. As this was the third time he’d been knocked down by easy shots, the referee had no choice but to end the fight and award Paul the TKO victory.

Jake Paul admitted to struggling to connect with his power shots during the fight

Despite a first-round knockout where he didn’t look in any danger at all, Paul struggled to follow the game plan that his trainer, “Sugar” Shane Moseley, had set out for him.

In a post-fight interview with Matchroom Boxing, the YouTube star admitted that he didn’t get to use his power, missing most of his big punches during the bout.

“I didn’t even really get to show my skill. I didn’t land any of my really hard punches—most were just grazing shots off the top of the head or barely connected.

“Shane always told me in practice, ‘You have power, you have power,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, cool,’ but I didn’t really believe it until I knocked him out in the first round.”

The game plan was to take Gib down with power punches, but Paul’s jabs were enough to secure three knockdowns and the TKO victory on his professional debut.