Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis. Three kings of the heavyweight division in an exclusive club that Anthony Joshua wants to join.
It doesn't, on the face of it, look like the move of a wise man to fight YouTube disruptor Jake Paul before plotting an assault to become a three-time heavyweight champion.
From his initial IBF title success against Charles Martin in April 2016, through to his r ematch loss to the great Oleksandr Usyk in August 2022, Joshua fought in 12 successive world title fights. Paul has had 12 wins in his entire career, with the vast majority of those not against active boxers.
For all the talk of how much risk Paul is taking by pursuing this gargantuan task, what's really in it for Joshua?
He's already had two goes at becoming a three-time champion, losing gallantly to Usyk and then humiliatingly to Daniel Dubois. He has not boxed since the latter bruising loss, when he hit the canvas four times in September last year at his old Wembley fortress.
Now 36 and with talk of a long-awaited fight against Tyson Fury swirling, before looking towards that elusive third reign, what on earth is Joshua doing in Miami this week?
Why is Anthony Joshua fighting Jake Paul?
Money
To save us all some time, this article could just have been a picture of a big sack of cash. As per multiple reports on Joshua's expected earnings on Friday night, there are 92 million reasons for him to be taking a fight that it's virtually impossible for him to lose.
“I like making money. Straight up. This is a prizefighting sport,” Joshua said prior to his previous comeback from defeat against Jermaine Franklin in April 2023. “I’ve been broke. My family has been broke. I know what this s--- means, and I do it because I’m good at it and I hustle hard. When it’s all said and done, no one will care about me no more. So, I’ve got to make the most of it while I’m here.”
That's as good a mission statement as any for what this weekend is all about for Joshua. If he were to get taken in the second half of the fight, to the scorecards or even wear significant shots from Paul at any stage, it would feel reputationally damaging. But, in truth, Joshua's name has been dragged repeatedly through the mud since his shocking 2019 loss to Andy Ruiz Jr. It's hard to imagine he cares what people might say in any of those worst-case scenarios for a fight that is incredibly low risk and lavishly high reward.
Injury comeback and new training team
Joshua's promoter Eddie Hearn revealed his fighter had been due to fight a low-key eight-rounder against a moderate opponent -- widely presumed to be American heavyweight Cassius Chaney -- on the Ring IV: Night of Champions card in Riyadh.
This would have been a departure for Joshua, who has been a main-event fixture in championship fights since his British and Commonwealth title barnburner against Dillian Whyte in December 2015. But the devastating nature of his defeat to Dubois, along with his subsequent elbow surgeries and a switch of training camp persuaded Team Joshua to take this course of action.
Joshua is boxing out of Oleksandr Usyk's training camp for the first time and it makes sense to get back into the routine of preparation, fight week and the night under the lights with significant changes after a long lay-off. In boxing terms, Joshua will learn next to nothing against Paul. But the same would probably have been true against Chaney (who, for the avoidance of doubt, would beat Paul, irrespective of any sparing stories doing the rounds). Fighting Paul can tick lots of the boxes a rudimentary eight-rounder would have done for Joshua, and he gets an inordinate amount of money to boot.
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Reputation in America
Joshua will sell out stadiums in the UK until he hangs up his gloves and remains one of the biggest boxing stars in the world. But his relationship in the United States is a curious one that has never recovered from his shocking defeat to Andy Ruiz Jr. At Madison Square Garden six-and-a-half years ago.
Despite Lennox Lewis' reigns in the 1990s and 2000s, and Tyson Fury's exploits on either side of the night Joshua's world came crashing down, this was a time for the American fight public to recall the stereotypical "horizontal British heavyweight" of yesteryear. Joshua might have been a unified champion with an Olympic gold medal and banner wins over Wladimir Klitschko and Joseph Parker, but for those who watched on in amazement in New York, he was a pumped-up hype job who had been found out.
It didn't matter that Joshua completely outboxed an ill-conditioned Ruiz in Jeddah six months later; the U.S. Had seen the new king for what he was, before it enjoyed the second and third acts of the enthralling Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder trilogy.
Joshua was the man from the other side of the Atlantic, on the outside looking in. Starching Jake Paul will prove nothing to purists, but a showreel knockout to precede what he hopes will be a defining 2026 would go some way to writing the wrongs of the Ruiz debacle.