A reflective review
I don’t write reviews as an expert. I write them as someone paying attention.
These pieces are a way of sharpening my observational and descriptive skills, noticing atmosphere, contrast, discomfort, and resonance rather than technical detail. I’m interested in how events land in the body, what they reveal about the world we’re in, and what stays with me once the noise fades.
This means I often write from the edge, as a novice, not quite fluent in the culture I’m observing. That is deliberate.
What follows is not a conventional review. It’s an account of how this moment unfolded for me, and what it stirred.
Watching the Internet Step Into the Ring
I woke in the early hours, went to the loo, and my phone lit up with a Netflix alert about the match.
A match?
By 4.15am, I was sitting in my living room watching Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua. It had been billed to start at 1am. It still hadn’t begun.
There was a long preamble. A women’s match. Commentary. Analysis. Talking heads. Time stretched and stretched, building anticipation, holding attention. I realised this wasn’t so different from football. Matches are rarely allowed to simply start. The ritual of waiting matters as much as the event.
This was my first boxing match. I don’t know the rules of rugby, and I’ve never quite grasped offside in football either. Every sport has its own grammar. You’re either fluent in it because you grew up inside it, or you’re not.
Watching as an outsider has its advantages.
The national anthems came first. An American woman sang God Save the King. A solo voice, reverent, unfamiliar. I realised I’d only ever heard it carried by massed bands or choirs. Then The Star-Spangled Banner, sung solo, which felt oddly familiar. I don’t know why. Perhaps some rituals travel more easily than others.
Then the entrances.
Anthony Joshua walked out first. No theatrical bravado. No borrowed movie soundtracks. Just concentration. You could see him narrowing inward, finding his zone. He was surrounded by people, but already alone in the way that matters. Whatever noise was around him, the work ahead was his.
The commentary was confident. One or two rounds. A knockout. He wouldn’t see the final bell.
Then Jake Paul.
It was louder. Brighter. More performative. Red and yellow everywhere. Yellow glasses. A bright scarf tied around his head. He wore a red leather jacket. It read as brash, deliberately so. He played to the audience, soaking up attention. There was music. A rapper alongside him. The noise lifted another level.
This felt like two different eras of success walking towards the same ring.
One built on accumulation, discipline, record, history.
The other on visibility, performance, and attention.
Around the ring stood young women, conventionally attractive, part of the spectacle. I hesitate over the term ring girls, but the function was familiar. Beauty as ornament. Youth as backdrop. It felt oddly out of time, and yet very much of this time too.
And everywhere, phones. Held aloft. Filming. Recording. Proof. If you don’t film it, it’s not happening. I’m used to seeing that at gigs. Live experience constantly interrupted by the need to capture evidence of being there.
The gloves don’t recognise followers.
The gloves recognise force.
By round four, the expected script wasn’t unfolding as promised. The punches weren’t landing as predicted. The commentary shifted from certainty to explanation. Technique replaced inevitability.
I found myself confused by what I was seeing. There were pauses that weren’t pauses. Embraces that weren’t embraces. Later I learned the word clinch. The rules were there, but not available to me. And I noticed how, when expectations wobble, we rush to technical explanations to steady ourselves.
By round five, the difference in experience showed itself in the body.
Jake Paul looked exhausted. Like a wounded animal. Going down, getting back up. Anthony Joshua, by contrast, looked fresh. Grounded. In control. Maybe this is when experience counts. Not in spectacle, but in stamina. In pacing. In knowing how to stay present when fatigue arrives.
The crowd wanted a knockout. They had been primed for it. Sold it. But Paul was still standing.
In round six, he went down again. The fight was stopped by the referee. Not a dramatic cinematic knockout. A body reaching its limit. Authority stepping in. A quieter ending than the hype promised.
And then the aftermath.
The ring filled with people. So many that the moment felt diluted. It was hard to tell who belonged to the fight and who belonged to the content.
Joshua was awarded a medal. Not a belt. A medal, branded Polymarket. I don’t know what Polymarket is. It’s not my world. The sponsorship landed with a slight thud, another reminder of how events like this are shaped by platforms and markets that don’t require our understanding to operate.
Joshua spoke calmly. He said it wasn’t his best performance. He was generous about Paul. Respectful. Clear-eyed. He thanked the audience. He talked about what might come next, mentioning Tyson Fury, though the hierarchy and politics of that didn’t really matter to me.
What mattered was his tone.
When asked how losing would have affected his legacy, he didn’t flinch.
My legacy is there.
That stayed with me.
Strength changes. Outcomes change. Bodies tire. Public wins slow or stop. But what has already been lived, built, contributed, endured, and learned does not evaporate because one performance ends.
Jake Paul said something similar, in his own way. He said he hadn’t lost. He’d already won in many parts of his life. He’d gone six rounds. He’d shown something. He was tired, yes. Experience and stamina matter. But visibility matters too. He will gain followers. The narrative will continue.
Joshua won the fight.
Paul extended the story.
And I, half-awake at four in the morning after getting up to go to the loo, watching as a complete novice, saw something that had very little to do with boxing.
I watched two systems of value overlap. One ancient, embodied, finite. The other modern, amplified, ongoing.
And I was reminded that legacy is not something we have to keep proving once we reach a certain point in life. It’s already there, held in what we’ve done, who we’ve been, and what remains when the noise fades.
That felt worth staying awake for.
This first appeared on Substack on 20 December 2025
