It sounds like a wild rumor until it starts happening again and again. For a boxer who began as a YouTube disruptor, Jake Paul has left behind an unusually chaotic trail. Almost every major opponent he has faced seems to walk away from the ring into turbulence. Fans have started calling it The Jake Paul Curse.

And once you start lining up what actually happened to Paul’s opponents, the coincidence starts to feel harder to ignore.

The legend of the Jake Paul Curse has recently reignited with a shocking incident involving British boxer Anthony Joshua. Just 10 days after his bout with Paul, Joshua survived a devastating car crash that claimed the lives of two members of his training team. In the aftermath, a bizarre online theory resurfaced: fans speculated that defeating Jake Paul might come with fatal consequences. Dubbed the Jake Paul Curse, the viral narrative connects past fighters who lost or even faced Paul to subsequent personal tragedies.

The idea of a curse is not rooted in the supernatural but in optics. Jake Paul rarely faces boxers in their competitive prime. These opponents often push their bodies beyond safe limits for one last payday, and the fallout can be severe. Take Ben Askren, for example. After losing to Paul in 2021, Askren later revealed he suffered from severe pneumonia unrelated to the fight, leading to lung failure and a double lung transplant.

Similarly, Tyron Woodley, another former UFC champion, admitted financial struggles after his boxing losses to Paul, later confirming he had mismanaged funds and overextended investments, again, not caused by the fight, but magnified by it. 

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Once enough examples pile up, skepticism gives way to suspicion.

The Jake Paul Curse endures because it reflects something real about modern boxing. Paul’s fights operate at the intersection of spectacle, money, and vulnerability. His opponents often gamble their health or legacy for relevance, and when it fails, the fall is public and unforgiving.

So is the curse real? No, at least not in the supernatural sense. But as a symbol of what happens when past-their-prime fighters step into a hype-driven boxing economy, it is disturbingly accurate. 

One of the most cited examples is Mike Tyson, Paul’s upcoming opponent in 2024. Tyson did suffer a serious medical emergency earlier that year when he experienced complications related to an ulcer flare-up during a flight, forcing the fight to be postponed. Still, the scare reinforced the narrative that entering Paul’s orbit carries risk.

Nate Robinson, knocked out cold by Paul in 2020, retreated from the public eye and professional sports, later resurfacing with music projects and business ventures. The silence, however, fed the myth.

Ultimately, the Jake Paul curse endures because it lives in the aftermath, not the fight itself. His bouts rarely end cleanly in the public imagination; they linger, overlap with real-world consequences, and blur the line between coincidence and cause. 

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Do you see a genuine pattern at play or just coincidence amplified by the spotlight? Share your thoughts in the comments below.