The prevailing sentiment around boxing-minded corners of the internet as Jake Paul and Julio Cesar Chavez Jnr finished the first half of their fight was: why isn’t Chavez Jnr throwing punches?
Through three rounds, Chavez Jnr had landed three punches, from a measly 14 thrown. After five, he’d found the mark nine times from 36 attempts. His activity and connects rose thereafter, even narrowly exceeding Paul’s in the final two rounds. But at the end of the night, Chavez had landed 61 punches and thrown just 154.
It brought to mind Paul’s previous fight, the sad affair against Mike Tyson that was projected into millions of Netflix-watching households. Tyson, 58 years old at the time and several steps beyond the traditional threshold for a “shot” fighter, threw 97 punches in 10 rounds and landed 18 of them. Tyson’s pitiful output was easy to explain – the once-feared world heavyweight champion is a grandfather with severely dulled speed and reflexes.
Chavez Jnr’s performance is more difficult to rationalize, especially given his surge at the fight’s end and age of 39 – but even in his prime, the son of a legend was never the most reliable or consistent. When Chavez Jnr fought Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in 2017, he was similarly hesitant to engage – he threw 304 punches, almost twice as many across those 12 rounds as in the 10 against Paul. He landed just 71 – 10 more than in Friday’s bout (indicating that Paul is not nearly the defensive wizard that Alvarez was in his pomp).
Still, Paul’s two most recent opponents producing so little presented a pattern worth looking into: what kind of effort are his ring rivals putting forth? Not all of Paul’s fights have accessible punch stats online, and others, like his first-round knockouts, didn’t seem worth considering. The numbers for his opponents that lasted most or all the scheduled rounds with Paul, all courtesy of CompuBox, follows.
Chavez: threw 154, landed 61 (lost 10-round decision)
Tyson: threw 97, landed 18 (lost eight-round decision)
Mike Perry: threw 122, landed 33 (KO’d in six rounds)
Nate Diaz: threw 392, landed 143 (lost 10-round decision)
Tommy Fury: threw 302, landed 88 (won eight-round decision)
*Fury out-threw Paul 302-157
Anderson Silva: threw 251, landed 79 (lost eight-round decision)
Tyron Woodley (first fight): threw 163, landed 52 (lost eight-round decision)
Tyron Woodley (rematch): threw 184, landed 43 (KO’d in six rounds)
This is a sample of 62 rounds, which excludes Paul’s five first and second-round KOs, essentially functioning as a pool of his competitive fights. In the 62 rounds, Paul’s opponents have thrown 1,665 punches and landed 517, which averages to around 27 punches thrown and eight landed per round.
Nothing extraordinary, but far better than the numbers posted by Paul’s three most recent opponents – Chavez Jnr, Tyson, and Perry averaged out to throw between 15 and 16 punches at Paul per round, landing less than five.
It’s safe to conclude that their low-activity efforts are the beginning of a new pattern rather than the continuation of a career-long one. Few would dispute that Paul picks his opponents very carefully – Silva was 47 when he fought Paul and made his reputation in MMA, as did Diaz and Perry. Each of them threw punches at a higher per-round rate than Chavez Jnr, despite Chavez Jnr’s boxing pedigree. Though the trend of low-activity Paul opponents is fairly short, it is glaring.
