Jake Paul: Losing control of my life, finding purpose in boxing | Forward Progress

0:01This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Ronda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Francis Ngannou versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Ronda Rousey versus Gina Carano. Live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center Time, 6 p.m. Pacific Time. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal.

0:41Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Hey, it's Graham. It's Thursday, and that means we're offering you another positive piece of a past interview. Each week, our team digs through the archives to find our strongest feel-good stories to present to you in podcast form. This week, Jake Paul.

1:20Describe the feeling of winning in front of a sold-out crowd at Manchester Arena. Definitely one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. I feel like that's part of one of the main reasons I fell in love with boxing, because I'd never experienced that big of a W. Everything about it was crazy. There was so much on the line. It was like U.S. versus U.K., brothers versus brothers. When I took that W on the biggest stage possible, and I proved everyone wrong, and I had worked so hard to achieve that. And it was my first training camp in boxing. And first fight ever. So it was easily one of the hardest things, learning to box in five months, sparring every single day.

2:12I would come out bleeding. I could barely move my arms. It's the hardest sport in the world for a reason. What made you decide to make that transition to boxing full-time or even start to consider it? I just felt like I could finally be myself and sort of take back control of my life as a boxer. Whereas before I was doing all of these stupid things to get attention on camera for my YouTube channel. I mean, when you wake up, you know, two years straight, every single day filming a video for 15 minutes, after like a year and a half, you're like, man, how do we keep this entertaining? Doing stuff that you normally wouldn't do just to get views.

3:08And that's such an unhealthy place to be in in life. and I feel like boxing gave me just a purpose and a path, and it fit me so perfectly from the shit talk and the outfits, the hype, the attention, the actual fight. I'm a fighter. I fought for everything I have in my life. I've really built everything from grit, hard work, determination, and it's been a fight. I've learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes, and so I feel like fighting is an outlet for me to just express myself. How much did you learn when you went to the mountains in California in Big Bear and visited Sugar Shane Mosley? That was really where, you know, my passion just went to a whole nother level.

4:05and I knew that this is something that I wanted to do for the very foreseeable future. I fell in love with it. And learning from Shane Mosley, you know, what it takes to be a champion. And he would show me that and tell me that every single day, how hard you have to work. And I remember he took me to a gym, you know, just as I was starting to get better and better and better, and I was getting a little confident. He took me to a gym and threw me in with this world champion for my first time against a world champion. And the kid just, you know, beat me up for three rounds straight. I didn't give up.

4:45He didn't knock me down or anything. But I took a beating. Like, I was bruised everywhere, like messed up nose. and Shane was like, you just earned my respect because I know that you'll never quit and you have a champion's mindset and now I'm even more excited to train you because I know that you're special. Most people wouldn't sit there and just take that beating for three rounds and not give up. What led to the deal with Showtime? Business is business, right? And when I'm putting up massive numbers on pay-per-view you know Steven Espinosa sees that you know I want to legitimize myself as a professional boxer and Showtime was the perfect intersection and platform to go to to do this and I told him straight up I was like yo I'm gonna be undefeated no one's ever gonna beat me I'm in the gym twice a day every single day I'm gonna knock out all these guys and let's do it on Showtime.

5:45And he took the chance and you know it's paid off thus far. And your goals are 10-0 and you want to fight kind of the next few years right? Yeah yeah two three four years you know the goal is to get to 10-0 maybe grab a world championship belt in the last fight there and just retire with the belt and right off into the sunset. And you said in terms of financial upside like 250 to half a billion dollars. If I play my cards right over which I am which I have been all I have to do is to win. The pay-per-view numbers are there right so and the fights are only getting bigger and the the revenue is only increasing exponentially by each fight.

6:38So you know five six more fights I could make 250 million dollars for sure. You have a goal becoming a billionaire explain why you love talking to billionaires. I think they create the future and their dedication their work ethic and the way they think about life is just amazing. The billionaires once they get to that level they just want to see other good people succeed a lot of them and they just want to uplift everyone and give free advice and mentor and I've never really had a mentor you know sort of take me under their wing and so I've just learned from different people. How well do you remember the unsolicited email you sent to Mark Cuban?

7:31I was a young entrepreneur creating my first company I was 18 years old and my idea was to create you know a social media group almost like a boy band but for social media and I went out to raise money from investors I called emailed Mark Cuban and he basically said you know I don't I I don't think this is a good idea, but good luck. And rightfully so, you know. I probably wouldn't have thought it was a good idea either. But turns out it was. We became the number one most talked about thing on the internet digitally that there was for about two years straight. and I framed his email and put it above my desk as motivation every day to just like prove him wrong.

8:35And credit to him for at least getting back to you with anything. No, exactly. I mean, it's inspiring. You know, I think I don't look at it as a bad thing. I thank him for denying me. That's it for now. But if you're hungry for more in-depth interviews, head over to YouTube.com slash Graham Bensinger. you can dive into our deep library, which includes more than 2 ,000 clips spanning 12 plus years. Thanks again for listening.