Not at all, I accept Paul is a professional fighter, I was talking in a wider sense. Paul’s only fight of note IMO, was Fury. That is the closest reasonably matched sanctioned bout over a decent distance.
Paul’s other fights were no better than televised local gym sessions. For me the question is one of talent, ability and potential. Jake Paul has displayed little of anything other than the will of stepping in the ring. I think this is what gets up peoples nose and the reason people like Carl Froch question the validity of Paul claims. Froch has a point though Paul is a useless boxer and looks a complete novice with very little in the way of talent.
As you asked, could Paul win an area title? Or would a more talented Plumber from Coventry, working 50 hours a week while holding down family life and training 10 hours a week just walk all over him after fixing a toilet the same day.
And you can argue that taking the Fury fight, even though I don't think much of him either, is a bigger step than most professionals take in their first 10 fights.
If I'm honest a lot of it comes from envy. If I were a boxer who had to go the hard route fighting down on the bottom of cards, having to sell my own tickets to get onto an event and barely making any money after paying my team; I'd be pretty sour at seeing a novice making millions fighting tomato cans. That's completely understandable. But it doesn't change the fact that even some of the most decorated boxers fight absolute puddings at the start of their career. Sometimes they do that even if they've had a few amateur bouts. It's not fair to judge Paul for looking a bit rubbish when he is learning on the job with no amateur career and no combat sport experience prior to getting into the sport.
It's just sour grapes.
Paul is in a bit of a difficult situation, really. Like it or not, he has a humongous following of people willing to pay to watch him fight. He doesn't have the 'luxury' to fight journeymen on small cards to better his craft. Everything he has to do is on the mainstage. That takes more balls than some professional fighters fighting some no hoper in a leisure centre. His learning fights are getting thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of eyes on them, that is not normal and a different type of pressure in its own right.
Just look at someone like Campbell Hatton who had a lite version of the spotlight Paul received and how it was detrimental to his career. He couldn't perform under the pressure and he wasn't even headlining shows.
People are expecting Paul to perform at a high level when he is essentially a 10 fight novice learning on the job. Networks aren't going to put his shows on if he was to fight a 3-60-2 fighter, which is exactly what he should be doing but then you'd get people complaining that he's fighting journeymen.
He is in a lose-lose situation all because he has a following.
