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At some point, you just have to learn to live with Jake Paul. He’s like a clubfoot, or a speech impediment. He’s not going to kill us, but it’s something we need to deal with, as courageously as we can, as we go about regular life.

The exhibition bout that was announced Wednesday for Nov. 14 against Gervonta “Tank” Davis is of course absurd. Nobody asked for this, man. The thing about Paul is he weighs in the vicinity of 200 pounds, while Davis weighs about a third less. That, of course, doubles as the appeal. Davis is the flickering WBA lightweight champion, who just happens to be the superior boxer in every aspect down to the boot laces.

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Paul, though he has been training in boxing for a few years and has curated a peculiar résumé, has some power but, more significantly, transcendent gall. That last thing does numbers. Can he find the illusion that is Davis? Or does Davis put on a clinic, death by a thousand beautifully timed mosquito bites?

You know what? We’re going to find out.

It’ll stream live from Atlanta on Netflix, which — as we’ve been reminded many times — has 300 million subscribers. It’s being broadcast to the world in the most unmissable way possible, because Paul goes big when he fights small. Over a hundred million tuned in for his fight with 57-year-old Mike Tyson. Never mind that everyone did a walk of shame the next morning, did you read what I just wrote?

It did over a hundred million.

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That’s a staggering amount of regret.

Jake Paul has gone from YouTuber to boxing’s unlikely matchmaker.

(Bradley Collyer – PA Images via Getty Images)

Yet the groans from the combat world aren’t just because Paul is back, it’s that this time he feels like boxing’s flaunting side piece. Back in March, Davis and Lamont Roach Jr. put on a dramatic fight at the Barclays Center that ended up in a draw. Boxing people thought the super featherweight Roach actually won. I was there that night, and the crowd in Brooklyn left feeling like Davis had gotten by with something. Roach hurt Davis in the early rounds, and there was a feeling that it could all crumble if Davis wasn’t careful. When he took that knee in the later rounds, I’ll never forget the high faces in the stands looking around for any kind of explanation.

None were forthcoming. (It turned out Davis’ eyes were burning from “hair grease,” so he took the liberty of calling a timeout.)

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All of this made a rematch obvious. You have to run that back, because Roach was a massive underdog who had no business giving Davis a fight. That was a massive storyline for one of boxing’s biggest stars. You have to run it back because everybody needed to see the real “Tank” stand up and prove that what happened in Brooklyn was a fluke. Nothing more than an off night. Isn’t that what great ones do? Traditionally? Try to correct bad notions as quickly and as emphatically as they can?

In a game that’s all about resolution, that rematch was set up brilliantly. And it looked like they were going to do it again this month before a misdemeanor domestic violence charge filed by Davis’ girlfriend derailed the plan. Once that was cleared up, the assumption was that the rematch could proceed.

Right … right?

Not so fast. In walks the box-office satyr of the boxing world, Jake Paul. All 200 pounds of him. Apparently, Davis had been “disrespecting his name for too long,” which prompted the action. Paul said that “Tank” was a tank, yet he was an “FPV drone.” He said that he would take out David (Davis) before handling Goliath (Anthony Joshua). It was like Paul interrupted a really engrossing movie by revving the engine of his tricked-out monster Jeep out front. Forget about the movie, he says, let’s go for a joyride.

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And because right now the boxing world boils down to Paul’s to-do list, Davis gets a check.

A big one.

Now the circus. MVP Promotions. Nakisa Bidarian. Debates as to whether or not Paul is good for boxing.

Who knows, maybe it ends up being something more than a typical Paul platter of empty calories. But these things have a way of taking on a life of their own. The first time I saw Davis live was in 2017 in Las Vegas for his fight with Francisco Fonseca, it was on the undercard for the massive Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather crossover fight. That time it was Mayweather welcoming a loud interloper into the ring, and from McGregor’s standpoint it felt like an impossible lark. He was making the Forbes leap in the boxing ring before coming back to MMA to pick up where he left off.

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Wasn’t how it happened. McGregor never really returned to where he left off. If anything, that’s where it all came to an end.

Yet I remember “Tank” on that card, holding down the essential side to boxing, mooring it to the sport within the spectacle. We knew he was the future of the sport. And it turns out he was.

These years later, he gets his turn to be the spectacle.

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