A conflict between villains, it was the culmination of an of badly acted trash talk videos and diss tracks. I was entirely ready for this to be a shambolic failure; instead, I got a flawlessly executed circus of bullshit. It was a perverse mix of brazen commercialism and the infliction of genuine pain: the amateurism of the performers translated into a brawling performance that left most people in the crowd delighted. Whoever it was that they hated, that dude got punched in the face and bled for their entertainment. In executing their contrived feud, the two pairs of brothers sought to assert their superior manliness through jake vs deji insults about strength, pain tolerance, attire, material possessions, and sexual prowess. Macho behavior is apparently infectious. I opted to keep my hoodie on. Have you seen his numbers. Have you seen his jake vs deji. He was just one of a number of serious reporters from serious networks and publications taking this event entirely seriously. Logan Paul like a traditional boxing match. They reported on the content of the bout rather than the farcical nature of its very existence. But back to the weigh-ins. If there was any question left about the mainstream legitimacy of YouTube stardom, the involvement of these two names put it to rest. Briggs introduced Jake Paul by saying the younger Paul had been trained by the same trainer who helped Briggs defeat George Foreman back in 1997. Indeed, after casting off a T-shirt, shorts, and ostentatious jewelry that would make Mr. T envious, Jake Paul strode onto the scales in perfect Instagram shape. Deji, meanwhile, turned up looking distinctly human in a way that made me feel preemptively sorry for the younger Olatunji brother. He was shorter, lighter, and in worse condition than Jake. What was Deji fighting for, exactly. They later faced off and tried to act tough. I think one of them brought breath mints as a prop, but by that point, my brain was erroring out from the overweening exhibition of pale male flesh and over-serious manliness. The day of the fights was a revelation. Never mind the famed great British reserve, people were roaring for blood. No one at the Manchester Arena was attending in the hope of seeing the sport of boxing; the jake vs deji was the embarrassment and humiliation of the opponent, a sanctioned, legalized hate for the other. In response, Paul was wearing a huge chain with those same words on it, embracing. Outside of the main event, the biggest cheer of the night came after the first round of Jake vs. Deji, when the overhead screens showed a close-up of a bloodied Jake Paul. Centuries of cultural, economic, and military fraternity with Americans were apparently not enough to prevent Brits jake vs deji being primordially thrilled to see an American bro bleed. I was, however, in the minority. Unlike his ultra commercial rival, Deji — with a bloodied nose and face — was deeply apologetic in his post-fight interview. Jake Paul, a Trumpian figure of boundless greed, seemed ready to do anything with anyone, so long as there was at the end of it. Deji was just a kid caught up in the suffocating cycle of living up to the increasingly extreme expectations of a growing audience he desperately wanted to please. That lasted for about 30 seconds. Logan kept up the arrogant preening act throughout the first round, but he was forced to take the fight seriously after receiving a few meatier punches in the second. By the fourth round, the two vloggers were tiring, which opened their already weak defenses to some meaningful assaults from the other side. Take a moment to appreciate this sentiment: a man proves himself a man by surviving a beating and meting one out in return. Two people, both of whom stand to benefit financially from a contrived emotional relationship, do their utmost to convince the cameras that they care about each other. In both cases, you get plenty of eye contact, songs dedicated to the other, intimate face-to-face moments, and the nervous tension of the audience not knowing if things will get physical. Thousands came to fill up the Manchester Arena, hundreds of thousands paid to watch the official YouTube stream, and more than a million others tuned in to. Their shameless boorishness, materialism, and sexism are popular, and the blame for that lies more with us, the audience, than with them.
