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On one of Jake Paul’s recent Instagram stories, he voiced displeasure to his nearly 27 million followers at a decision by a set of boxing judges at the Paris Olympics. An American boxer had lost by split decision during a semifinal bout, and Paul labeled the result an “absolute robbery.”
A few slides later on Instagram, he posted a video of himself holding an Olympic medal next to a stick of deodorant from his new personal-care line.
The sequence perfectly encapsulated Paul’s partnership with U.S.A. Boxing: an unpaid, loosely defined agreement between an influencer who has disrupted the sport and a program seeking to regain its luster.
The partnership has, so far, had benefits for both parties. For Paul, 27, a YouTube star turned pro boxer, the pairing allows him to attach himself to the prestige of the Olympics and engage with them as he sees fit. U.S.A. Boxing, which is a national governing body for the sport, and the American Olympic team have access to Paul’s millions of followers.
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“This is what I’ve been doing my whole life, which is storytelling and making people interested in things,” Paul said in May in an interview at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where he had come to promote a since-rescheduled fight against the boxing legend Mike Tyson. “I’m a marketer at heart, a salesman at heart. And I think I’ve brought that over into U.S.A. Boxing and just continue to shine a spotlight on them.”
