Why The Logan Paul Vs. Floyd Mayweather Fight Can Only Be Won By Knockout
And what that rule means for the two fighters.
Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock Logan Paul is set to fight Floyd Mayweather on Sunday, June 6 at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
The boxing match between the YouTuber and a professional boxer who some say is the greatest fighter of all time is an exhibition bout, which means it won't be part of either's professional record and will be held according to special rules.
Sure to be a spectacle, one rule in particular catching people's attention: a knockout is the only way either Mayweather or Paul can technically win.
Why is a knockout the only way Floyd Mayweather or Logan Paul can "win" the fight?
One way of hyping any boxing match is to take away the judges. Normally, three judges stand by to score the fight and declare a winner. After the fight winds through each one of its scheduled rounds, the judges take over and score each round to a particular fighter, until an overall winner is tabulated.
Some decisions are controversial, and judging isn’t perfect, but it’s a good way to make sure that athletes can win fights while dominating the ring via strategy and skill instead of brute force.
In this case, taking away a victory by scorecard ups the entertainment value by guaranteeing an ultraviolent slugfest. Since the only way to win the fight will be via knockout, Mayweather and Paul will be trying hard to do just that.
This fight is in no way sanctioned by any regulatory boxing authority and is a purely promotional event. And when Logan Paul is involved with anything, the least you can say about him is that he does a nice job of promoting his escapades for money.
Normally, boxers pace themselves to ensure that they can go the distance and their energy reserves will last through the final round. It’s unusual to have the stamina to go 12, three-minute rounds while swinging full-fisted blows with each intended to knock out your opponent. Fighters who do that are putting themselves at risk of tiring out very quickly and creating easy openings for the other boxer.
The Logan and Mayweather fight, however, is only scheduled for eight rounds. Not only can they only win by knockout, but they have a shorter time frame in which to accomplish this.
The practical effect of all of these changes will result in a modern-day gladiatorial clash where both men will be focusing all of their might on inflicting as much damage to the other as quickly as possible.
Great for mass entertainment, but not so great for health and safety.
What are the odds going in?
Long story short, the odds aren’t very good for Paul, who is taking on one of the best boxers in history.
Mayweather is undefeated, with a professional record of 50-0. He’s beaten champions and Hall of Famers.
In my opinion, even with his 34 lbs weight advantage, there’s absolutely zero chance Paul wins this fight.
Strangely, the odds are better for Paul than they have been for real boxers who’ve fought Mayweather in the past, but this could be due to the rumors that the event is potentially staged for maximum shock value.
Most bettors still think that Mayweather is going to win, of course. But they’re mostly interested in guessing during which round he’s going to choose to end it.
In Mayweather’s last exhibition against kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa, he defeated Nasukawa by knockout before the first round was over.
While the bout is scheduled to go eight rounds, Sportingnews.com is predicting Paul will be out via (T)KO by round three, as letting the fight go any longer could risk Mayweather's overall professional reputation.
What's the difference between a knockout and a TKO?
While the technical details vary depending on the boxing organization, a win by knockout or KO happens when "the opponent is unable to get up before the referee counts to ten."
A win by TKO, meaning a technical knockout, happens when "the fight is stopped because the opponent is unable to go on."
In the Mayweather Vs. Paul event, either may happen, as a knockout may be determined at the referee's discretion.
And while the rules for the exhibition initially called for each to wear 12-ounce gloves, just yesterday they each agreed to change that and wear 10-ounce gloves instead.
Paul fought fellow YouTuber KSI back in 2019 wearing 10-ounce gloves back in and Mayweather typically fights in eight-ounce gloves.
“I wish the gloves were eight-ounce gloves," Mayweather told reporters. “At first they were trying to fight in 16s, then they were saying 14s, then they said 12s, then they said 10s. I’m saying eight, let’s go eight. So we can really give the people what they wanna see, let’s get some eight-ounce gloves.”
The lighter the gloves, the more likely a knockout.
It’s all about the money for Logan and Mayweather.
"I can fight a fighter right now and I can guarantee myself $35 million," Mayweather said in an appearance on Disruptive Entrepreneur Podcast. "Or me and Logan Paul, or a YouTuber, we can go out and entertain and have fun and make nine figures. $100 million or more."
It’s pretty clear that Mayweather can still compete at the age of 44. But, unlike many fighters who don’t know when to quick, it looks like he’s figured it out.
Instead of competing at the highest levels, he can make a ton of cash by knocking out Logan Paul, who’s involvement is guaranteed to bring a huge purse to the winner of this fight.
Mayweather told Complex Sports, “We want to give the people entertainment. If I wanted to, I could go out there and if I want to I could knock him out in the first-round.”
Entertainment, in this case, means changing the rules to ensure optimal levels of suffering for Paul, increased violence, and what fellow boxers are decrying as bad for boxing.
Similar things were said when Mayweather fought UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor in 2017. That fight was scheduled for twelve rounds.
Even though it could have been over much sooner, Mayweather, ever the entertainer, allowed the fight to go ten rounds before finishing McGregor with a TKO.
For his part, Paul has said, “I think I have to knock him out. Someone’s getting knocked out. Someone’s gonna quit.”
The best word for the whole thing is “spectacle.”
This is an exhibition bout arranged and produced for entertainment purposes only between two men, wildly mismatched in skill level, who have both been accused of horrendous misdeeds in the past.
Paul infamously posted a video from a popular suicide forest in Japan, wherein he joked and laughed while filming a man who’d hanged himself.
Mayweather is a serial domestic abuser and has been accused of striking his partners and their friends multiple times over the years. The accusations against him have led many to question why he’s allowed to participate in sports at all, where he stands to gain millions of dollars while hitting people for an eager and breathless audience.
Mayweather is no stranger to violence; the fighter can’t seem to leave the ring when it comes to his relationships.
The whole exhibition is a weird and wild situation that probably requires some examination of the way we view entertainment in America.
Paul is likely going to be embarrassed and beaten by one of the best fighters in the world.
Every tweak to the bout has made sure that it will be a violent struggle fit to entertain the most bloodthirsty of Caesars.
Is there value in watching an event that turns a legitimate sport into a reckless money grab for two men who don’t exactly deserve an audience in the first place?
You can be the judge. This fight won't have any.
Kevin Lankes, MFA, is an editor and author. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Here Comes Everyone, Pigeon Pages, Owl Hollow Press, The Huffington Post, The Riverdale Press, and more. He began training in boxing and MMA at the age of 7.