Jake Paul vowed to retire from boxing if he loses to former kickboxing champion Cedric Doumbe on Christmas Eve in Dubai.
“If he wins, I will hang up the gloves and call it a day,” Paul promised in a video posted this week on his YouTube channel.
“But if he loses, the man who calls himself ‘The Best’ just got beat up by a YouTuber with a titanium jaw. So, Cedric Doumbe — I, Jake Joseph Paul, will knock you out, embarrass you and defeat you on Christmas Eve. This fight is not going the distance and someone is getting put to sleep in the Middle East and it’s not Santa.”
The eight-round cruiserweight bout comes a little over a year after Paul sustained a broken jaw in a knockout loss to Anthony Joshua.
Paul (12-2, 7 KOs) required multiple surgeries to repair his jaw after it was broken in two places by Joshua, a former two-time unified heavyweight champion. The scheduled eight-round bout ended in the sixth round on Dec. 19, 2025, in Miami.
“Honestly, after Joshua, part of me thought about quitting, never boxing again,” Paul said. “He broke my jaw. I have two titanium plates in my mouth. I couldn’t eat for weeks. I couldn’t even talk or smile at my bank statements. I was just laying in bed night after night, asking myself, ‘Do I still want to do this?’ Yeah, obviously I still want to do this. I ain’t no b—-.”
Since making his professional debut in 2020, Paul has become one of boxing’s biggest draws. His victory over Mike Tyson by unanimous decision in November 2024 drew 125 million viewers globally, according to MVP.
Doumbe, 34, boasts a kickboxing record of 75-7-1 with 45 knockouts. He is 6-1 in mixed martial arts but his only professional boxing appearance came in April 2015 with a win against fellow Frenchman Mohamed Fodil.
–Field Level Media
