When Jake Paul inevitably gets back into the boxing ring after his sixth round TKO loss to Anthony Joshua, it won’t be against his longtime rival KSI. That’s because KSI — real name Olajide Olatunji — has officially announced he’s done boxing.
KSI is one of the pioneers of Influencer boxing, making the combat sports industry pay attention in 2018 with a Logan Paul fight that sold over a million pay-per-views. He’d go on to found Misfits Boxing, which is one of the more stable promotions where YouTubers and social media stars can ply their wares. But after a five-fight run in 2022-2023 that ended with a 3-1-1 record, KSI lost his love for the game.
“I’d say the training, how physically and mentally draining it is, it’s just like nothing else,” KSI said on The Ranveer Show. “I’d say of everything I’ve done in my life, that is the hardest thing … By the seventh or eighth week, you’re like, ‘Why am I doing this? I hate this. This is horrible. I’m getting beat up. I don’t even want to get up anymore.’”
“I fell ill, like, my body is starting to shut down because you’re just feeling sick. But you just have to fight through it. Every day, the same thing over and over and over again. That’s physically. Mentally, you’re just cooked.”
Add in the uncertainty that big fights would come together or that you’d get your hand raised in the ring, and the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.
“You win? Fantastic. Best feeling ever. Euphoric. You’re over the moon,” he said. “You lose? ‘What a waste of my f–king time. What a waste. I literally spent 12 weeks of my life killing myself to not get the result I wanted.”
As for Jake Paul, KSI revealed that he’d been offered tens of millions to face “The Problem Child” but claimed Paul always had excuses early on and then bulked up too much to make the fight realistic.
“My main goal when I got into the boxing ring again was to fight Jake Paul and build Misfits,” KSI said. “Time and time and time again, it’s just excuse after excuse after excuse … I think I tried to build up again to try and fight Jake again, and then he was just getting heavier and heavier, trying to move the goal posts when it comes to weight. It got to the point where it was like, ‘What am I doing? I’m done.’”
“I’ve been offered $20 million to fight Jake Paul, $30 million to fight Jake Paul,” he revealed. “These guys can’t give me any amount of money to fight this guy. When it comes to boxing, I’m done.”
