Jake Paul
- In full:
- Jacob Joseph Paul
- Bynames:
- The Problem Child and El Gallo de Dorado
Why is Jake Paul famous?
How did Jake Paul transition into boxing?
Are Jake Paul and Logan Paul twins?
Jake Paul (born January 17, 1997, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.) is an American boxer, influencer, and actor. A member of Generation Z, the first to come of age in a world of ubiquitous Internet and smartphone use, Paul rose to fame and notoriety in the mid-2010s by creating comedic, deliberately provocative videos for the social media platforms Vine and, later, YouTube. He parlayed his popularity with young, chronically online audiences into a short-lived acting stint on the Disney Channel before turning to a career in professional boxing in 2020.
Early life
Paul was born to Greg Paul, a real estate agent, and Pam Stepnick, a nurse. He has an elder brother, Logan Paul. In a 2023 episode of the Netflix series Untold, Jake Paul said that his parents were “really strict” and alleged that his father physically abused him as a child. His parents divorced when he was seven years old. He was a member of the football, basketball, and wrestling teams in high school and for a time had ambitions to become a Navy SEAL.
Rise to fame
In 2013 Jake and Logan Paul started posting six-second prank and slapstick-style comedy clips on Vine, a short-form video platform. The brothers had separate accounts and openly competed with each other to gain more views and followers. By the time Vine shut down in 2017, Jake Paul had more than 5 million followers on the site and his brother had some 9.5 million followers. Paul also started vlogging on YouTube in 2014, posting daily videos that combine elements of MTV reality TV shows such as The Real World (1992– ) and Punk’d (2003–15) with the stunts and gross-out humor of Jackass (2000–07). By mid-2025 he had nearly 21 million subscribers on his channel.
In 2014, when he was 17, Paul dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles with his brother to further his career in entertainment. In 2016 he created the Team 10 collective, an influencer talent management agency. He rented a mansion where he and other members of the group lived and created content. The next year Paul released the rap song “It’s Everyday Bro.” Though widely panned, it charted at number 91 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified platinum within a year of its release.
From 2016 to 2018 Paul played Dirk Mann, a fictional social media star, on the Disney Channel show Bizaardvark, which also featured actress and future pop star Olivia Rodrigo. However, during that time Paul started to become notorious for his online stunts, which included jumping on a news van and burning furniture in an empty pool. His antics led to him being sued by his landlord and becoming a liability for the family-oriented Disney Channel, which fired him midway through the second season of Bizaardvark. In a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he reflected on his brief association with the mainstream entertainment industry: “I don’t think I was that talented of an actor. I could play ‘the bro.’ I needed probably four to five years more acting experience. But I guess I made the decision to stick with my bread and butter, which was social media. It felt safer. I didn’t understand Hollywood.”
Criticism of Jake Paul grew louder after Logan Paul uploaded a video on YouTube at the end of 2017 that included footage of the corpse of someone who had died by suicide in a Japanese forest. The elder Paul’s posting of the video was condemned as being tasteless and exploitative, and, although Jake Paul did not appear in the video, the controversy led to him losing numerous endorsement deals.
Foray into boxing
Paul developed an interest in boxing in 2018 after he was challenged to fight in an amateur match against fellow YouTuber Deji Olatunji; Paul won the fight. He later told Rolling Stone that the bout had reignited the love of sports he had in high school, saying, “It brought back the competitive, athletic Jake Paul. I just fell in love with it. When I won my first boxing match, it was one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced in my life.” His first professional fight was in January 2020 against Ali Eson Gib, another YouTuber-fighter. Paul won the match after a first-round technical knockout. Later that year his transition to boxing gained wider attention when he knocked out Nate Robinson, a former NBA player.
In 2021 Paul moved to Puerto Rico and cofounded a boxing agency called Most Valuable Promotions; featherweight champion Amanda Serrano was the first boxer to sign with the company. Over the next several years Paul accumulated victories over a series of opponents, many of whom were known primarily for their experience in mixed martial arts (MMA). His first professional defeat, by split decision, came in February 2023 at the hands of Tommy Fury, brother of the English-born heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. Paul has faced criticism from the boxing world for his unconventional path to becoming a professional boxer and for choosing opponents who are often much older than him or not primarily boxing specialists. Nevertheless, he undoubtedly has brought considerable attention to boxing, and in 2023 Sports Illustrated named him one of the 50 most influential figures in sports.
In November 2024 Paul had a highly publicized fight against former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who was returning to the boxing ring for the first time in nearly 20 years. Paul won the match by unanimous decision.
Other ventures and activities
In 2021 Paul cofounded a venture capital firm, and a year later he cofounded a mobile sports gambling company called Betr. In 2023 he settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over charges that he failed to disclose that he had been compensated to promote a cryptocurrency.
In 2024 Paul endorsed Donald Trump for U.S. president and subsequently attended Trump’s second inauguration, in January 2025. Paul’s influence and appeal among younger men have been compared to those of other cultural figures who have expressed support for Trump, including MMA impresario Dana White, podcaster Joe Rogan, and comedian Theo Von.
In 2025 Paul and his brother starred in Paul American, a reality TV show produced by HBO.
Personal life
Paul has staged two weddings, one with fellow Team 10 member Erika Costell in 2017 and another with social media star Tana Mongeau in 2019. It was later revealed that both weddings were fake and that the marriages were not legally binding. Also in the late 2010s Paul dated Alissa Violet, another Team 10 member. After the couple broke up in 2017, Violet accused him of emotional abuse and cheating. In addition, Paul was accused of sexual misconduct by two women in 2021; he denied one of the allegations and did not specifically address the other.
In March 2025 Paul got engaged to Dutch speed skater Jutta Leerdam, who won a silver medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games.