Jake Paul Says Losing Tommy Fury Fight Made Him 'More Relatable,' Grew His Fanbase

If you ask the polarizing star, Jake Paul came out a winner to some extent from his February defeat to Tommy Fury.

"I think the loss actually made me more relatable, because for some reason people think of celebrities as not humans," Paul said to ESPN's Marc Raimondi. "If anything, it's grown my fanbase and given me the opportunity to come back, and people see now how serious I am about it, doubling down now after a loss."

The 26-year-old added that no longer having a perfect record removed a bit of a burden.

"For the longest time, I was carrying the influencer boxing wave and my worst fear was losing, because I didn't know what would happen on the other side of that," he said.

The nature of his loss may not have put much of a dent in Paul's drawing power, either.

There's unquestionably a portion of fans who tune into his fights in hope he suffers an embarrassing knockout, the kind he instead delivered to Nate Robinson, Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley. Fury was unable to achieve that.

As a result, the followers fueled by schadenfreude might be willing to plunk down the $59.99 it costs to watch Paul's encounter Saturday with former UFC star Nate Diaz.

Should Paul suffer a second successive defeat, though, he might already be approaching a crossroads in his burgeoning combat sports career.