Turki Alalshikh Thanks Anthony Joshua for Removing Jake Paul
Turki Alalshikh used the Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua launch to thank Joshua for taking Jake Paul out of a Netflix ring.
The comment came Wednesday in London as the two former heavyweight champions sat together for the first time ahead of their December 11 meeting at Principality Stadium in Cardiff. Alalshikh, whose The Ring group is backing the card with Dana White, framed Joshua’s last Netflix night as more than a payday.
“Thanks, big thanks to the champion next to you, AJ,” Alalshikh said.
He then made the point he wanted on the record.
“AJ, help boxing and save boxing with Netflix kicking out YouTuber from the boxing,” he said. “Thanks God, in the last fight.”
Joshua stopped Jack Paul in the sixth round on December 19, 2025, at Kaseya Center in Miami. The eight-round heavyweight bout streamed live on Netflix and ended with Paul down and later reporting a broken jaw.
Alalshikh treated that result as a line between crossover boxing and the fight he is now selling.
“And this is important for me,” he said. “Please, please, we want, this is the biggest fight, everyone wait for it.”
Joshua had already described the Paul assignment in similar language months earlier. He said a task had been laid on him to remove Paul from boxing, and that the job was done whether it took one round or six. Alalshikh publicly enjoyed that line at the time. On Wednesday he put it next to Fury.
The contrast is the story he wants fans to hear. Paul was a YouTuber who built a boxing business on streaming events. Joshua is a two-time former world champion who needed a high-visibility win after losing to Daniel Dubois in 2024. Netflix carried both nights. Alalshikh is now using the same platform for Fury-Joshua and calling the Paul knockout a cleanup job.
That does not make Paul disappear from the sport by itself. It does explain why Alalshikh brought the name into a press conference built around two British heavyweights and a vacant WBA Super title. He wanted the room to see Cardiff as the real fight after a year of influencer traffic on the same service.
Joshua’s record now sits at 30-4. He followed the Paul stoppage with a knockout of Kristian Prenga in July. Fury is 36-2-1 and last boxed Arslanbek Makhmudov in April. Neither man holds a major belt heading into December. The winner in Cardiff becomes a three-time world champion if the WBA Super strap stays on the line.
Eddie Hearn sat beside Joshua while Alalshikh spoke. Hearn and Alalshikh had spent the previous week in a public fight over Dana White’s role and where the bout should land. The date still held. The venue stayed in Britain. The thank-you to Joshua was Alalshikh’s way of resetting the room around the fighter instead of the promoter dispute.
Fury-Joshua is the fight British boxing has talked about for a decade. Alalshikh’s message was that Netflix should carry that fight, not another YouTuber main event, and that Joshua already did the work that made the shift possible.
Tickets for Cardiff go on sale October 9. The next public chapter is fight week in December, when the same stream that showed Joshua walk through Paul will show him walk toward Fury.
