Jake Paul is offering Angela Carini a chance to showcase her boxing skills under his Most Valuable Promotions brand.
The YouTube personality turned boxer posted to social media on Thursday about the opportunity for the Italian fighter after she abandoned her Olympic fight with Algerian Imane Khelif on Thursday 46 seconds in after taking a powerful punch.
Carini said afterward that she had “never been hit so hard in my life.”
The episode reignited the debate over gender and fair play in sports, with questions surrounding Khelif’s eligibility to compete in women’s boxing competitions after she was prohibited from fighting at the 2023 World Championships by the International Boxing Association.
Paul’s offer came in the form of a pair of posts on X, one in English and one in Italian.
Paul, who is scheduled to fight Mike Tyson in a special fight airing on Netflix in November, wrote that Carini has an open invite to fight in any MVP promotions event when she feels up to it.
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“To Angela Carini although your dreams couldn’t come true today because of the crazy agendas that are at play in our world at the moment, I would love to offer you to fight on an MVP undercard, to show the world your talents on a fair platform,” Paul wrote.
The Italian, after taking the hard punch less than a minute in, turned and returned to her corner and notified her coach Emanuel Renzini that she had intense pain in her nose.
“I had entered the ring to fight,” Carini said afterward. “I didn’t give up, but a punch hurt too much and so I said enough. I go out with my head held high.”
The IOC defended Khelif’s participation in the Olympics this year and said that she, along with Lin Yu-ting of Taipei, were “victims of a sudden and arbitrary decision” by the International Boxing Association.
preliminary round match against Angela Carini of Team Italy on Day 6 of the
Olympic Games in Paris. Getty Images
Khelif next fights on Saturday in the quarterfinal.
