Jake Paul is known by his ring-name the Problem Child, a moniker which has followed him throughout his career from social media stardom to boxing glory.
The younger brother of fellow YouTube superstar Logan, Jake has always had ambitions of becoming a huge star within his industry. He frequently tells the story of modest beginnings in Ohio before moving to California to pursue a showbiz career and while some parts are exaggerated, it's certainly true that the Pauls were not in a perfect situation growing up,
At an early age, the brothers' parents Pam Stepnick and Greg Paul were divorced, leading the pair to have to share time growing up between their mother and father's house. Logan managed to keep himself busy and power through by becoming a top student and star athlete with a college scholarship, while Jake became more rebellious and found himself in trouble frequently at school.
Eventually, they found social media and after a few years failing to make a dent on YouTube, they hit it big in their teens on social media platform Vine. They quickly began to make big money through advertising, and moved to California where they pursued careers in entertainment.
"We don't use the word 'can't' in our household," Stepnick explains to Mirror Fighting on the eve of her son's biggest fight yet against Tommy Fury. She's surrounded by a massive press huddle who trecked all the way to Saudi Arabia to try and grab a moment of time from her youngest son prior to his latest pay-per-view boxing headliner. "Now here we are."
"There's good and bad," she admits of her sons' fame. "You have to take the good with the bad, it's not all about everything being perfect all the time because it certainly isn't. I'm definitely proud and I think some of my proudest moments are when there is adversity and Jake or Logan come back from it. They'll make something of it and that happens multiple times."
The key relationship for Jake is with his older brother Logan. A bitter feud at the height of their YouTube careers was a key player in catapulting them to even bigger fame, with their diss tracks towards one another garnering billions of views and attracting tens of millions of subscribers to their channels.
But they managed to fix it, and have ever since been almost inseparable. And their mum admits that the one time she would put her foot down and tell them not to pursue their passions would be if they ever entertained the notion of fighting each other in the ring.
"Yes, it's been talked about and people ask me about it, no I do not want it to happen," she says with a notable shift in her friendly tone. "It would promote big numbers, yeah, but it's not like either of them need the money or whatever and who knows what would happen?
"It was horrible when they were just singing about each other! I did not like that, my happiest moments are when they're together and being successful with each other and supporting one another in their endeavours."
Even Logan's recent business relationship with his brother's biggest rival KSI hasn't proven a sticking point, and he beams with pride as he watches on in Riyadh ahead of his sibling's seventh professional fight. "I don't know what's happening any more," he says after leaving the palatial surroundings of his brother's weigh-in.
"Life has become a little bit hard to comprehend. All of this seems incredibly surreal and the fact that Jake and I came from Cleveland, Ohio and navigated the globe to end up in the kingdom where we're going to knock out a family and end a legacy, it's crazy."
Paul's parents have both embraced becoming public personalities, and have their own crafted images with the brothers' fans. Stepnick presents as the sweet All-American mother who dotes over her boys, while Greg Paul shows the tougher exterior, often finding himself caught up in their hijinx.
In reality, they both appear to be relatively understated as they watch on with pride in their sons' successes. After becoming overly involved in their initial boxing outings against KSI and Deji in 2018, dad Greg has taken a backseat that only becomes visible when contrasted with the abrasive John Fury, who insists on stealing his son Tommy's limelight at any given moment.
"It's not about me and John," he says. "It's about Jake and Tommy. I've always gotten along with all the other fighters that Jake's been in there with and their parents. I've got no beef with John - as a matter of fact, John and I are in the same arena; he's got a kid who's getting punched in the face and so do I, we're both going for the same thing."
At one point, the Paul parents were famous YouTubers just like their sons. Greg still posts to a modest audience, while Stepnick has completely left her 712,000-subscriber channel dormant in favour of a quieter life with her new husband outside of her son's fight weeks.
"There's just different timing," Greg notes. "Sometime you've got to show up, sometimes it's better to sit back and Jake's grown up, he's a little more mature and handling things differently so I don't have to show up as much."
During their time as social media stars, the Paul brothers were not shy about making their parents big players in their daily vlogs, as such creating at-times difficult reputations for the pair. Their father bore the brunt more so than their mum, who fronted up more as a charming, inoffensive Mid-West mother to her ex-husband's more abrasive attitude.
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And it all came to a head when after a number of small-time controversies, Greg jumped on stage during Logan's pre-fight press conference with KSI in London to defend himself after being branded "disgusting" by the Brit. The pair have now made up, and he insists that their back-and-forth was little more than 'the fight game', which draws trash talk out of all involved.
Nowadays, the parents trail along with their sons as they prepare for massive fights or WWE events, travelling around the world to support their children. "You haven't seen me at a wrestling match," Stepnick jokes, having attended all of her son's early athletic endeavours.
"I was screaming, yelling, rooting for my kid. If anyone said anything derogatory or was seriously trying to hurt them a couple times, I was mama bear... I kind of got thrown in and here we are."
And she hasn't found it easier to sit at ringside and watch her sons take punishment, whether in the scripted world of WWE or the boxing ring. For the eleventh time since their white collar beginnings, she will take her seat tonight in a special section and cheer on her sone to what she hopes is another victory.
"My mouth goes completely dry," she admits. "I'm screaming and yelling and jumping up and down and telling them what to do! I get the chills and I am not all the way used to it. I still have all kinds of nerves, I'm not all about the talking and the back-and-forth, I say 'put your money where your mouth is and let's just get in the ring and prove it'... I just have to go with it, but getting used to it? No."
It's a stark contrast to her ex-husband, who revels in his sons fighting, He took them to amateur MMA shows in their childhood and idolised the likes of Mike Tyson and Anderson Silva, and loves to see Jake and Logan step into the ring for major bouts of their own.
"It's great, we grew up watching the fight game," he recalls, before declaring that he feels it's "much better" for his son's to be fighters than YouTubers. "Anderson Silva was Jake's idol, Tyson was somebody we looked up to and now these guys are friends with him and Jake's fighting them? It's surreal, unbelievable.
"I like the fact that my son's out there being a savage and not a lot of people are willing to get into a ring and just punch each other for a living. I think it's awesome... Ultimately, what I'm most proud about with both of my boys is that they keep on working.
"They work their a** off, they outwork everybody and they're constantly overcoming adversity. To see them in a ring, MMA? Yeah I'd love it but ultimately the work ethic, the drive and the fortitude is what I'm most proud of because if Jake gets punched in the face and loses his marbles and can't fight any more, he can still work hard and make a living."
