Jake Paul is feeling the consequences of a boxing career. He says his speech has become slurred and he is suffering from memory loss and mood swings.
“I notice it in conversations with like, with my girlfriend or friends, like, not remembering something that I should be able to remember that happened a couple days ago,” the 24-year-old YouTube personality turned professional boxer said on Thursday’s “In Depth With Graham Bensinger.”
“Sometimes in my speech, where like every hundredth or two hundredth word, I’ll mess up or, like, slur. Which I didn’t do that before.”
Paul, who is set to return to the ring with former UFC Welterweight Champion Tyron Woodley on Dec. 18, told Bensinger that because he played football when he was a kid, he had his head scanned before he launched his boxing career in 2018. And what the doctor saw was bad enough to suggest Paul drop any dreams he might have had of being a professional athlete.
“The doctor told me there’s a lack of blood flow from the concussions I had when I would play football, into certain areas of my brain, one of them being the frontal lobe which is partially memory,” Paul said. “After my first year of boxing, I went back and it was worse.”
Such symptoms have also been linked in recent years to CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative brain disease associated with contact sports including boxing, football and ice hockey.
But Paul has continued to box some of the best fighters in the world, even though his symptoms are increasing in rapid pace.
“I was always thrown in there with people who were way, way better than me until I started to slowly get to their level.”
Paul and Woodley’s bout on Aug. 29 ended with Paul winning in a split decision.
You can watch his interview in the video at the top.