Mike Tyson and Jake Paul’s eight-round heavyweight bout, live-streamed by Netflix last November, decidedly underdelivered. Viewers saw the once-feared 58-year-old former champion’s decline in pugilistic prowess on full display en route to his loss by unanimous decision to the 27-year-old YouTuber-turned-boxer. But the event still delivered a different kind of thrilling knockout in the form of Sydney Thomas.
A 21-year-old student studying management and entrepreneurship at the University of Alabama, Thomas was hired as a ring girl by Paul’s entertainment brand, Most Valuable Promotions. While the blonde bombshell had established herself as a minor influencer, she hadn’t ever worked an event of this magnitude, let alone one where she’d be interacting with such big-name celebrities.
“I talked to Paul for a second before going onstage at the press conference; he introduced himself and told us we were killing it out there!” she recalls. “I didn’t get the chance to talk to Tyson. Leading up to the fight, you could tell he was locked in and didn’t want to talk to anyone outside of his team.” As for her thoughts on the fight itself, “The result was slightly underwhelming. I was initially rooting for Paul, but as the fight continued on and it was obvious Tyson wasn’t doing well, I started to feel bad and then wanted Tyson to win.”
Thomas recently revealed on social media that she’d attempted to manifest the opportunity by writing “I will be a ring girl for the Paul vs. Tyson fight in November” on a note card weeks before she’d even secured a contract. But there was no way to predict the breakout stardom following exposure to some 108 million global viewers. Her social media follower counts instantly surged by hundreds of thousands, and her story became the subject of online articles from Fox News, People, the New York Post and the Daily Mail, among other major media outlets.
“One thing that’s surprised me is how quickly everything has happened,” she tells Maxim. “I didn’t expect the response to be so overwhelming. There’s such a variety of people reaching out, whether it’s fans, brands or even people I looked up to.”
Comparing her social media popularity before and after the fight, Thomas has seen her Instagram follower count jump from 220,000 to more than 850,000 and her TikTok audience swell from 630,000 to over 1 million. She’s extended an existing ambassadorship with influencer-utilizing brand Fashion Nova, signed with powerhouse talent firm Creative Artists Agency and appeared on red carpets rolled out by Sports Illustrated and Wynn Las Vegas for Formula One’s 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix. While she’s still weighing other offers, Thomas wasted no time partnering with Pink Ribbon Good, a nonprofit that provides free services to breast and gynecological cancer patients.
“My mom passed away a year ago of breast cancer, which has significantly impacted my life. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her and wish she was still here,” she says of the motivation behind the partnership. “With my platform, I hope I can inspire others who are going through something similar to overcome these battles and realize there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
Aside from that admirable mission, her other plans for the immediate future include more ring card girl gigs with Most Valuable Promotions and an early graduation in August 2025. With longer-term dreams of covering a major magazine, she cites one former Maxim Hot 100 leader as a new inspiration. “As I’ve gotten more into modeling and social media, I’ve looked up to Kate Upton. She’s a girl boss, and I aspire to be like her!” With killer looks and a solid work ethic, we’d say Thomas is well on her way.
