After Tommy Fury, an undefeated boxer who is the brother of the heavyweight Tyson Fury, pulled out of their scheduled fight a few weeks ago because of a medical issue, Paul scheduled a rematch with Woodley and promised a more exciting match than the first one.
After Paul knocked him out in an otherwise dull fight early Sunday that drew boos from the crowd, Woodley commended him.
“At some point, you’re going to have to start putting a little respect on Jake’s name,” Woodley told reporters afterward.
After fielding criticism that he was too passive in their first meeting, Woodley was slightly more aggressive to start their second match. He threw more than 30 punches in the first round, compared with fewer than 10 in August. In the third round, he accidentally elbowed Paul in the forehead, opening a deep gash above Paul’s right eye that bled for most of the fight.
With less than a minute left in the sixth round, Woodley appeared to lower his left hand before Paul nailed him on the side of his head.
Afterward, Woodley said he did not know why he dropped his hand.
“Sometimes I just felt like I was too tense,” he said afterward, “and I may have dropped them just to breathe and loosen up.”
Paul, who has not faced a boxer in his short career, called out Fury repeatedly in the time leading up to this weekend’s fight and again afterward, telling reporters that Fury was “lucky he wasn’t in there tonight.”