Nate Robinson getting knocked out by YouTuber Jake Paul on Saturday night on the undercard of a Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr. exhibition fight became the story of the sports world over the weekend. That is somehow a real sentence and is kind of a perfect encapsulation of the strangeness of this year.
Robinson got knocked out cold by Paul in the second round of their fight, and while he ended up being OK, the way he dropped face first to the canvas was something you knew would lead to jokes and memes on the internet. Some of his fellow NBA colleagues even got in on the jokes, as they couldn’t help themselves, but also made sure to offer Nate some support and point out his resiliency, which Robinson offered appreciation for in his post-fight social media post.
Robinson’s rather disastrous boxing debut will always be something folks remember, but eventually the jokes and memes will go away. For now, though, people will continue to poke fun at the knockout and the jokes have made their way to TikTok where the Nate Robinson Challenge has arrived, with people laying face down on whatever surface they can in a number of different ways.
nate really ended up as a tiktok meme for $600 smh smh pic.twitter.com/OK0I0R5AcH
— mike taddow (@taddmike) December 1, 2020
@jswinn this the one
#naterobinsonchallenge #naterobinson #fyp #foryou #viral
@etboii22
@tiktokrabbit_ #greenscreen #naterobinsonchallenge
@yeaa.mike The Nate Robinson challenge
@clifford Show me your best “Nate Robinson” and duet this!!
#naterobinsonchallenge #naterobinson #jakepaul #newchallenge #boxing @jakepaul
My personal favorite is the guy who goes full commitment collapsing onto the box in the first video. It’s all in good fun, and Robinson’s friends in the league have said he’s taking all of the jokes in stride, which is good to hear. The irony of all of this is you just know someone’s going to actually hurt themselves by overcommitting and faceplanting on the ground for this TikTok challenge, and, in turn, play themselves trying to make fun of Nate.