Move over, Jake Paul and Mike Tyson — ring girl Sydney Thomas was the breakout star from their highly-anticipated Netflix fight.
Thomas, 20, was front and center at the Friday, November 15 boxing match, which certainly got the attention of the hordes of viewers watching at home. In an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Thomas — currently a student at the University of Alabama — said she gained more than 350k followers on both Instagram and TikTok overnight.
“My DMs are just insanely flooded right now,” Thomas said. “There’s definitely been some pretty big names and brands that have reached out.”
While Thomas noted she didn’t want to disclose any of the names for “privacy reasons,” she joked that “the DMs and all that are just going crazy right now.”
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Thomas recalled waking up the morning after the fight and immediately realizing that her life had majorly changed.
“I woke up and saw how my followers had gone up, and then saw all the news articles that had been written about me,” Thomas said. “I refreshed my feed and it was just pictures of me and memes and everything. I think that was the moment for me where I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, like I really am going viral.’”
Thomas explained she’s doing the best she can to keep up with everything — “I genuinely think my screen time the past two days is 48 hours,” she said — but acknowledged the excitement of her newfound fame.
“It is very overwhelming,” she said. “But at the same time, I’m also very blessed and very grateful. You know, what a problem to have.”
Thomas added, “I knew the exposure was going to be awesome, just the fact that it was being streamed on Netflix and it was such an iconic fight. But I had no idea that all the focus was going to shift from the results to the ring girl being the main star of the event. That was not even a thought in my head going into it.”
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A senior at Alabama who takes her classes online, Thomas said she has “a flexible schedule” in order to strike while the iron is hot.
“I think what’s next for me is to continue building up my social media and continue working with [Paul’s] Most Valuable Promotions and being a ring girl,” she expressed. “I think dialing into the ring girl and modeling aspect of my life and sharing that with my audience that I’ve now built up.”
Thomas added, “And then obviously continuing with school, graduating, getting my degree and then seeing where things take me from there.”
To see more of Thomas, the Paul-Tyson fight is available to stream on demand on Netflix.
