Sydney Thomas, the ring girl who went viral during the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight on Friday, November 15, argued imitation isn’t always the most sincere form of flattery.
Thomas, 21, took to social media to address multiple profiles on adult content site OnlyFans that have begun using her likeness.
“A ton of Only Fans pages have been made impersonating me,” she wrote via her Instagram Story on Wednesday, November 20. “I do not have, nor do I plan to, have an account on OF.”
Since going viral for her gig at the highly anticipated boxing match, which streamed live on Netflix, Thomas has seen her online engagement explode. In an exclusive interview with Us Weekly on Tuesday, November 19, Thomas said she earned more than 350k new followers on both Instagram and TikTok overnight.
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“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 recalled of the morning after the fight. “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.’”
She added, “It is very overwhelming. But at the same time, I’m also very blessed and very grateful. You know, what a problem to have.”
Thomas — currently a senior at the University of Alabama — boasted that her Instagram DMs have “been flooded,” including messages from some “big names.”
The ring girl, who was hired for the Netflix event by Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions, didn’t want to divulge any of the names filling up her inbox for “privacy reasons.”
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While Thomas was prepared for the spotlight entering fight weekend, she admitted she wasn’t prepared for it to be quite this bright.
“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,” she said to Us. “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.”
Looking ahead, Thomas said she’s focused on getting her degree and then “seeing where things take me from there.”
“I think what’s next for me is to continue building up my social media and continue working with Most Valuable Promotions and being a ring girl,” she added. “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.”
