What, exactly, is the ‘Drake Curse’?

The so-called ‘Drake Curse’ is a series of unfortunate, but hardly supernatural, coincidences that are associated with the Canadian rapper Aubrey Drake Graham, otherwise known by the mononym ‘Drake’. Since he rose to prominence as a recording artist in 2009, Drake has posed for photographs with, and/or endorsed, some of the top athletes in the world and, more often than not, they have subsequently suffered misfortune of one form or another.

Of course, Drake isn’t really ‘cursed’ or ‘jinxed’ but, for anyone remotely superstitious, his uncanny ability to put the mockers on heavily favoured, elite sportsmen and women is definitely cause for concern. In April, 2019 alone, Drake was pictured alongside footballers including Jadon Sancho of Borussia Dortmund, Pierre-Emerick Aubmeyang of Arsenal and Sergio Aguero of Manchester City, who all suffered major reversals of fortune almost as soon as the pictures were uploaded to social media.

The latest high-profile ‘victim’ of the Drake Curse was former unified world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua, who posted a photograph of himself and the Toronto rapper on Instagram shortly before his shock defeat by virtually unknown Mexican Andy Ruiz Jr. at Madison Square Garden on June 1, 2019. In what Joshua billed as the ‘bout to beat the curse’, Ruiz Jr., who weighed in at a seemingly overweight 268 pounds and could be backed at 25/1 beforehand, won by technical knockout in the seventh round, creating the biggest heavyweight boxing upset since James ‘Buster’ Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990.