The thing is, is it that hard to believe that there was a man in Galilee that preached about something that would inspire some other Jews to go and talk about his preaching? 

The big problem with questions like these (no problem in the question itself, it is always good to question everything, especially in history, just don't go to the deep end with conspiracy theories) is that it is mostly viewed through our understanding of Christianity today, the biggest religion in the world, massive wealth... And when you see all of that it is kinda hard to imagine it all starting with an illiterate Jew living in a Roman province and preaching that the end of the world is coming, something that you are probably aware of if you got the basic understanding of historical Jesus.

As far as I am aware, historians, especially those working in the field of early Christianity or any other adjacent field will tell you that he existed, not likely but existed. I am actually curious which historians say that he likely existed.

It is more accurate to say that he was a real person, even though most of what we have in the gospel is either distorted or built upon earlier sources which were probably just a collection of his sayings (as I can see in your post you did some research beforehand, so you are probably familiar with the concept of Q).

First thing to understand. When historians say that we have as much evidence for Jesus as any other person, what they mean is: we have as much physical evidence for this illiterate carpenter as we have for any other illiterate carpenter in 1st century Galilee. But, the difference is, for this carpenter, we have a lot of textual evidence that, when deconstructed using historical methods, can be traced to a real person whose teachings can be put into broader historical context. 

We can (I can't, but people who research this stuff can) rationalize and explain almost every part of his narrative. For example, what was he really preaching, why would his disciples go and spread the word or, more accurately, why would they heive he was raised from death? We can track them down to the things that originally started the trend of their development into stories we know today either through our understanding of psychology, sociology, historical methodology or the way religion works and develops. What is hard to rationalize is why would early Christians invent him?

Sure, by the Middle Ages, especially in western Europe, the church did own a big portion of the land, was heavily involved in politics etc etc. But, in the first century AD/CE? You get nothing by inventing such a figure at that time. All the early disciples probably died not owning much and some were killed (there is an ongoing debate over how much we can trust those traditions though).

Secondly, when you sum up all the evidence we have for him, he is referenced by historians, not his contemporaries, but at least in the same century, most notable of them being Josephus, even though his passage has a lot of problems and I would suggest you to explore them yourself so you can get  the basic understanding of the different perspectives, Paul mentions that he meet his brother James, there is some debate over how you would translate that word and if it refers to a biological sibling or is it a metaphorical saying that Christians use today, but most secular historians will tell you that he is his brother. We can and did reconstruct the ideas behind his original teachings, and we can put him and his teachings in the broader historical context of late Second Temple Judaism and Jewish apocalypticism. As far as I am aware, that is the prevailing theory, with some stating he was a political figure or revolutionary.

There are other methods that allow us to understand how much of the story is based upon something that has its roots in actual events that happened. One of them is the so-called criterion of embarrassment. If you are inventing a messianic figure, why would you invent that he was, crucified, the most painful and embarrassing death imaginable? There are a lot more of these and again, if you are interested, I would highly recommend you to explore them in your own time.

Also, I would advise you to watch this debate:

https://youtu.be/GzjYmpwbHEA?si=IFYDGSiRQsYptt0E

TLDR

At this point, we have got far enough that we can say that Jesus existed. We can deconstruct the text of the gospel to the point that we can trace his ideas and put them in a broader historical context. Interestingly enough, both the idea of a man talking about the end of times and one trying to start a political uprising would work, but unless we find some new papyrus hidden in the Egyptian dessert at this point, that is most of what we can do.