Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza has weighed in ahead of Jake Paul vs Anderson Silva this weekend. Following Paul’s Tweeted accusation that “Dana White is doing everything he can to hurt the Anderson Silva PPV promotion”, Espinoza elaborated on his ongoing rivalry with the UFC president in an interview with MMAFighting.
“UFC hasn’t been cooperative in giving access to fight footage — usually that’s a courtesy that’s given without that much controversy.
Espinoza: Dana White Wants to Sabotage Paul vs Silva PPV
Here we didn’t get that. It didn’t affect our promotion, it would have been nice to be able use some of his old fight footage. I’m sure Anderson would have appreciated being able to get access to his old fights.
It wasn’t a big thing. I think it was a series of little things and a series of comments over weeks and months that made it very clear that they’re hoping that this does not succeed.”
Jake Paul, for his part, has gone to great lengths to get under Dana White’s skin. This includes Paul’s ongoing campaign to draw attention to the controversial issue of UFC fighter pay.
“I think [the UFC is] uncomfortable whenever someone brings up the issue of fighter pay. They’re very defensive. There are issues there to look at. The structure and the treatment, a lot of what Jake says has a lot of merit.
But I also think that there’s a threat in what Jake is doing in the entrepreneurial sense. Yes, he’s aligned with Showtime now, he’s been aligned with other platforms before but he is literally taking his business, his life’s dream and he’s partnered with us of course we’re helping monetize that but at a certain point, he is going out and finding his own opponents.
He is doing a lot of the marketing himself. He is proving at a certain point with enough of a fan base, you can go on your own. You can be entrepreneurial. You don’t have to be with a huge promotion throughout your career and I think that is a threat to the established order of combat sports.”
Despite the alleged attempts on White’s part to sabotage the event, Espinoza claims that Paul vs Silva is on track to be one of their biggest fights yet.
“From every metric that we’re seeing, and we’ve got a few, this is on track to be Jake’s largest fight. Now I say that with the qualification obviously that it’s unlikely to be as big as [Mike] Tyson vs. [Roy] Jones Jr., which is where Jake’s fight [against Nate Robinson] was initially under but Jake’s main event fights, this is definitely on track to be the biggest one.
Part of that obviously is Anderson Silva’s marketability and the recognition part of that is the risk.” Do you think Dana White is trying to sabotage Jake Paul? Let us know in the comments.
