YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul wasn’t thrilled with his pay-per-view estimates heading into his boxing match against former UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva this weekend. Speaking on the Impaulsive podcast, Paul discussed his disappointing pay-per-view returns.
“I think it will probably go around 2-300,000, which is kind of upsetting. On the pay-per-view buys thing, the pre-buys were going crazy. Up, up, up. And on Wednesday, when the news came out about Anderson saying he got knocked out or whatever and the fight was in jeopardy and all this press came out, the pre-buys tanked. All the way down.
Jake Paul Reveals “Upsetting” PPV Buys
The general public sees that and, ‘Oh, it’s not happening. Tommy pulled out, Hasim pulled out. ‘Jake f****** Paul can’t get an event together. This is done.’ It killed ticket sales. We were still selling tickets, that day, everything went to zero.”
The issue, Paul claimed, was Anderson Silva mistakenly claiming that he had been “knocked out” in training for the fight. It appears now that this was likely a mistranslation, as Silva used the term again to refer to a knockdown in the fight itself. Regardless, consumer confidence in Jake Paul’s boxing was remarkably low.
Paul, however, knew that he had to fight this year to maintain his momentum. “It’s weird. Halloween, World Series, Sunday football. This is the worst time of the year to fight, but guess what, I had to fight.
All my fights from now on will be in the summer with no sports. There’s, like, this perfect gap in July-slash-early August where there’s no sports. And by the way, all my other fights were during COVID. No one had anything to do and anything to watch. The NFL was cancelled, the NBA, nothing was on.
I had to fight this year. I just had to get it f****** done. I’m sick and tired of waiting around.”
Jake Paul won on the night, bringing his pro boxing record to 6-0. Although he has not yet booked his next opponent, Jake Paul will look to improve on his lackluster financial performance for the next fight. Likely opponents include longtime rival Tommy Fury and recently free agent Nate Diaz. Of the two, Diaz, a former UFC lightweight, seems more in keeping with Paul’s typical choice of opposition. Tommy Fury, however, has been booked to face Paul twice, and may well get third time lucky.
Did you expect Paul vs Silva to do well with pay-per-views? Let us know in the comments.
