Jake Paul might have bitten off more than he could chew. Not in the YouTuber’s nascent boxing career, that is, but in his attempts to form fighters’ union.
Paul has been working with former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva to unionize fighters to improve their bargaining position for health insurance and better pay. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out quite as well as Jake Paul hoped.
Jake Paul Admits That His Fighter Union is “Damn Near Impossible”
“We’ve been working nonstop on it behind the scenes. It’s just … damn near impossible to figure this one out. It’s very difficult. Very, very difficult.
We’re not shying away because of that, but it takes a lot of people, a lot of brains, a lot of money that we are funding, and a lot of time, a lot of thought. So, really, we’ve been chugging along in this whole entire time behind the scenes and making slow progress more and more every single day.”
Paul is now coming to terms with the fact that, like most previous attempts at forming a fighters’ union, this might take longer than anticipated, if it comes to fruition at all. Many have tried, including the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters’ Association, who are currently engaged in an anti-trust lawsuit with the UFC over the promotion’s business practises.
Jake Paul is realising that this won’t happen overnight. “Definitely this is a big three, four-year thing.
It doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve been working and fingers crossed. I think it’s gonna be great for the combat sports world in general and sort of change the history of fighters being treated terribly and not having health insurance, being underpaid, the list goes on and on and on.
Hopefully, that’s something we can fix in the next couple of years.” Meanwhile, Paul is busy training for his next foray into the sweet science. Paul is set to box UFC veteran Nate Diaz this August.
The YouTuber claims he is interested to see how good Nate Diaz is at translating his MMA striking acumen to the boxing ring, which has not traditionally gone well for Jake Paul’s opponents.
“I guess he’s probably just as tough as Tyron [Woodley], and has that durability and that stamina, and is maybe a little bit more unorthodox than Anderson, but he’s about that same level of striking.
I would say he’s right up there with Anderson and Tyron and could probably potentially be a better boxer than both of them just because of his experience working with Andre Ward.
It’ll be interesting to see how good he is.
