Jake Paul is feeling pessimistic about the numbers for his most recent fight.
Though Paul arguably picked up the biggest win of his boxing career by defeating MMA legend and former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva this past Saturday, he doesn’t expect the pay-per-view numbers to reflect the significance of the moment for a variety of reasons.
Speaking to his brother Logan on the Impaulsive podcast, Paul couldn’t say for sure what the PPV buys will be for the Showtime event, but it’s unlikely that it will be considered a blockbuster.
“I think it will probably go around 2-300,000, which is kind of upsetting,” Paul said.
According to Paul, everything was trending upward for the Silva fight, the YouTuber’s first boxing match since December. Paul was coming off an incredible knockout win of Tyron Woodley in a rematch, but bouts with rival Tommy Fury and former sparring partner Hasim Rahman Jr. fell through earlier this year leading to an eventual booking against Silva.
Unfortunately, Silva caused his own share of headaches when word got out that he was “knocked out” in a sparring session ahead of the fight, though the 47-year-old later said that he “misspoke” and was never knocked out in sparring.
But Paul thinks the damage was done once the initial comments went public.
“On the pay-per-view buys thing, the pre-buys were going crazy,” Paul said. “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.”
“The general public sees that and, ‘Oh, it’s not happening,’” he continued. “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.”
When Logan remarked that there seemed to be a lack of post-fight buzz concerning his brother’s big win, Paul agreed wholeheartedly. He mentioned that there were numerous other factors to take into consideration and that from now on he’s going to aim to fight in the summer, where the could potentially be less sports competition.
“It’s weird,” Paul said. “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.”
Paul improved to 6-0 with the win and has a number of options ahead of him, whether it be another attempt at booking Fury or a much-discussed meeting with former UFC star and current free agent Nate Diaz. The growing lineup of potential opponents is one reason Paul was happy to get back in the ring, even if he knew they might not be able to maximize viewership.
“I had to fight this year,” Paul said. “I just had to get it f****** done. I’m sick and tired of waiting around.”
Check out the highlights from Paul’s appearance on Impaulsive here: