Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Jake Paul, Anderson Silva, UFC, Boxing, YouTube
Tom Fenton
Jake Paul may have defeated UFC legend Anderson Silva via points on Saturday night (29 October), but the 25-year-old isn't best pleased with the number of viewers who tuned in to the boxing event.
According to Paul, rumours of Silva, 50, being knocked out in sparring negatively impacted Pay-Per-View numbers, causing fewer people to buy the fight on Showtime than the former vlogger expected.
The YouTuber-turned-pro-boxer estimates that buys in the US will range between 200-300k, well short of his pre-fight target of 700k.
Speaking on brother Logan Paul's Impaulsive podcast, he said: "The pre-buys were going crazy.
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"On Wednesday, when the news came out about Anderson saying he got knocked out [in sparring] or whatever, the fight was in jeopardy and all this press came out, the pre-buys tanked.
"The general public sees that and thinks it's not happening. Tommy [Fury] pulled out, Hasim [Rahman] pulled out. ' Jake Paul can't get an event together, this is done'.
"It killed ticket sales, we were still selling tickets but that day everything went to zero. It was so annoying. I think it will probably go around 200,000 - 300,000 which is kind of upsetting."
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As for the fight itself, it arguably saw Paul produce his best performance to date against a genuine combat sport icon. Despite Silva having several boxing wins to his name, alongside his status as a UFC GOAT contender, Paul controlled the fight throughout - winning by unanimous decision on the scorecards.
A further reason why the PPV numbers tanked the way they did, according to the American, was due to the time of year it took place - with several other events taking the limelight away from the bout.
Paul added: "Halloween, World Series and Sunday football. This is the worst time of the year to fight but guess what, I had to fight. All of my fights from now on will be in the summer, there's no sports.
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"There's like this perfect gap in July and early August when there is no sports. All my other fights were during Covid when no one had anything to do and anything to watch. NBA, NFL, nothing was on.
"I had to fight this year, I just had to get it f****ng done. I was tired of waiting around."
In other Jake Paul news, it looks like his next bout could be against the aforementioned Tommy Fury, following the cancellation of their previous contest.
With much of the Fury clan now banned from entering the US, Paul recently stated that he'd be willing to fight the former Love Island star in the UK - if the opportunity presented itself.
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Paul told Ariel Helwani that it would be an 'easy fight' for him, adding: "Yeah, there's definitely interest, I think if his team is taking the financial risk and putting the event on then I'm cool.
"I just don't want to take that risk because I think he's [Fury] going to back out again, most likely."