Sat, Oct 29, 2022 page7

• Jake Paul tops influencer boxing world

  • AP, LOS ANGELES
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  Jake Paul’s crowd does not look like any other fighter’s crowd.

  When the world’s most unlikely pay-per-view boxing star promotes a bout, as Paul did in Hollywood several weeks ago, the usual autograph-hungry fight fans are outnumbered by unfamiliar faces, mostly under 30. They include excitable teenagers trying to interrupt Paul’s news conference, hypebeasts in distressed white jeans, and even a few ecstatic preteens and their mothers.

  Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza knows these are fans of Paul, not boxing — but that appears to be changing.

  

  Jake Paul speaks at a news conference in Los Angeles on Sept. 12.

  Photo: AP

  “What we’ve seen very clearly after just a couple of events is that these Jake Paul fans are sticking around and becoming boxing fans,” Espinoza said. “Our usual boxing audience is a small fraction of the audience that tunes into Jake. We’re getting in front of people who don’t follow boxing, haven’t shown an interest in boxing whatsoever. That’s great for this sport.”

  The new fans are arriving because the blond, bearded YouTube megastar is a big part of their lives, and if he is into boxing now, then they are into boxing.

  However, Espinoza sees this unusual first taste creating an appetite for the sport’s more traditional flavors. In a sport that has been supposedly dying for nearly half a century, Paul is a welcome breath of life.

  “These are fans who we have not reached any other way,” Espinoza said. “If we look at all the different measures of consumer sentiment over the last two or three years, it’s very clear in all of our surveys that boxing is seeing a resurgence, particularly in a very young demographic. I’m not going to attribute that solely to Jake Paul, but it certainly is the phenomenon of influencer boxing. It’s definitely created an awareness and an interest among a very different fan base than boxing before.”

  About five years into the rise of social media influencers becoming boxers, the subculture is still thriving. Former foes KSI and Logan Paul — Jake Paul’s older brother — are preparing to fight on the same card early next year along with several other content creators and MMA figures largely unknown outside their social media bubbles.

  However, Jake Paul is fighting in a different arena: While other YouTubers continue to throw haymakers for content creation and a small profit, he has become a professional prizefighter in every traditional sense of the word except in the level of his opposition, which is also getting higher.

  “Everybody needs to respect this guy,” said Anderson Silva, Jake Paul’s next opponent. “Why? Because he opened the door to think about something new.”

  When Jake Paul faces the former mixed martial arts superstar tonight, promoters say the Desert Diamond Arena outside Phoenix, Arizona, would set its revenue record from a boxing event, with gate money on par with a top UFC pay-per-view (PPV) show.

  While reliable PPV numbers are largely kept secret, the most concrete sign of Jake Paul’s success is that his fights have been lucrative enough to keep staging more of them.

  Forbes estimated that Jake Paul, who gets a percentage of his PPV revenue, made US$40 million from his three fights last year, but he claims that number is low.

  His fight against Silva could be the biggest yet, with Jake Paul predicting more than 300,000 buys and optimistically hoping for 700,000.

  “I grew up idolizing this guy,” Jake Paul said of Silva. “I watched him on my couch, and to be in the ring with him is something I never imagined... This is surreal. I think none of it makes any sense sometimes.”

  It is starting to make sense to Espinoza, who kept tabs on the influencer boxing phenomenon with a raised eyebrow until Jake Paul fought on the undercard of Mike Tyson’s exhibition with Roy Jones Jr in late 2020.

  When he left former NBA player Nate Robinson unconscious on the canvas, Espinoza decided it was time to take Jake Paul seriously.

  “To knock someone out cold, that’s an achievement,” Espinoza said. “That’s just not something you do by accident.”

  He booked a meeting with Jake Paul, who came off as knowledgeable, intelligent and focused on building something concrete atop his ephemeral social media fame. Showtime reached a deal to put the former Disney Channel star on its pay-per-view platform, starting with his two victories over former UFC champion Tyron Woodley late last year.

  “He was not at all what I expected,” Espinoza said. “I’m not sure what I did expect, but I probably expected the guy who is somewhat controversial and made some blunders on social media.”

  Jake Paul only took up boxing in earnest in December 2019, but he has the financial resources and the determination to do it big. He says he has a 30-person team supporting his training, which is largely done at the Cleveland native’s base in Puerto Rico.

  “The key is nonstop work every day, and I’m addicted,” Jake Paul said.

  He has given a boost to boxing, but it’s also clear that boxing helps Jake Paul, who has repeatedly been in significant legal trouble amid his social media fame.

  “He and [brother] Logan had been very clear that they took this up at a point where they were starting to spiral,” Espinoza said. “There’s been plenty written about the negative effects of social media and celebrity, and I think they were both struggling with that. And like so many other people from all walks of life, boxing gave them a direction and a discipline, a structure.”
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