I have never watched a Jake Paul fight. In fact, I might never have watched a Jake Paul YouTube video. At 26, I am 8 - 12 years too old to enjoy what I presume his schtick is. In truth, I am indifferent to Jake Paul. I respect that he has the guts to step into that squared circle, and from the highlights that I have seen, he seems to have genuine power and some guts. Credit to him.
But in truth, this isn’t really an article about Jake Paul’s prospects as a fighter or personality. Instead, it’s about Jake Paul the disruptor in the combat sports space. The term ‘disruptor’ has been stolen by douchebags who work in real estate and have a crypto portfolio (I hear that’s going well), but Jake Paul in the combat sports world has truly been the essence of disruption. He has called out what should be called out and has set precedents that bigger promoters and more entrenched boxing people should have been doing for years.
Jake Paul has exposed and sought to remedy genuine failures in boxing and MMA, and he should be applauded for it.
I am going to make my argument in three parts. I’ll start with his advocacy for better conditions in MMA and specifically the UFC. After that I’ll move onto Paul’s own initiatives. Firstly, I will talk the way his promotional vehicle handled the Hasim Rahman debacle, and then how Paul is one of relatively few big names in boxing to put real resources into women’s boxing.
We’re going to start where Jake Paul started: conditions for MMA fighters. Paul started by going at the king. He knew that going at a monolith like the UFC would get him serious traction on social media, and he knew that Dana White is so thin-skinned that he would have to respond. So Paul started talking, and talking, and then talking some more about UFC fighter pay. He has pointed out repeatedly that even as the UFC has grown bigger and more profitable, the fighters’ salaries have remained basically flat. He has come armed with the facts and is clearly well-prepared. For instance has noted that the UFC bragging about having increased fighter pay 600% since 2005 is meagre when you consider that in that time UFC revenue is up 1700% percent and profits alone are up 6,200%. He has also pointed out time and again that, in a time where American professional sports are collectively bargained, every other major US sport is basically at a 50/50 revenue split. UFC fighters earn anywhere between 12% and 17% of an event’s revenue and are practically forbidden from unionising. This, as Paul has regularly noted, is absurd.
Not only has he spoken loudly fighter pay, but also fighter conditions. He made a bet with Anderson Silva that if Paul won, Silva would have to step in and help Paul to make a union for fighters in the UFC that the UFC could not crush like they have every other attempt at collective bargaining. He has said again and again that the UFC should provide long-term healthcare for fighters after they retire like the NFL or AFL does.
All Paul is really asking for is that the UFC carry itself like a major professional sport, which it now is. There’s a real argument that in North America, it is the fifth major sport.
Beyond Paul calling out the monolithic UFC, he has also done impressive work in boxing through his own promotional vehicle “Most Valuable Promotions’, which was co-founded by the former UFC CFO and Executive Vice President Nakisa Bidarian. Most impressive is the way that a small promoter handled its Paul v Rahman Jr main event falling through at the eleventh hour in late July of this year.
I, again, am indifferent to Rahman’s lack of professionalism in failing to make weight. What I want to talk about, instead, is how the promotion looked after the undercard fighters. In a statement put out on 30 July, MVP said that they had no choice but to cancel the event because of Rahman’s shenanigans. A week after that, on August 6, they put out a second statement saying that they would still pay each of the smaller ticket undercard fighters half of their purse and would work to reschedule the bigger stars’ bouts quickly.
If we compare that to how a massive promoter like Matchroom handled itself in the wake of its main event falling through due to Connor Benn obviously cheating, it is chalk and cheese.
What MVP did here should be the norm in boxing. It is not now, and may never be, but if Paul keeps making waves like he has then maybe the pressure on these bigger promoters will grow.
The final point that I want to make in praise of Jake Paul is his work in building female boxing. We’ll start with his inspired decision to sign Amanda Serrano as the first fighter to fight under the Most Valuable Promotions banner. Before signing with MVP, she genuinely had a claim to being one of the greatest female fighters ever but was a relative unknown.
After signing with MVP, she became a legitimate star in the boxing world. Paul was able to help put together biggest and greatest women’s fight in history when he paired with Matchroom to make Katie Taylor v Serrano at Madison Square Garden. His platform has helped to make Serrano a genuine star, and his obsession with fighter conditions meant that each of Serrano and Taylor made upwards of $1 million for the first time in the history of women’s boxing.
I have no idea why Paul does all of these things that he does. Has he attacked the UFC and Dana White as hard as he has because he truly cares about MMA fighters? Or does he just know that Dana White is a thin-skinned little megalomaniac who has to respond publicly and their back and forth will do massive social media numbers?
Does he care about the fighters on his undercard? Or did he just want to pay everyone so the release could have a sentence that says each of the undercard fighters “will be receiving a payment directly from Jake Paul of 50% of their contracted purse amount”?
Does he care about women’s boxing? Or does he just want to win on social media for a day, especially given his complicated history with women?
I ask these questions so I can answer with another one. To quote Bert Cooper from Mad Men, “who cares?” The upshot is the same. A groundswell of support is being created for MMA fighters. Undercard fighters made some money that they usually wouldn’t have made. Amanda Serrano is a superstar in women’s boxing and is going to rematch Katie Taylor for even more money this time.
Who cares what his motivations are. These are good things.
Therefore, I don’t begrudge Jake Paul his freakshow events. Boxing is the wild west and freakshows just come with the territory. George Foreman fought 5 men in one night for one freak show. Muhammad Ali fought wrestler Antonio Inoki while he was the undisputed heavyweight champion. Inoki kicked Ali 107 times during the bout and spent most of it on his back. Floyd Mayweather boxed Conor McGregor, Logan Paul, and now apparently every small fighter in Japan.
Jake Paul’s boxing career is an object of disinterest for me. I don’t care that he just beat 47-year-old Anderson Silva or that he knocked out Ben Askren 6 months after Askren got his hip replaced. I’m glad everyone got paid and can move on. What is impressive, though, are the waves that he is making in combat sports and I hope that those bring about real change in a world that sometimes just needs an agent of chaos.
