Boxing, MMA, WWE, and… The Paul Brothers
Admit It — Jake and Logan Paul are Great for Boxing
Jake and Logan Paul’s success are exposing the failures of boxing promoters to produce the best fights.
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As a boxing fan, writing that title was painful. But I’ll admit it — I’m thankful the Paul brothers are exposing how the greed and negligence of boxing promotors have consistently robbed fans of the best fights.
At first glance, the cringe-worthy manner in which the Paul brothers have garnered attention by playing the bad guy is in some ways the epitome of trashiness. Their shtick feels like the prostitution and disrespect of moral character for attention, fame, and money... because in many ways it is.
But as they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure — trash talk sells.
Triller’s recent PPV with Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren was more of a NSFW party— full of explicit language, pot-smoking, a non-sober (to put it politely) Oscar De La Hoya in the commentary booth, and lots more — than a professional sporting event. But even if it was something many would not want their kids to watch, the event pulled 1.5 million PPV buys and made $75 million dollars.
If you’re not interested in the Paul brothers, or boxing for that matter, you might be asking yourself, “Why do people watch that crap?” And, “Why aren’t they watching real top-level boxers instead?”
#1: Why do people watch that crap? It’s entertaining.
There’s probably not a more time-tested form of story-telling than pitting a clear bad guy with bad intentions against a good guy. The WWE has built their entire product around doing just that and wrestling as a whole has a century’s worth of knowledge and experience to back it up. It’s the reason that having a great hero like Hulk Hogan needed an equally interesting heel (bad guy) like Andre the Giant to make one of the best Wrestlemania’s of all time.
In simple terms, ensuring that everyone hates the heel also means the heel’s opponent (“the babyface”) will appear more sympathetic. This heightens the public’s desire to see the babyface beat the heel. And just like that, you’ve got a compelling story, and tickets sell.
It’s also the reason UFC fighters like Chael Sonnen and more recently Colby Covington have intentionally taken on the heel persona. So much so, that in a recent episode of Chael Sonnen’s ESPN YouTube show, Chael talked about how in the Ultimate Fighter he actually had to call WWE wrestling manager Paul Heyman to ask him advice on how to stay heel for a real-life situation he was facing. This was to ensure the conflict with his rival would remain compelling and pull good ratings.
Chael was a genius for taking this wrestling concept to the UFC before most people knew exactly what he was doing. In wrestling, they used to call this staying “Kayfabe” — or staying in character so people believe it’s real.
Establishing themselves as a heel is what the Paul brothers have accomplished so skillfully. By essentially trolling the fight world and monetizing their large social media followings, they’ve been able to draw more interest to their fights than most professional boxers who are way better than them.
And guess what — it’s entertaining.
Jake Paul got my attention by playing his loud-mouthed, idiotic character to the point where I couldn’t help but get emotionally involved and root for his opponent Ben Askren. I hoped against my better logic that Askren would knock Paul out and teach him a lesson for being so rude.
After Paul knocked Askren out in the first round, he laughed his way to the bank while some people in the fight game have since said Jake Paul’s self-promotion has been nothing short of genius. He may be loud-mouthed, but he’s no idiot. And he’s definitely richer than me.
#2) Why aren’t people watching real top-level boxers instead? Boxing promotors have failed to consistently produce the best fights.
Where boxing promotors have failed at creating a compelling atmosphere, the Paul brothers have succeeded. This is because no one boxing organization has been able to monopolize the competitive landscape. There are a number of boxing organizations that have professional fighters in their stables, and these organizations compete with each other to attract the best fighters.
On the one hand, this lack of a monopolized power is good for labor. The fighters can pick the organization that will pay them the most money, and the competition between the organizations ensures that their potential paychecks will increase. Whereas an NFL player is restricted by a salary cap no matter the team he wishes to play for, a boxer that becomes a free agent can switch organizations entirely to get a better paycheck if he’s marketable.
This is also the reason why the UFC is often criticized for not paying their fighters enough money for the risk they take. The UFC is the premier MMA fighting organization, and fighters want to associate themselves with the UFC brand even while they complain about fighter pay. Why do you think Connor McGregor made his biggest payday by going to box Floyd Mayweather Jr.?
But on the other hand, there’s no comparing who routinely puts out the best, most competitive, and thus most compelling product when comparing boxing and MMA— it’s the UFC. With the best fighters in the world in his stable, Dana White can ensure that week in and week out the best fighters will fight each other and create awesome drama for the fans.
Thanks to Dana White giving the people what they want, the UFC’s product is incredible.
For years now, a boxing fight that everyone has wanted to see is Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford. But, for years now, it hasn’t happened. Spence is signed to Al Haymon’s PBC boxing, while Crawford is signed to Bob Arum’s Top Rank Boxing. Wouldn’t the two promotors want to have their fighters compete in a megafight and split the purse? Unfortunately, too often the answer is… maybe… eventually.
Eventually…
After they get their stars to fight a bunch of other guys in their own stables, ensuring they keep a perfect record and getting as much money as possible — and eventually… when all dollars and cents have been made — then maybe there could be interest. This is because when two undefeated superstars fight, as they say in boxing, someone’s “o”, their perfect record, “has to go.” Since the promotors care more about the money than the sport, they’d rather their fighter take safer fights to ensure they make more money in the long run.
Boxing fans often have to wait literally years for a big fight to happen. Meanwhile, the UFC is churning out megafights it seems like every month. In 2020, UFC superstar Jorge Masvidal took a fight on 6 days' notice against belt holder Kamaru Usman. That fight went on to be the UFC’s best-selling PPV of the year.
6 days' notice...
Meanwhile, it feels like it’s been about 6 years since people have been clamoring to see Spence v Crawford. I agree with Chael Sonnen that this is a failure in boxing. And as long as this less competitive business model exists, boxing will always produce less meaningful fights than the UFC.
When a couple of non-professional boxing YouTube “stars” are out-promoting actual boxing promotors, that’s a bad look for boxing. This is how the Paul brothers are actually helping boxing.
Boxing fans around the world have decried what they’re are doing as terrible for the sport, because they want to see great boxing matches instead of the circus shows the Paul brothers have been producing. But don’t get mad at the Paul brothers for circumventing the anti-competitive promotor system — they’re exposing it and heaping more pressure on it.
They’re showing just how exciting trash talk and boxing can be if you put the two most interesting characters in the ring at the same time and let them punch each other in the face. They’re shining a light on how a handful of greedy promotors could be and could have been putting on so many more compelling events if they cared more about serving the fans with good competition rather than lining their pocketbooks.
Now more than ever, this has become a topic of conversation on sports shows and in sports articles like this one. “Iron” Mike Tyson recently even went so far as to say the Paul brothers are “saving boxing.” This type of press in turn heaps more pressure onto the promotors and makes them look worse than they already had since the UFC has been killing boxing in the ratings.
While I agree with Chael Sonnen’s critique of the promotor system, I disagree with his constant negativity towards boxing in general. There are many great and exciting fighters out there — Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua, the Charlo brothers, Canelo Alvarez, Teofimo Lopez, and upcomers like Shakur Stevenson just to name a few.
But until boxing can restructure its outdated business model and create a more competitive landscape, it will continue to crawl into the 12th round of the ratings while the UFC scores knockouts. So if a couple of annoying YouTube brats can further expose this entire system and put more pressure on boxing to make wholesale changes, then I’m all for it.
Admit it — the Paul brothers are great for boxing.
This article, Admit It — Jake and Logan Paul are Great for Boxing, was originally written by Corey Perkins and appeared first on his Medium page.
