ARLINGTON, Texas — The boxing community is still waiting for Jake Paul's influence to spill over into other sports.
Paul (10-1, 7 KOs), 27, is a YouTuber and social media star who took up boxing in recent years and has since produced some of the biggest fights in the sport.
The majority of those fights are against fellow influencers, MMA fighters, or athletes from other sports, and are specifically designed to be absurd in order to draw large audiences.
Paul gained many fans and became a box office hit much faster than most professional boxers.
He won his long-sought big-money fight against 58-year-old Mike Tyson on Friday night at AT&T Stadium. Given Tyson's age and stature in the sport, it's similarly designed to shock people into watching.
Paul is expected to receive a hefty paycheck of $40 million, while Tyson is expected to bring in $20 million. More than 60,000 fans are expected to attend the home of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, and Paul predicted the match would be the largest attendance ever for a boxing match outside of Las Vegas. .
But is this a one-time gimmick or will it actually help boxing?
“I'm still waiting for boxing to do what Jake Paul has done,” former two-time welterweight champion and current boxing analyst Shawn Porter told the Post. “Thanks to Jake Paul, people who weren't interested in boxing before or haven't been interested in it for a long time are now interested in boxing again. There is.
“I remember a few years ago, my 11-year-old cousin asked me if I was going to fight Jake Paul. An 11-year-old kid who never watches boxing except when I get in the ring was going to watch boxing. So, he asked me if he's fighting anyone, if there's a fighter who has this big of a crowd and commands this kind of crowd in one night, why are we fighting if he's only fighting one night? Didn't he do something to take advantage of his participation in the sport?
Paul co-founded Most Valuable Promotions, which produced this match and also promotes Amanda Serrano, who will rematch Katie Taylor in the co-main event.
He has been vocal about his intention to use his influence to draw attention to MVP's leading fighters, but progress has been minimal. Serrano is already a star and considered one of the best female fighters of all time, and the rest of MVP's fighters are far from household names.
But Friday's fight platform presents an interesting opportunity for the sport.
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The fight will be streamed live on Netflix and available for free to approximately 283 million subscribers worldwide. This represents a major departure from the majority of the most anticipated matches, which take place on big-ticket pay-per-views that turn many fans away.
Friday's fight marks Netflix's first foray into streaming boxing matches, and one of its first forays into streaming live events in general. The company has said live events are an area it wants to grow, with WWE's “Raw” moving to the streaming platform in 2025.
And their entry into boxing comes at a time when traditional networks are fleeing boxing — HBO pulled out of boxing in 2018, Fox pulled out in 2022, Showtime pulled out last year, ESPN 's contract with Top Rank ends in 2025, so they may be leaving the company soon.
The move to streaming networks is underway, as Amazon Prime signed a deal with Premier Boxing Champions when Showtime ended. DAZN has also become influential.
Although Netflix has no involvement in boxing, the strong Friday night viewership allowed the company to increase its investment in boxing, which in turn opened the door to more eyes, especially younger ones. may be drawn to this sweet science.
“Honestly, there are probably at least 100 guys I've never heard of who are so much better than Jake Paul that Paul wouldn't be able to continue a round with. They're trying to criticize the sport in general, not the sport in general,” Porter said. “You're all focused on this one guy who's boxing, but you've never seen the sport before him, and there are other guys who might actually like it or at least know it.
“The business of boxing is so flawed from the point of view that they want to be a part of it, that they want to embrace it, but they don't know what to do about it.”
