Jake Paul’s latest fight might not be a PPV cash cow … at least according to Jake Paul.
“The pre-buys were going crazy,” Paul said on a recent episode of IMPAULSIVE. “Up, up, up. And on Wednesday, when the news came out about Anderson saying that he got knocked out or whatever, and the fight was in jeopardy, and all this press came out, the pre-buys tanked all the way down. The general public sees that and is like, ‘Oh, it’s not happening.’ Tommy (Fury) pulled out, Hasim (Rahman Jr.) pulled out, ‘Oh, Jake f*cking Paul can’t get an event together. This is done.’ It killed ticket sales. Boom, boom, boom, we’re still selling tickets that day. Everything went to zero. …
“I think it will probably go around 200 to 300K, which is kind of upsetting.”
Paul thinks the PPV buys tanked due to comments that Silva made to MMA Weekly about being “knocked out” twice. Those comments were made during a pre-fight presser more than a month before the bout and Silva said he meant “knocked down.”
Paul also cited the time the fight occurred as a major dent to the PPV buys.
“Halloween, World Series, Sunday football – this is the worst time in the year to fight,” Paul said. “But guess what: I had to fight. All my fights from now on will be in the summer. There’s no sports. There’s like this perfect gap in July, early August where there’s no sports. And by the way, all my other fights were during COVID when no one had anything to do and anything to watch. … I had to fight this year. I just had to get it f*cking done. I’m sick and tired of waiting around.”
No official PPV numbers have been released yet.
Jake Paul thinks pay-per-view sales ‘tanked’ for Anderson Silva fight
