Jake Paul Says Latest PPV Numbers Tanked

Jake Paul vs Anderson Silva's boxing pay-per-view numbers were no knock-out. Instead, they were a giant whiff.

Speaking on his brother Logan Paul's Impaulsive podcast, the YouTube influencer-turned boxer admitted that when the final buy number comes in, it's not going to be pretty.

“I don’t . I think it’ll probably go around like 200 to 300,000, really which is kind of upsetting,” the younger Paul brother said.

Jake blames the timing of the fight for why the number will be low.

“It’s weird. Halloween, World Series, Sunday football, this is the worst time of the year to fight, but guess what, I had to fight," Paul said. “All my fights from now on will be in the summer. There’s no sports. There’s like this perfect gap in July slash early August where there’s no sports. And by the way, all of my other fights were during COVID, when no one had anything to do, anything to watch.”

There were also a number of combat sports fights on Saturday that may have split up the audience. UFC had a Fight Night event. While one of the biggest female names in boxing, Katie Taylor had a match. And we also saw the return of Ukraine's Vasily Lomachenko.

Additionally, Paul says that Anderson Silva revealing that he was "knocked-out" during training ahead of the fight, may have scared potential buyers away.

“The general public sees that and thinks like ‘oh it’s not happening.’ Tommy pulled out, Hasim pulled out. ‘Oh, Jake f'n Paul can’t get an event together. This is done.’ It killed ticket sales. We were still selling, then that day, everything went to zero," Paul added.

PAUL DEFEATED UFC STAR ANDERSON SILVA

On Saturday, Jake Paul (6-0) boxed future UFC Hall of Famer Anderson Silva. Paul won via unanimous decision with a knock down of Silva in the final round. The match didn't nearly draw as much buzz as Paul hoped, after his previous two fights against actual boxers were cancelled.

I have long been arguing that these crossover type of UFC / MMA / Celebrity Boxing matches have become an absolute joke and that they need to start cutting back on them. Do we really need to see Le'Veon Bell as a professional boxer, only to get embarrassed?

Personally, I believe that the number will be bigger if and when Paul fights an actual legitimate boxer and not another UFC fighter. People want to see if Paul actually has what it takes to get in the ring with a professional boxer.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR JAKE PAUL TO WIN FANS OVER

Although I'm not a HUGE fan of Jake Paul in general, I do feel bad for the guy. He wants to prove that he can box and has been putting the time into training. His last two fight cancellations were not his fault. Boxer Tommy Fury had visa issues entering the United States, while Haism Rahman Jr. withdrew over weight cut issues.

Essentially Jake had to settle for Anderson Silva. Which is cool because he's a future Hall of Famer and one of the best UFC fighters of all time. But Silva is also ancient as hell at 47-years-old. I think the fact that Paul didn't win by KO or TKO actually hurts him.

Many of the crossover and hype fights became popular during the pandemic where everyone just wanted to watch SOMETHING. Now that we have moved on from that and life is back to normal, it will be interesting to see if the public's mood continues to change.

By Paul's own admission about the lackluster PPV buys, it seems that we are heading that direction. Paul needs a big time, real life boxing opponent fast.

Written by
Mike “Gunz” Gunzelman has been involved in the sports and media industry for over a decade. He’s also a risk taker - the first time he ever had sushi was from a Duane Reade in Penn Station in NYC.