“I think it will probably go around 200 to 300K, which is kind of upsetting.” —Jake Paul
The Jake Paul vs. Anderson Silva pay-per-view (PPV) event “tanked.”
That’s according to “The Problem Child,” who blamed the collapse of their Oct. 29 boxing match on the pre-fight revelation that Silva was knocked out during sparring. The Brazilian later retracted that statement after the athletic commission got involved, but Paul believes the damage was done.
“The pre-buys were going crazy,” Paul told IMPAULSIVE (transcribed by Farah Hannoun). “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 fucking 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.”
Paul previously tried to box Tommy Fury and Hasim Rahman Jr. but those bouts fell apart at the eleventh hour and sent the YouTube pugilist back to the drawing board. That may (or may not) explain why buyers had cold feet after the 47 year-old Silva started talking about his recent sparring woes.
And it sounds like the timing didn’t do them any favors either.
“Halloween, World Series, Sunday football, this is the worst time in the year to fight,” Paul continued. “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 fucking done. I’m sick and tired of waiting around.”
Paul defeated Silva by decision and is now targeting a Nate Diaz fight for 2023.