No one draws a crowd quite like YouTuber turned boxer Jake Paul. The twenty-four-year-old master showman, who seems willing to cross any lines, is hard at work preparing for his upcoming boxing match against former UFC fighter Ben Askren, and in the least surprising development of all-time, he’s using that training to generate content. He recently uploaded a picture of himself pulling a fire truck and boasted that with the help of Justin Bieber, he’s going to break pay-per-view records.
Let’s start with the firetruck because it’s just classic showmanship. Jake Paul uploaded a clip to Instagram that showed him on all fours pulling a fire truck. I’m not sure how valuable strapping a fire engine to your back is for actual training, but it certainly looks impressive and that feels like that point. The fight game really requires those involved to both train however they see fit in order to be physically ready and also to generate hype. If Paul is able to generate hype with an unconventional training method like this, all the better. You can check out his over the top video below…
All the training is, of course, for his upcoming fight on April 17th with Ben Askren, which will continue the social media star's push into combat sports. It started when Jake Paul tried his hand at boxing alongside his brother in a match against other YouTubers, and he performed extremely well and apparently liked it. That led to Paul training on a more consistent basis and two further fights, the latter of which was against former NBA player Nate Robinson and ended in a vicious knockout.
There was a ton of buzz about how good Paul looked after the fight, and there was even more buzz after the pay per view numbers were released. Paul and company put up more than one million buys and while a lot of that was obviously due to Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr, at the top of the card, many experts think Paul was responsible for a good percentage of the buys too. This upcoming fight with Ben Askren will be a good test of that without a legend billed above him, which is where Justin Bieber comes in.
Jake Paul announced this week that pop star Justin Bieber will be performing on the card. At this point it’s unclear how long of a performance fans can expect, but regardless, his presence will likely attract additional purchases, which is the name of the game. It’s all about piecing together enough interested parties with whatever you have to offer. The Tyson/ Jones Jr and Paul/ Robinson fight likely did so well because there wasn’t a ton of overlap in the people interested in Tyson and the people interested in Paul. That’s probably why Jake Paul isn’t booking his brother Logan Paul onto his recent fight cards, even though he has his own high profile fight game going. There’s no point if it’s not going to bring in additional pay per view buys. You can check out the Instagram post announcing Justin Bieber below…
The all-time record for pay per view buys is 4.6 million for a fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. It’s hard to imagine any scenario in which this fight topped that one, but I think there’s a good chance Jake Paul and company still put up a really nice number, and if he wins and books a higher profile opponent next time, then who knows. Just expect if it does happen to see him in the lead-up pulling something even more outrageous than a fire truck.
