Jake Paul is attempting to do his part for fighter rights.
Love him or hate him, Paul has created a platform that’s led to good financial gain for not only his opponents but those competing alongside him. In other instances, he’s contributed to fight camps for those who struggled to gather the proper funds, most notably former UFC flyweight Sarah Alpar.
Speaking on the FULL SEND PODCAST, Paul recently got into somewhat of a debate with the Nelk Boys over fighter pay. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as the Nelk crew is close with UFC CEO Dana White, therefore, their argument was more of: “How is it so bad?”
Paul noted he’s “probably” generated around $300 million in PPV revenue throughout his 11-fight (10-1) professional boxing career. That was followed by what his undercard fighters make compared to a base example of a UFC fighter, which is $12,000 to fight and $12,000 to win.
“It’s pretty difficult,” Paul said about organizing fights for his events. “We have so many requests, so many fights. Mostly, we want to help young prospects, we want big names, then we want crossover fights like Uriah Hall vs. [Julio Cesar Chavez Jr] … We pay people the most they’ve ever gotten paid pretty much every card. It depends who or what their name is, but it could range anywhere from $40,000 to $1.5 million.
“We’re not a $6 billion company. That’s my gripe with it is the UFC is making billions and billions of dollars, but still only paying the fighters 12 percent of the income.”
Paul, 27, has proved that claim true with certain stars like Amanda Serrano and H20 Sylve. The former has been a staple of Paul’s events and has been a promoted athlete outside of his events.
In a way, Paul admits an equivalent to UFC in boxing might be smart, but he doesn’t find it feasible.
“Amanda Serrano went from making like $10,000 a fight to being the highest-paid female boxer, making $2 mil a fight. It’s just different economics and different terms, but yeah.
“It would be cool to do that in boxing [like a UFC organization], it’s just almost impossible. There’s so much segregation and so many big power players, and there’s also six times more boxers than are MMA fighters. Boxing has been around since the 1500s so it’s in every country, more professional fighters. So, you’re managing bigger pools of talent, and then to convince the top 1 percent of boxers to sign into a league is like, ‘Why would I do this? Because I’m basically gonna be forfeiting revenue.’”
Paul last scored a sixth-round TKO against Mike Perry last month and will next take on Mike Tyson in their rebooked matchup for Nov. 15.