Jake Paul predicts ‘upsetting’ pay-per-view numbers for Anderson Silva fight

The YouTube star outpointed Silva last week after dropping the UFC legend in the final round

Jake Paul has said he is yet to find out how many pay-per-views his fight with Anderson Silva sold, but the YouTube star has admitted that his predicted number is ‘upsetting’.

Paul, 25, outpointed Silva, 47, on Saturday, after knocking down the UFC legend in the final round of their boxing match in Arizona.

The result saw Paul move to 6-0 as a professional boxer and, with Silva’s status as one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time, marked the most impressive win of the American’s career so far. However, the fight did not generate the buzz that Paul expected, he admitted on his brother Logan’s podcast.

When asked what the reasons might be, Jake Paul said: “Halloween, World Series [baseball], Sunday [American] football; it’s the worst time of year to fight, but guess what? I had to fight.

“All my fights from now on will be in summer. There’s like this perfect gap in July slash 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***ing done, bro. I’m sick and tired of waiting around.”

Paul also said he had not made any money this year until stepping in the ring with Brazilian Sillva.

“Not only did I make $0, I lost like milllions of dollars just running a god-damn organisation with 15 employees. But everyone provides the value of more than what they get paid.”

When asked whether he knew how many pay-per-views his fight with Silva had sold, Paul said he was yet to find out but speculated: “I think it will probably go around like 200,000-300,000, which is kind of upsetting, but...

Jake Paul (left) beat Anderson Silva via unanimous decision (Getty Images)

“The pre-buys were going crazy – up, up, up. And on Wednesday, when the news came out about Anderson saying he got knocked out [in training], 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***ing Paul can’t get an event together, this is done.’

“It killed ticket sales. We were still selling tickets, [then] that day, everything went to zero.”

Paul was referencing comments made by Silva in an interview in September – which was not published until fight week – that he had been knocked out twice in sparring. The Brazilian last week said he had simply ‘misspoken’ at the time.

Paul was also making reference to Tommy Fury’s withdrawal from fights with the YouTuber last December and this August, with Hasim Rahman Jr replacing the Briton on the latter occasion before that bout also fell through.