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Forbes just reported that YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul made more than $40 million in 2021. That, for lack of a better term, is insane. Paul has only amassed five professional fights in his career and yet he's already earning more money than most world champions.
Let's put this ludicrous achievement in perspective. Canelo Alvarez, boxing's current pound-for-pound best and a man with a record of 57-1-2 (39 KOs), made $32 million last year. Yep, we live in a crazy world.
So how did some kid, without any athletic background, start doing a sport and end up getting paid more than the best athlete of said sport? The answer is quite simple: Jake Paul became insanely famous first before becoming a boxer.
Love him or hate him, 'The Problem Child' is one of the most popular people in the world today. His 20 million YouTube subscribers are testament to his undeniable ability to garner attention. If the former Disney star can get 16 million people to watch him Yodeling inside a Walmart, he can pretty much make anyone watch him do anything.
Although he's marvelous at self-promotion and viral in his endeavors, as a boxer, Jake Paul is, in all honesty, still a rookie. He's a pugilist with five fights and should be treated as such, competitively at least. He's undeniably talented and is getting better with every fight. It wouldn't make sense, however, for him to fight Canelo just because they both make eight-figures in the sport.
Jake Paul's last two high-profile opponents, 40-year old Tyron Woodley and the retired Ben Askren, although prominent combat athletes, had zero records in pro boxing. That might be the reason Paul chose those opponents.
Now, this is not a knock on 'The Chosen One' and 'Funky's boxing skills, but MMA is a wildly different sport from the sweet science.
With that said, since 'The Problem Child' has been beefing with and knocking out MMA fighters, he's created a long-standing rivalry with the MMA community. In a post on Twitter, Paul declared that he's willing to retire from boxing and fight MMA if UFC president Dana White agrees to his terms.
Although White has already expressed no interest in signing, working with, or co-promoting with Jake Paul, there are still other MMA leagues that might. The most viable candidate could be Asia's ONE Championship.
Why? We list down five reasons why the Singapore-based organization is the perfect destination for Jake Paul if he wants to branch out of boxing.
#5. Jake Paul can tap into the Asian market
Without trying to sound like Khabib Nurmagomedov's famous post-fight words: North America, 580 million. Asia, 4.6 billion.
Those numbers are enough to tell you that Asia is a goldmine when it comes to getting people to buy anything you're selling. That might be the reason why Floyd Mayweather Jr. came out of retirement to knock out kickboxer Tenshin Nasukawa in Japan for $9 million in 2018.
With the rise of Asian MMA champions like Zhang Weili, Angela Lee and Aung La Nsang, as well as boxing icons like Zou Shiming and Naoya Inoue, Asia is having a martial arts resurgence.
ONE Championship has proudly brought martial arts back to the continent and has already established a foothold in its fight industry. Creating new fans from Asia would certainly mean dollar signs for the budding professional fighter.
#4. Jake Paul can fight under special rules in ONE Championship
To help Jake Paul ease himself into the sport, why not a mixed rules match? It's been done before and just recently, ONE Championship created a special rules match for their 10-year anniversary event, ONE: X.
The mixed rules superfight will be between former UFC champ Demetrious Johnson and ONE's flyweight Muay Thai titleholder Rodtang. The first and third rounds will be Muay Thai rules, while the second and fourth will be MMA rules.
Though we have no clue how this fight will turn out, it certainly makes for a lot of intrigue. If Jake Paul wants to fight under special rules, ONE can certainly accommodate him. He can showcase his boxing prowess while testing his MMA skills at the same time.
#3. ONE Championship has a lot of matches for him
As has been said already, Jake Paul has an ongoing rivalry with the MMA community. As unusual as it may seem that a professional boxer is having a rivalry with a sport that is not even his, it's not entirely surprising.
The YouTube phenom has an uncanny ability to get under people's skin and uses it to create massive hype around his fights. From UFC president Dana White to former champions like Daniel Cormier to MMA superstars like Conor McGregor, no one is safe from Paul's trolling tactics.
With Paul's knockout of MMA fighters under boxing rules, people saw this as MMA being unfairly seen under a bad light. So we're not going to be surprised if there's a line of fighters out there who would like a piece of 'The Problem Child'. He's a massive payday after all.
At ONE Championship, a certain kickboxer has already shown interest in fighting the Cleveland native.
Whether it's kickboxing phenom Neiky 'The Natural' Holzken or one of many MMA fighters under ONE's banner, they will not run out of fight options for Paul.
#2. Jake Paul could still box in ONE Championship
Jake Paul may not even need to leave boxing if he decides to fight under ONE Championship's banner. Though ONE is mostly known for showcasing MMA, Muay Thai, kickboxing and submission grappling, they also once promoted boxing.
The lone boxing match in ONE Championship's recorded history happened in October 2018. It was a title fight between Thailand's WBC super flyweight champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai and Mexico's Iran Diaz.
In partnership with Nakornloung Promotions, the fight headlined their event, ONE: Kingdom of Heroes, and was a pretty awesome match. It was a frenetic back-and-forth slugfest that both pugilists pushed each other to the limit.
Watch the highlights of the boxing match here:
If Paul decides to just go straight to boxing in ONE Championship, who knows, the Asian promotion might just run with it.
If ONE decides to open a boxing leg and promote boxing fights, it might be the start of something big. The Asian fight league already has a huge following and can potentially rival other boxing promotions like Top Rank and DAZN.
#1. ONE Championship can turn Jake Paul into an even bigger social media icon
In 2021, ONE Championship garnered 8.84 billion organic views on Facebook, beating out all other sports properties on the social media platform. The UFC, ONE's major MMA rival, came in 5th place with 1.65 billion views. That's a whopping difference of 7 billion views.
What we're trying to say here is that ONE Championship arguably has a stronger social media presence than any sports league in the world. Showtime Boxing, the promotion Paul is currently fighting under, has about 1.7 million followers on Instagram and Twitter combined. ONE Championship has over 7 million followers.
As someone who uses social media to gain popularity and income, Jake Paul can definitely benefit from this. Signing with ONE can help him be exposed to audiences beyond his usual fans and can further expand his reach globally.
