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The New York Instances is reporting that Jake Paul has signed a contract to battle for the PFL (Skilled Battle League).
Initially of 2023, Jake Paul promised he’d move from discuss to motion when it got here to fixing MMA fighter pay. His first concrete step in direction of doing that? Crossing over into MMA, the place he’ll undoubtedly pay himself a hefty purse to battle in a cage later this yr.
According to the Times, Paul signed a multi-year take care of the PFL to compete within the promotion’s new ‘Tremendous Battle Division,’ which is able to anchor the PFL’s pay-per-view occasions. Whereas no dates have been revealed, the PFL plans on holding two pay-per-views this yr and it’s anticipated Paul will compete on one whereas boxing as soon as someday within the yr as nicely.
As a part of the deal, Jake Paul now owns fairness within the PFL, and his accomplice Nakisa Bidarian at Most Precious Promotions will likely be serving to the PFL with ‘logistics’ for pay-per-view occasions. Bidarian is the previous Chief Monetary Officer of the UFC from 2011 to 2016. Paul may also turn into the PFL’s ‘head of fighter advocacy.’
On this clip, Jake Paul says he has supplied Nate Diaz a two battle deal: one battle in boxing after which 6 months later in MMA beneath the PFL banner pic.twitter.com/vqzTvZ1ben
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) January 5, 2023
In what’s the most attention-grabbing wrinkle of this deal, fighters within the Tremendous Battle Division will earn ‘not less than 50 p.c of the pay-per-view income’ from PFL occasions. Positive, that won’t have amounted to large bucks when the PFL held their first PPV event in November headlined by Kayla Harrison and the 2022 event finals. However with Paul hooked up to the occasion, the UFC could not be the best paying MMA sport within the enterprise.
For years the UFC has been criticized for locking fighter pay throughout the promotion to roughly 18% of income. They’re presently embroiled in a gradual transferring class motion lawsuit launched by former fighters arguing that they’re a monopoly and monopsony that has illegally used its market share to depress fighter pay. And whereas it’s going to most likely be just a few extra years not less than earlier than that case is labored out, this PFL deal provides a glimmer of hope that fighters like Nate Diaz, Francis Ngannou, Paulo Costa, and others can go away the UFC and have a platform the place they will battle and be paid pretty.
We were a bit dubious when Jake Paul claimed he was going to vary the sport so far as MMA fighter pay went, however with some slick maneuvering and the fitting match-ups, the PFL may use his title to construct their model right into a reliable competitor to the UFC. The Skilled Battle League debuted in 2018 and hoped to lure away large title MMA fighters from the UFC with their $1 million greenback event setup. The exodus by no means occurred, partially because of the extraordinarily restrictive and long-lasting nature of UFC contracts. However there’s a rising handful of fighters releasing themselves from these and changing into free brokers.
We think about 50% of PPV earnings will sound fairly interesting to them as soon as Paul proves a non-UFC PPV can promote a pair hundred thousand items.
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