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Jake Paul is officially beefing with the Saudis, who are currently taking over boxing. Earlier this month, Saudi backer Turki Alalshikh took a victory lap after preventing Canelo Alvarez from fighting Paul by signing him to a massive four-fight deal.
After signing Canelo, Alalshikh mocked Paul while speaking to ESPN.
“Canelo only fights real fighters,” Al-Sheikh told ESPN.
Paul went on to blast Canelo for signing with the Saudis.
“Canelo Alvarez ducked me, Jake Paul and is now an owned slave with no regard for the pride of the Mexican people who support him on US soil. it’s not surprising when his whole career he has done nothing for the sport of boxing outside the ring. I’m the new face of boxing.”
On Thursday, the Sports Business Journal reported that Paul’s fight against Tyson on Netflix stacked up with some of the streaming giant’s biggest scripted shows.
Within the Netflix universe, Most Valuable Promotions’ Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight drew an audience on par with the platform’s best scripted TV shows, and well above what the platform says it drew for NFL Christmas Day games, according to internal data released by the company measuring July-December 2024.
per Netflix, the Paul-Tyson fight had 48.9 million views in the U.S. along from its live airing on Nov. 15 through the end of the year. The figure is the seventh-best “TV” program on Netflix during the time frame, and just below something like Season 1 of “Nobody Wants This” (56.8 million views). Paul-Tyson was above what a popular series like “Cobra Kai” (Season 6) was able to draw (38.3 million with a release date of July 18).
Paul reacted to the SBJ’s report by firing a shot at the Saudis.
“I would be mad as well…you spend billions & you can’t come close.”
Unfortunately for Paul, the Saudis are in talks with UFC CEO Dana White to debut a new boxing league that will launch this year and directly compete with his promotion in the United States.
TKO: We are close on an agreement with the Saudis on the creation of a boxing league where we, TKO, would be the producer, the promoter and responsible for all day-to-day operations of the venture, whereby we would receive a fee of $10M+. Again, we’re not putting any money in.… pic.twitter.com/6saotvCurn
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) February 26, 2025