Jake Paul has never liked how Dana White runs the UFC and now he thinks the CEO might actually be killing it.
Two of the biggest MMA events of the year are set to take place in the next couple of months, with Paul’s MVP MMA show headlined by legends Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano taking place on May 16 live on Netflix, and White promoting a historic UFC White House event on June 14. There has been plenty of comparison between the two events, and personalities on both sides have taken public shots at
the other, now it’s Paul taking aim at his longtime rival White.
During an appearance on the This Past Weekend podcast, Paul was asked if he’d ever work with White and he gave a surprising answer before criticizing the longtime UFC boss.
“I’m open to it,” Paul said. “Buy us. We’ll help you guys not be idiots. The amount of money you would spend—Like, I don’t have an ego. I’ll work with anybody.”
When host Theo Vonn called White “a very smart guy,” Paul quickly shot that opinion down.
“Not smart enough,” Paul said. “Just look at what he’s doing. You don’t not pay your fighters, you don’t get Jon Jones on the White House card. First of all, Justin Gaethje is going to lose to Ilia [Topuria] on the White House card. So you have a Spaniard beating a white American on the patriotic White House card. Big mistake, first of all.
“Second of all, why are you not going to pay Jon Jones? … This is one of the most profitable sports organizations in history. Their investors have gotten greedy, they’re in control, they are looking at the P&Ls [profits and losses] and being like, ‘Yo, we can just keep pumping this shit.’ They forgot their heart as a company and that’s the problem. It’s dying.”
It’s not just the longterm health of the UFC that Paul is concerned about.
The UFC has faced increasing scrutiny over its matchmaking and event planning in recent years, with some fans lamenting the lack of star power at the top of the card as well as the constant churn of events leading to lackluster lineups, while others have praised the promotion for continuing to grow its business while providing fight cards on a near-weekly basis.
In Paul’s opinion, the MMA product is growing stale because of the dominance of wrestling-based champions like Khabib Nurmagomedov and Khamzat Chimaev, as well as poor fighter compensation.
“MMA hasn’t stood the test of time because the best people wrestle and they just hold on,” Paul said. “Khabib. Khamzat. Which is boring. No one wants to watch that. So it hasn’t stood the test of time. Boxing has been around since the 1500s. MMA is 30 years. It’s declining. Also, because it’s not ran properly and they’re becoming greedy and it’s a super-corporate organization where they’re signed with Paramount, they have stockholders, it’s a part of the WWE. Ari Emanuel. Public company. Blah blah blah.
“So when they’re paying fighters 15 percent of the revenue-by the way, down to 10 percent-it’s going down. The NFL pays their athletes 50 percent of the revenue, so if the NFL makes a billion dollars, the athletes make $500 million. In the UFC, it’s $150 million out of a billion, but when you exclude Conor McGregor and Jon Jones from that, it becomes like, 5 percent, $50 million out of a billion.”
The May 16 Rousey vs. Carano event marks Paul and Netflix’s first foray into promoting an MMA show. Paul has previously worked with the streaming giant to broadcast two high-profile boxing matches against Mike Tyson and Anthony Joshua.
In 2018, Paul entered the fight game with an established fan base as a popular YouTuber and social media celebrity, with his following having only grown during that time. Having built a resource pool independent of combat sports is why Paul is confident he can afford to treat the athletes he works with better than White and the UFC.
“Me and [Most Valuable Promotions co-founder) Nakisa [Bidarian] have money from other shit and don’t need to do it and that’s why our motto is always ‘Fighter first,’” Paul said. “That’s actually very important, so when you start there, fighter first, and operate as a startup, we instantly took over and resonated with fighters and are clearly the best to work with and make our fighters the most amount of money and give them the highest percentage of the fights, etc.
“But on top of that, if you just want to talk analytics, like coming into the game, I have a hundred million followers or something like that and the second-biggest promoter is Dana White with, like, 30. So I’m, like, three times bigger than him.”
