By: Frank Hyden, MMATorch Senior Columnist
Another week of no events so another week of checking out some news.
Get ready for a lot of Jake Paul. But first…
Eagle FC, the promotion founded by Khabib Nurmagomedov, is introducing
a 165lbs. weight class and is bringing in some former UFC fighters.
Rashad Evans is ending his three and a half year retirement to fight
Gabriel Checco on January 28th on a card headlined by Tyrone Spong vs.
Sergei Kharitonov.
Also, Diego Sanchez vs. Kevin Lee is slated for March 11th.
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The word from Steven Muehlhausen is that Jake Paul vs. Tyron Woodley
II did about 100,000 pay-per-view buys. There could be a variety of
reasons for that. There were several combat sports PPVs (Boxing and
UFC) in the last two months which makes people choosier. The first
Paul-Woodley fight wasn’t all that exciting, and it’s possible that
some of the shine has come off of Paul. We won’t get a real indication
of whether that’s true or not until Paul’s next fight.
Paul vehemently disputes the 100K number. Their first fight sold
500,000+ buys. It would be a little surprising to see the numbers
shrink so much from that figure but the first fight wasn’t good and
there was plenty of competition so it’s possible. As always, we’ll
have to wait to see how this plays out.
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Speaking of Paul, he recently challenged Dana White to an interesting
proposal, we’ll say. Before I get to that I need to back up real quick
and mention that these two seemingly hate each other. White had
challenged Paul to get randomly tested for steroids for 2 years in
exchange for White being randomly tested for cocaine for 10 years.
That’s when Paul challenged White on the usual thing he criticizes the
UFC for, fighter pay and healthcare.
Paul said he’ll retire from boxing and sign a 1-fight UFC contract to
face Jorge Masvidal if the UFC increases minimum fighter pay from
$12,000 per fight to $50,000, guarantee revenue sharing for the
fighters at 50% of the UFC’s annual revenues, and provide longterm
health care to fighters.
White responded by saying that Paul is too stupid to have written that
himself and making fun of the appearance of Paul’s manager. He didn’t
really address any of Paul’s points and reiterated his challenge for
the steroids and cocaine testing.
Nothing will come of this, of course, it’s just to try to score
brownie points and maybe get some additional PPV buys. I’ve long
argued for UFC fighters to be paid more so if something comes from
this I’d be happy. For now, this is just something to talk about when
there’s no fights on. It’s just preening from both guys as it’s very
doubtful anything comes of this. I’m very cynical of stuff like this
so it wouldn’t surprise me all that much to find out at least parts of
this “feud” are a work. Probably not but it’s possible.
My book is on Amazon. It’s called Small Town Crime Cabal.
It’s about a brother and sister who operate a drug and gambling ring
in their small hometown. They want more, though, and hope to expand
beyond the limits of where they grew up. That comes with a price,
though, and the question becomes- are they willing to pay the price?
This is the first in my Brotherhood of the Streets series. It’s on
Kindle Unlimited right now or you can buy it in e-book or paperback
form. If you’re interested, I would greatly appreciate it if you would
check it out and support me. Here’s the link to my book on Amazon- My Book I’ve also
written a sci-fi book called Forever Man, the link is Forever Man: The
Fight to Save the World. Thank you very much, have a good day.
Comments and suggestions can be emailed to me at
hydenfrank@gmail.com and you can follow me on Twitter at @hydenfrank.
Thanks for reading and have a good day.
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