Logan Paul vs. Dillon Danis has been a regular fixture in the combat sports cycle since it was announced on July 30. Although Terence Crawford, Justin Gaethje, Canelo Alvarez, Sean O’Malley and Sean · Sean Strickland performed well down the stretch, but interest remained. But why do so many people care about Saturday’s Misfits boxing match at the 21,000-capacity Manchester Arena in Manchester, England?
Brothers Paul and KSI have built a broad network of interests on video platforms such as YouTube and Vine. Logan Paul performed well at multiple WrestleMania events as a part-time WWE Superstar and headlined a pay-per-view match against undisputed world champion Roman Reigns . Jake Paul has become a credible celebrity boxer with wins over three mixed martial arts champions and a recent victory over one of Conor Mcgregor’s rivals, Nate ·Nate Diaz. KSI is a well-deserved celebrity in the UK, with 10 top ten songs and albums, ranking at number two and number one respectively.
Technically, Logan Paul and Jake Paul are professional boxers, but MMA is their real calling. It’s a unique two-pronged attack, with the Paul brothers playing good cop and bad cop in the UFC. Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime Beverages are official UFC partners; Meanwhile, Jake Paul feuded with UFC President Dana White in the media and teamed up with the Professional Boxers Alliance to defeat MMA boxing heroes at the same time.
Misfits Boxing events are not for boxing purists. It’s for YouTube fans who want to support their favorite content creators, MMA fans eager to see Team Paul take down, and the morbidly curious. This is a strange pseudo-cultural event. A public spectacle. But why is Dennis here?
Influencer-athlete pairings are designed based on one fundamental principle: maximum reward with minimum risk. The Paul brothers prioritized smaller, higher-profile opponents with little boxing experience. As promoters in their own right, the Paul brothers have the unique responsibility of promoting their opponents as well as themselves. Jake Paul turned wrestler Ben Askren into a multiple-time world mixed martial arts (MMA) champion, easily dismissing him as perhaps the worst striker to achieve high levels of success in MMA. reputation. The tone of the Logan Paul-Dennis match was much uglier, but the formula was similar.
Dennis was a talented BJJ fighter, but he barely qualified as an MMA fighter. Dennis fought twice for Bellator between 2018 and 2019, which was his only professional fight under MMA rules. Danis’ popularity in MMA is not based on his athletic achievements. His popularity is a response to his friendship with Conor McGregor and public controversies with fighters such as Diaz and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
What Paul got right about choosing Dennis as his opponent—beyond the skill gap—was Dennis’ commitment to selling the game. Dennis has done much of the marketing for the fight and is a key reason for continued interest in fighting the stale subgenre. Unfortunately, Dennis betrayed the fight by targeting Logan Paul’s fiancée, Nina Agdale.
Denis posted numerous photos of Agdal spending quality time with other celebrities, some of which were allegedly digitally altered. Denis’ fascination with Agdal resonated with fans, as evidenced by his massive growth on social media, but it landed him in hot water. According to , Agdal is currently suing Denis for “revenge porn” for allegedly posting “sexually explicit photos.”
“This guy is so good at Twitter. It’s top-notch trolling, and that’s why I picked him as my opponent,” Paul said on the “Flagrant” podcast in late August. “I didn’t know (he was going to try that hard), but we got people interested, right? At the end of the day, it’s all fight propaganda.
“I thought he was a brilliant troll. I thought he was very parasitic, which is why I was honored to be the one to take him out and embarrass him. That’s why I took the fight. I was like , ‘Well, I know this guy’s going to make a mess of it.”
Dennis repeatedly urged Logan Paul to pay $1.5 million in compensation to small investors for his CryptoZoo venture. There’s also a running joke that Dennis, who pulled out of a boxing match with KSI earlier this year, will inevitably jump ship. Dennis could even be fined $100,000 if he canceled the game without approval from a doctor chosen by Paul’s team.
The typical pattern for these boxing matches is that MMA fans tune in to support their favorite fighters against arrogant, cocky social media influencers. But Paul vs. Dennis is a unique win-win situation for consumers, and the elimination will be satisfying in either direction. These two men were not popular. That’s a draw. Any outcome, short of boring decisions, would be embarrassing.
