Based on the chatter I saw on the internet on social media and martial arts forums, the general consensus on Saturday’s Trill Fight Club was: Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren, that it was trash. Delicious trash. Entertaining, in a wide variety of ways, from pure shrinking to laughter incredible.
From Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night Live” performing mobile trolling duties to an incredible explosion of Oscar De La Hoya on the microphone that makes everyone who knows his sobriety issues uncomfortable, there was plenty of feed for endless Twitter posts and hot recordings.
There was also enough heat behind the event to allegedly draw 1.4 million pay-per-view purchases. This is according to our friends at Bad Left Hook, and we have to say that our statistics imply that more than a million attention is being paid to the event online. One interesting measurement we were worth sharing: the fight between Jake Paul and Ben Askren yielded seven times more Google searches than the Wrestlemania 37 event last week.
Of course, early numbers are just like that: early. And the good people at Triller Fight Club have a firm interest in people seeing this event as a huge success, and not as an insane money-burning exercise that should be mocked around and not encouraged. Much of the old transparency that once existed when pay-per-view numbers came in through cable companies is now gone, and promoters can claim anything they think they can get away with, now that the numbers are through one or two internet held streaming partners.
Right now, here’s a little balm for legitimate martial arts lovers: Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren is not the biggest PPV event of 2021. This goes for UFC 257: McGregor against Poirier 2, which reportedly sold 1.6 million buys. Do not be surprised if Triller updates their numbers in a week or so.
Regardless of the exact case, a lot of money was generated and spent. On the MMA side, Frank Mir and Ben Askren were paid, so that’s nice. And there’s a new freak show promotion out here that’s giving us something weirder than the golden era of Japanese MMA ever managed.
Of course, Japanese MMA has usually also produced incredible fights. We’ll see if Triller is interested in incorporating the element of their promotion.