How to Build a Better Fight
I had no intention of watching the Jake Paul–Anderson Silva boxing match last Saturday. I promise, no part of me even considered plopping down on a couch to see a punkish 25-year-old social media mogul try to knock out a retired mixed martial arts legend 22 years his senior. It’s safe to say I'm not too enamored with the Jake Paul ethos, nor does any 24 minutes of ring time excitement justify the $59.99 price tag, funds which could be deployed to purchase 24.48 24 oz containers of my favorite fridge staple, Aldi brand Friendly Farms lowfat cottage cheese.
Thing is, I did watch the Jake Paul–Anderson Silva boxing match last Saturday. All eight rounds, kneeling near the Halloween party host’s boyfriend’s laptop, staying there until Paul’s hand was raised in semi-surprising triumph. And while I don’t think I gained any new love for Paul or wiggle room on the cost/value proposition, I got a taste for why one might gravitate towards such an event; a sold out arena, seven figure paydays, eight-plus figure revenues and worldwide online attention.
For one, I continually underestimate how much I (and many others) enjoy seeing people beat the living bajeezus out of one another. America was shaped by seminal ultraviolent conflicts with (maybe) the aim to create a more peaceful and democratic society, yet the price for trying to maintain that has more or less led to more violence and confrontation. As anxiety, depression, inequality and declining social connectedness have all gained momentum, a common way to cope is leaning into simulated violence, scenarios with rules and limits for which these complex energies can be sufficiently channeled.
Over the last half century, there’s been an upswell of entertainment built with a strongly violent backbone—the NFL, the UFC, first person shooter video games, cop shows, mob films, true crime docs/podcasts, even social media-posted phone footage of average drunken joes duking it out or kids throwing hands on WorldStar. Even if one doesn’t venture down these avenues, our communal ability to absorb the harsh realities of local, national, and global happenings is higher than before. Atrocities of war find a way of slipping out of the news and the noggin. Mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and environmentally fueled natural disasters might send shockwaves, but still take on a cyclical shape that ultimately renders us numb to the hurt, somewhat able to forget it. The more bludgeoned we get, the more many of us seek out ways to pad ourselves from the pain, seeking solace in the aforementioned violence-stuffed simulators.
I think it’s unwise to stake any claim that this content is the reason why our times are (or appear) more violent. If anything, an argument could be made that these simulators serve more as safe controlled societal ventilators than conflict-causing kindling. Wherever your beliefs sit on this spectrum, I myself find my overall tolerance for pain and insanity higher these days. The rush from watching someone—particularly a Jake Paul kind of figure—knocking and getting knocked, was palpable, even satisfying. The actual violence of the fight is not my primary sticking point. As my demographic fits, I’m curious about getting more into combat sports. My aversion towards fully investing in this culture is the same reason why anyone decides not to invest in any phenomena—an overall absence of time/access to understand the rules and a reason to appreciate/pursue knowledge about the lore, personalities, and essential contexts that makes something valuable/enjoyable.
We can see this adoption hurdle everywhere. Major League Soccer had difficulties surpassing it for decades, and the struggle remains present for games like cricket or bridge. Try taking up a long running narrative series like (soap opera) The Bold and the Beautiful or (comic strip) Doonesbury and notice how little you pick up. Have fun digesting recent online zeitgeist scandals (Don’t Worry Darling, The Try Guys) or world events (Iranian protests, Mar-a-Lago raids) without a very informed, unbiased, thorough, and/or patient individual who is willing to explain. In all, unless you’re raised on/with something, are an early adopter, or have the time/energy/monetary wherewithal to plow into catching up on the vast and continuously evolving storylines of any world or culture, you cannot, will not, or will not want to want to understand. Life is busy and demanding, and there are only so many wagons to hitch oneself to.
Let’s apply this back into the realm of figting-based entertainment—like WWE wrestling, a remarkably resilient piece of popular culture since the 1980s. As a purely scripted show birthed out of its own performative universe, WWE's success is a result of its lore and characters crossing, clashing and collaborating over time. You might know the mainstream stars, but if you never grew up watching Hulk Hogan taking on André the Giant or done the homework as to why John Cena beefs with the The Rock, your enjoyment—or ability to—will remain limited. Even if you wanted to know, where do you start, and how?
On the other end of this continuum are professional boxing (WBC, WBO) and the UFC. Both have grown and maintained their success as the gold standards of their respective athletic fields, where the best of the best go to prove it. The fights are real, the consequences are real and the degree to which the bouts are arranged and analyzed are approached with utmost seriousness. Again, if you don’t have the necessary background, or any interest in actual bruises, blood and brutality, it likely won’t be on the top of your watchlist, if at all.1
As for the Paul–Silva bout, it landed it somewhere in the middle of the entertainment-professionalism scale. The fight was fought in earnest and seemed to not be scripted (despite the underdog victor), yet the not-quite (or no longer) professional nature of the combatants combined with Paul’s effortless ego strokes did make it feel at times like a stunted spectacle. There wasn’t much lore to the proceedings, moreso a cash grab and another platform for Jake to prove he was worthy of facing a WBC/UFC level talent. Paul proved he could punch, and though the match didn’t turn me into a fanatic, I was intrigued by the possibilities of this semi-pro platform. It felt like an approachable appetizer, a way to begin to understand fighting without having to go full-in on the multi-course meal. With a packed arena and multimultimillions via various revenue (pay-per-view, betting, event tickets) streams, the demand was clear.
Given this fervor and my unexpectedly curious response, I wondered how this model might be improved, expanded-upon. Between WWE Wrestlemania and a Heavyweight title fight, is there a goldilocks ‘just right’ of an event that would serve a new kind of consumer? How might it be built to spark hype and whet the entertainment appetites of the fighting-ignorant and fighting-curious who don’t want to take things too seriously, but legitimate enough to retain their attention and encourage them to become passionate, knowledgeable fans without excess lore, terminology or catch-up? Perhaps not, but worth seeing what else can be learned. Let’s put on our mad scientist goggles and see.
Celebrities
The first component of our hypothetical fight-league has to be a pipeline of known entities as competitors. They could be current or former entertainers, athletes, influencers, public figures, viral people with some sticking power. They can come from anywhere or anything and the audience doesn’t have to know all or any of them, just enough to know they were someone known for something, somewhere, at some point.
Why is this important? There’s already an established presence to build off from, and subvert. Getting people excited about talented professional fighters is harder when so few know their backgrounds and stories. As Jake Paul proves, there’s something about someone being known for one thing attempting to do another that is magnetizing, noteworthy. We are still largely accustomed to seeing public-facing figures looking and acting as expected, in their relative lanes and elements, and when we see them venture out and beyond them, something changes. We see new dimensions and imperfections, and in this process, assess ourselves differently. You realize if they can do it, so could you, or if they can’t, you might laugh or scoff at them for thinking they should try and be anything more than what they established themselves to be.
This is the undercurrent that makes so much ‘reality-adjacent’ content successful and irresistible to watch: Dancing With The Stars, The Masked Singer, Worst Cooks in America (Celeb Edition), or any guest game segment on a late-night show all capitalize on the celebrity fish out of water trope. It’s hard not to click, look, explore, applaud, rage against. Under this lens, it’s little coincidence a former reality television star was the one to ascend to the presidency, grab a century-old party establishment by the cajones and court hordes of new voters and followers from overlooked, unexpected places. Others with well-known backgrounds have noticed and done the same (Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker) or might consider leveraging their statuses for political roles in the future (Matt McConaughey, Dwayne Johnson).
If the public can get behind a celeb learning to partner dance or sing underneath elaborate costumes, imagine the buzz created when they’re expected to train and fight someone else? Agents and business managers might object, but eyes and dollars will follow drama, and there’s nothing more dramatic than hand-to-hand combat.
Boundaries
Reality-adjacent shows perform well because they are fueled by personalities, but unlike pure reality plays (Southern Charm, Love Island, the Kardashians), they have rules, goals, competition, purpose. It’s not so much a stage for the people to flaunt themselves, rather having them meet a challenge outside of themselves. In setting up a fight scenario, the objective is outlined, weight class defined, opponent set. What's required is the process of preparing for these conditions, which is where the opportunities for buildup, branding and monetization are vast. Each celeb could leverage their own status to forge new partnerships and create their own supplemental content about their training process, attracting their respective audiences over time to the fight.
Like DWTS or The Masked Singer, a fight is also a prime opportunity to revive or change someone’s image (physically, emotionally, societally), or even double down on the one that already exists. Existing rivalries could be built upon, or new ones could emerge or be arranged. It may seem silly, but in the properly structured container, the upside could be significant.
Universes
When one considers how to best structure ‘player vs player’ entertainment, there are already some that have experimented within this format. For years, Barstool Sports has put on a series called “Rough n’ Rowdy,” which pits fans and Barstool affiliated folks in boxing matches, with commentary by popular personalities from the company. “Verzuz” (a pandemic creation) has two R&B or Hip-Hop legends face off, performing their greatest hits in-concert on a livestream. Both do an admirable job of galvanizing their fanbases, but also have their limitations. Rough n’ Rowdy’s contestants are comprised of all amateurs, only really relevant to those within the Barstoolsphere. Verzuz has more mainstream appeal, but as it’s the music (and its performance) that’s being judged, a subjective medium can’t have an objective winner and loser.
Perhaps the best embodiments of blending fun and fighting are seen in video games, as some of the world’s most lucrative franchises model this format: Super Smash Bros, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, Soulcalibur. The formula is pulling together a diverse set of characters with different attributes, then allowing the player to pick and choose which best suits their style and preference. Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros is particularly remarkable in how it draws across the entire scope of the company’s intellectual property and partnerships, from Mario to Kirby to Ness to Pokémon to the Wii Fit Trainer, creating millions of possible unique matchups and combinations. Franchise-centric fighting games like Injustice (DC Comics), Dragon Ball Z, and Marvel vs. Capcom have also followed suit, leveraging their iconic characters for mainstream appeal.
The newest iterative step is MultiVersus, released in July of this year. It’s another platform fighting game, but with playable characters from across the Warner Brothers Discovery catalog, including Arya Stark, Bugs Bunny, LeBron James and Scooby-Doo. Though it's essentially a Super Smash Bros copycat with a different cast of characters, it’s a slick way to not only generate engagement and revenue, but invite audiences deeper into WBD’s expansive portfolio. Though the game is a game, it is also a promotional superhighway, with exits towards other games, shows and narrative universes for a player to learn about and explore, potentially prompting them to purchase an HBO Max subscription.
With the streaming wars in full swing, content has proven to be king. The services that have performed well and will ultimately survive are the ones with the deepest libraries, with enough hits and choices to incentivize consumers to pay their bills month after month. Streamers are trying to churn out the next big original hit while simultaneously building on the valuable universes their parent company owns the rights to. This is easier for companies like Disney and Warner, who have developed deep catalogs built on uber-popular franchises like Marvel and Star Wars (Disney) or DC, Looney Toons and Game of Thrones (WBD). As the arms race of worldbuilding continues to intensify, other media players will have to take risks and find ways to optimize their IP, or face the risk of receding into irrelevance.
Which brings us back to combat sports. As so many streaming services have leapt hard into the sports world, the opportunity for a sporty, violent, reality-adjacent event feels ripe for the picking. If I was a Netflix, a Peacock (Comcast), a Paramount + (CBS), here’s what I’d suggest:
1) Corral your celebrities. All these organizations have hundreds of creative partnerships and developmental deals with lots of known entities. They can draw from their existing talent pools, show lineups, or reach anyone in the broader online/entertainment industry with a phone call. If the platform’s big enough and the money’s there, people will pick up.
2) Lock down the lineups. Model it like Smash Bros. or MultiVersus, showcasing prized franchises along with talent you want audiences to get to know. For Netflix, have the guy who plays Steve from Stranger Things to trade punches with Shayne from Love is Blind, or get a Derry Girl to get in the ring with a comedian with a recent standup special. Mix, match, and milk your IP for all it’s got.
3) Set the stage. Promote wisely, and let the combatants do the marketing for you on their own channels (training, smacktalk). Make content about and around the content, building up the hype cycle.
4) Do it live. Stream three or four fights in a primetime slot or offer it as a service exclusive that can also be streamed later. Developing a real-time entertainment experience might be a new step for online-native companies, but in-person games and sporting events can be lucrative. Want to expand into these fields, or do so further? Here’s a way to dip your toes in.
5) Assess, alter, repeat. See what demographic groups are watching. Was it similar to a WWE, UFC, Jake Paul? Was there good word of mouth and social media, notable storylines? What were the best kind of matchups, and were there any worth repeating for a later date? Unless it was a complete and utter money vacuum, it’s worth trying again, and is at least different than dropping tens of millions on another aggressively meh niche film/show very few will watch. Iterate, and see what happens.
Of course, I don’t know if this kind of leap is really logical or feasible, or if there’s any true method to bring combat sports to the masses or an accessible mainstream. If there’s a greater takeaway here, it’s that no needle gets moved if things are played safe. As much as I detest him, Jake Paul is off the wall. Off the wall is not what most think we want, but the world is so off the wall that often off the wall is what we seek, or are waiting for. Until creators think different and/or consumers demand different, we’re going to go nowhere.
For now, maybe it’s only a frivolous dream to consider Lil Pump in the octagon with Anthony Weiner, or Mary-Kate slipping on the gloves to fight Ashley for the title of Olsen twin supremacy. But to quote another celeb in a cult sports hit...“if you build it...they will come.”
Additionally, as entities like WWE and the UFC have mostly grown on the fringes of the entertainment and sports mainstreams (AKA not a studio film/tv series/major sports league), they have had to utilize other ways to gain traction and generate revenue. In most cases, this requires a reliance on the pay-per-view model, or in some recent cases, attaching themselves to a streaming service. This means you won’t get access to this content unless you pay on top of your existing cable/television bundle, and often even on top of your streaming bundle. Given our evolved expectation to access most content for free or in large accessible quantities for a reasonable price, asking any potentially interested party to splash the cash for a one-time event adds another layer of separation to more mainstream adoption (a curse also afflicting movie theaters).