Morning Report: Brendan Schaub says Logan Paul and KSI are better promoters than the UFC

This past weekend, Justin Gaethje knocked out James Vick in the main event of UFC Lincoln, and while the viewership numbers haven’t come in yet, it almost certainly was not the biggest combat sports event of the weekend, at least not monetarily. That honor would fall clearly to the celebrity boxing match between well-known YouTube personalities KSI and Logan Paul, which an estimated 750,000 people payed $10 to watch. It was, by all accounts, an enormous success and one that some MMA personalities believe reveals just how easy fight promotion is.

“I loved what they are doing because they are showing how easy it is to promote a fight!” Brendan Schaub said on his Below the Belt podcast. “When everyone goes, ‘Being a promoter is so difficult.’ Really? These kids have zero background! They both decided, ‘Hey, we both have a following,’ and they did it all their own. I’m sure they lined up with some help to acquire the arena and get the ticket sales and all that, but for the most part two famous guys showed you how easy it is to promote and sell a fight. It is not rocket science. No one is skilled at doing this. We give way too much respect to these promoters. They are not that skilled. It’s very obvious who should be fighting, what fight to make, how to build a fight.”

KSI and Paul both have tremendous social media influence as individuals but are novices in the fight promotion game. Nonetheless, the managed to put on an event that sold more pay-per-views (albeit at a far lower price point) than any UFC event this year. For Schaub, that is just indicative of the UFC’s failings as a promotion. When amateurs can outsell world class competition, Schaub says, the promoter is not doing their job.

“When a fight does not sell, that’s when you realize how s**tty a promoter is,”” Schaub continued. “Whenever there’s two headline UFC fighters, both those guys are so f**king talented it’s not even funny. For those fights not to sell should not rely on a fighter. That’s where a promoter or the marketing business of the UFC, or name whatever boxing promoter you want, should come into play. It is not the responsibility of them. Them being the fighters.

“For these two guys with zero background to s**t on any UFC fight this year, numbers-wise, shows you how poorly of a job the UFC is doing at times and how easy it is to promote a fight.”

Schaub’s opinion runs in direct opposition to Dana White’s own stance on the matter, which is that it is the role of fighters to promote themselves. That could perhaps explain why the even the champion vs. champion superfight of UFC 226 didn’t even break 400,000 PPV buys. Of course, there’s one way to shore up those numbers, just sign Logan Paul. Schaub says he wouldn’t put it past the UFC to do just that given the success of the event this weekend, after all, they did sign CM Punk.

“People want to hate on these, tell me how this is any different than the UFC signing CM Punk?” said Schaub. “I will wait. . .

“Again, you’re going down a tricky road because someone in the UFC offices is watching going, ‘That Logan Paul looked pretty good. How much does he weigh?’ You’re bats**t crazy if you don’t think in the UFC office this morning someone went, ‘We’re just spit-balling ideas here, did anyone see the Logan Paul fight? He didn’t look terrible! What numbers did they do? Better than any card we’ve had this year. Should we sign him?’ I guarantee there’s a spark interest of signing Logan Paul to the UFC.”