What the hell was that? Don’t let Jake Paul’s win distract you from the horrible Triller’s Fight Club event
Jake Paul and Ben Askren “fought” last night. I put that in quotes because it wasn’t much of a fight. Just over a minute in, Paul finished Askren with a brutal right hook that saw the referee call the fight off. But, I feel like Triller’s Fight Club disastrous event last night will be overshadowed by the Jake Paul finish of Askren. I can’t let it rest, I have to bring up the elephant in the room. The production was absolutely terrible last night.
Triller’s Fight Club was supposed to bring in a cinematic experience to boxing. What does that mean? We have to sit through more interviews and musical performances that we do actual boxing. Sporting events such as the Super Bowl have musical acts and put on fantastic shows at halftime, but it doesn’t make the halftime event all about the music. It’s about football. What Triller put on last night was bloated and just too much frills and not enough boxing. Fans already complain about this kind of stuff in boxing as it is. The over the top ring walks are criticized by fans who just want to see boxing. Triller takes that and puts it on steroids and lets it be even worse.
Triller’s Fight Club: Not About Boxing
Triller’s Fight Club brought in a plethora of the hottest stars in pop culture and the likes. Pete Davidson, Snoop Dogg, and more all were there. Cool right? No, not cool. The problem with having all of these A-list stars on the broadcast is they’re all bumping heads and trying to be the “star” of the PPV when in fact, it should have been Jake Paul and Ben Askren being put on a pedestal for fighting and getting this event together. Without Jake Paul, without Ben Askren even, this pay per view would have tanked hard. People tuned in to see them fight. Literally nobody wanted to see the musical performances. It was a complete trainwreck.
The commentary booth was perhaps the worst of the entire night. It was bloated with six or so people all trying to talk over one another. They were drunk and high, completely oblivious to that fact last night. Triller’s Fight Club had no real experts in boxing on the booth with the exception of Oscar De La Hoya. But if you listened to De La Hoya, you’d understand that him on the booth was a negative. I won’t say my real thoughts here, but something was off about De La Hoya.
The booth needs to be sober, needs to be professional and needs to be analyst. Even if they’re not good, they need to try. They didn’t. Instead, when Paul and Askren were about to fight, we got whoever that dude was saying, “I’m about to cum. Oh! I just came so hard.” Childish.
Then there was the fact there was one legit matchup on the card in Regis Prograis vs. Ivan Redkach. That fight ended when Redkach faked a low blow and was handed the loss for not being able to continue. The real issue here isn’t Redkach faking an injury, it’s the fact that this was the only boxing match on the card that actually mattered on the World Championship level. This is supposed to be about boxers, young and upcoming, getting exposure.
Here our pleas, please!
It isn’t just me either, people flocked to Twitter to express their displeasure with how the PPV was handled. It was a disaster. I fear that Triller will see the huge pay per view numbers that are rumored, near the million mark, and see the event as a success. Then, they’ll be keen on doing that again. The next Triller’s Fight Club event features one of the best pound for pound boxers in the world, Teofimo Lopez, coming off of the biggest win of his career. If that event is anywhere near the shenanigan level as Paul vs. Askren was, it will absolutely tank in the worst way possible. Should that be a disaster, cutting ties with Lopez will be a snowball effect that sees actual boxers refuse to go on the platform.
I plea to Triller’s Fight Club, listen to us. Don’t let big PPV events like the Mike Tyson comeback and Jake Paul’s spectacle jade your vision. You’re treading water with a 50 pound ruck on your back. Spending all this money on Megan Thee Stallion and Snoop Dogg and not going after big events and making your cards actually entertaining will see you go by the way side, into the land of has beens and dead promotions.
Instead of lamenting how bad last night’s pay per view event was, watch this video breakdown of Mike Tyson knocking out Michael Spinks in 1988 below!
