Last month Netflix shattered streaming viewership records when it played host to a boxing match between the former YouTube star Jake Paul and boxing legend Mike Tyson.
Now it’s hoping to replicate some of that magic with his older brother Logan Paul, who will return to the WWE next year to be one of the stars of Raw, which will make its Netflix debut Jan. 6.
Paul, who joined the WWE in 2022 but has been on hiatus for much of the year, was reintroduced to the company by WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Raw GM Adam Pierce at an event hosted by the company at its Stamford, Connecticut headquarters Wednesday.
In front of about 400 fans gathered in the company’s cavernous lobby downtown, Paul emerged to a chorus of boos, before leaning into some crowd-work with those in attendance.
“Every single one of my matches is a banger,” Paul crowed to the audience. “Think about it. Mike Tyson wants to fight me. Conor McGregor wants to fight me. Of course they do, a payday with a Paul brother is a bucket list item for most all of these washed-up fighters.”
Tyson, of course, lost to Jake Paul just last month, and subsequently called out Logan. And the UFC and MMA star McGregor on Tuesday posted on X that “I am in preliminary agreements with the Ambani family to face Logan Paul in a boxing exhibition in India.”
A source close to the matter, however, says that such a match is not going to happen. And if Logan Paul is going to be one of the faces of the WWE on Netflix next year, one can understand why.
Netflix is making a big bet on the WWE, to the tune of $5 billion, and it wants and expects everything to go smoothly. At a press event in Los Angeles earlier this month, executives dismissed concerns about whether the service can handle the events, after the Paul-Tyson fight suffered some buffering issues.
“If it blinks a couple of times, and we do 60 million [viewers], I’m good with that,” Levesque quipped.
Logan Paul, like his younger brother, is happy to relish in being an antihero, a role that is particularly useful at a place like the WWE, which needs a consistently refreshed roster of heroes and villains. Paul used the event in Stamford to kick off his next chapter at the company, and on Netflix:
“Here’s the message to the entire WWE roster, everyone watching back there, everyone watching at home, because I know you’re watching,” Paul told the crowd, removing his sunglasses for effect. “If you have something that I want, I’m going to take it. I’m not asking permission. I am going to take it from you.”
“I’m not here to take part. I’m here to take over. Your approval means nothing to me,” he said, before leaning into the persona that he and his brother have crafted as must-see TV, whether viewers like them or no. “Whether you love me, whether you hate me, I don’t care, because you’re still watching, and you will stay watching because you are a spectator, and I am a star, and I promise everyone in the crowd right now, everyone watching at home, you are looking at the future WWE World Champion, and his name is Logan Paul.”
Source: Hollywoodreporter
