YouTube Boxing Match – Biggest Event in Internet Influencer History

YouTube Boxing Match - Biggest Event in Internet Influencer History

Emma Walrath

Logan Paul, YouTube royalty, versus KSI UK YouTube Superstar, the internet boxing match of the century. Both are controversial influencers with massive audiences and the hype building up to this fight and the petty drama has been big news for months.

August 25th, 2018 Logan and KSI entered the ring at the Manchester Arena in England, with millions of people watching, all around the world. Many of the millions of views were fans of one of them, others were just sucked into the drama, but lots were tuning in to see one of them get beaten up in the ring because of something wrong they have done in the past; everyone was very disappointed when after 10 rounds, the fight ended in a draw.

Logan Paul has had many scandals over his YouTube career, the most prominent being the suicide forest incident, where he made fun of a dead body in Japan’s notorious forest. Therefore, many tuning in to the fight were only there to see Logan get beat up by KSI. He has had multiple controversies of his own, such as the rumored sexual harassment claims made in 2012. This fight brought in a significant amount of money, from fans and haters.

This was one of the first pay per view events that YouTube has done. The fight cost 8 dollars to stream live. Merchandise booths lined the hallways of the venue and there were thousand of sales online, for both Paul and KSI.

The money coming from this fight is so massive because of the amazing advertising that both of them have done for the last months, from dis-tracks to press conferences, everyone has had an opinion about this lately, causing more people to want to watch them box.

The other controversy is that the popular streaming service, Twitch did not take down illegal streams of the fight, even though doing so violates the services guidelines. It is not known how much money was lost, but at one point there were over a million views on one of the streams and no one did anything about it. Since then the fight has become free on YouTube.

The actual fighting that took place seemed that Logan Paul was definitely losing, but it was called before an outcome could be reached. The rematch is scheduled for February 2019, somewhere in the United States this time.