Saturday’s Triller boxing card was an interesting show, to say the least. Here are three takeaways from the maiden voyage over at Triller Fight Club.
Well, that’s that.
After months of build-up, a shuffling undercard, a thousand music acts, and one sad main event, we can shut the door on the first boxing event headed up by the Snoop Dogg and Triller collaborated promotion known as Triller Fight Club. The top “highlights” of the card were a visibly drunk Oscar De La Hoya on commentary, billionaire Joe Fournier knocking out a reggaeton artist, and obviously the main-event fight between Jake Paul and Ben Askren.
Here are three takeaways from the first Triller Fight Club card.
Jake Paul is here to stay, for now at least.
Going into this, Jake Paul was a heavy favorite against former Bellator and ONE welterweight champion Ben Askren, and for good reason. Askren is the worst mixed martial artist striker of recent memory, and possibly of all-time to have any success in the sport. That being said, some thought that Askren’s savvy veteran skills and gas tank might be enough to beat a boxing novice. That was not the case as Askren got flattened in round one, albeit with a controversial stoppage.
So we now know Jake Paul is a good enough striker to controversially beat the worst striker potentially in MMA history. However, this won’t be the last time we see him, not even close. With a buyrate of anything from 1.45 million to 2 million buys on PPV according to a report from BadLeftHook, we will be seeing a lot more of Paul. Who will it be against? Who knows, Dillion Danis appears to be an obvious pick due to Paul wanting a McGregor fight down the road, but we’ll see.
Other names that we could see in the ring with Paul range from Mike Perry to BJ Penn, but one thing is for sure, we will see him again. As sad as it sounds, he’s legitimately one of the biggest boxing stars right now.
Triller’s presentation continues to be excellent.
There’s going to be many cons coming out of this show, however, one thing that nobody can dunk on would be Triller’s presentation. The first Triller card, Tyson vs. Jones killed it with the presentation and did a good job of playing up a fight between two men in their 50’s, and they somehow did it again by getting people interested in a fight between a YouTuber and a 36-year-old former wrestler coming off a hip replacement.
Come fight night, we saw many staples of the first card once again, night lighting, great sound quality, and the video presentation was excellent, especially when previewing the main event. Triller reportedly is attempting to bring cinematic elements into the fights and that’s something that could be appreciated when everything settles down. Promoters never attempt anything new due to the risk/reward being so much bigger when you’re a big company, Triller is trying something new and they deserve credit.
It’s important to remember that years ago, the NFL took aspects from the failed football league known as the XFL. Just because some aspects of a promotion my be… questionable (that’s being kind), doesn’t mean that everything is, and Triller did a great job with the production value of the event and doing new things.
It felt like a complete car crash most of the time.
However, there are times when it is all too much. There were good things, such as Pete Davidson pretty much acting like the sole person there that knows the card is a bit of a joke, even mentioning at times that even having him there is bringing down the event itself. Snoop Dogg also provided a couple of funny moments on commentary as well, however, they were much rarer this time around.
But there are certain things that should never be done in sports, and a six-man booth is one of them. The main event had Ray Flores, Crimefaces, Al Bernstein (poor Al), Pete Davidson, Mario Lopez, and Snoop Dogg all on the call. The conclusion of the fight was nothing but a mix of different people yelling with no real direction. That’s not the only low-light either, as Oscar De La Hoya went viral for his clearly unintelligible commentary during the Mir-Cunningham fight. What should’ve been a nice moment on an otherwise insane card as two legends of their sport put on a fun show, was instead overshadowed by De La Hoya’s yelling.
Also the obvious here, the musical acts. They kind of worked on the first card because it was a couple of popular artists doing one or two tracks with pretty excellent presentation. It felt like a fight card with a music intermission, which was obviously basically what it was. At one point at Askren vs. Paul on Saturday, however, there was one boxing match in two hours of the PPV being live, which is insane. The card was a complete and utter car crash at times.
It’s going to be interesting to see what Triller’s next card does. The first one could sell as the comeback of Tyson, the second one could sell-off of the star-power of Paul, the third one doesn’t have a massive star on it so it’s not going to appeal to the casual masses, and Triller seemingly spent all of Saturday night telling the hardcore fans that Triller Fight Club isn’t for them.
