KSI's boxing return against Alex Wassabi is being targeted for August, with Jake Paul now stepping in to help with negotiations for the event.
British YouTuber KSI has had a long-running rivalry with Wassabi, which has heated up again after the American defeated his younger brother Deji last month in his boxing debut. KSI has fought three times, twice as an amateur and once as a professional, and is plotting a ring return in the hopes of earning a fight with Paul.
But he first has set out a plan to fight twice before the end of the year, with Paul and his Most Valuable Promotions working towards making sure Wassabi becomes the first opponent. Paul's promotional company haven't signed Wassabi as yet, but have agreed to work in an advisory capacity to help push his boxing career.
"We're shooting for that KSI fight in August," Paul told Mirror Fighting of Wassabi's boxing future. "I think it could very easily happen, it's just from KSI's side him actually getting in the ring, he keeps on talking about it and he's been talking about it for what seems like years now.
"So who knows if he actually is going to put down the microphone and pick up the boxing gloves. Because there's a lot at risk for him and I don't think his ego can take a loss, so I don't know if the money is going to be worth him losing in the ring."
And Paul believes that KSI will look to make major money from boxing after claiming that the Brit's rap career is beginning to decline. This is despite a No.1 album and a UK tour that concluded with a sold-out OVO Arena Wembley date. "Take a look at his Spotify and his monthly listeners," Paul added. "They're slowly declining.
"You can only pay for so many features, he's paid damn near every person in the rap game to do a feature for him, and now he's out of features and the numbers are going down. Obviously the music sucks, it's not good, no-one is ever like 'oh did you hear that new KSI?' No-one is talking about that stuff.
"The music is going down and boxing for influencers is where the money's at now. KSI is a business guy, obviously he has Prime [his new energy drink company] with my brother, so when the numbers are declining on the music side you're going to look towards boxing.
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"Everyone saw I made $45million from it last year, there's not any music artist in the world who's being paid that in a year besides Drake. So boxing is where the money is at."
Paul and Wassabi have been friends since the early days of their social media fame. They were neighbours on California when the Paul brothers Jake and Logan arrived on the scene, and are now back working together in the boxing world.
"We're advising Alex on his boxing endeavours," Paul explained. "He came off a big win and he's not officially a MVP athlete. But we've got a lot of experience in this realm and he needed some help with negotiations and figuring out how to map out his career and his game plan.
"So Nakisa [Bidarian, MVP co-founder] and I have stepped in to really help him and obviously he's a big star, a big YouTuber and we sort of figured out the formula to making these fights happen and make a lot of money off of it. So it just made sense for us to reach out a helping hand, help with everything that's going on and hopefully we can lock down one of these big fights."
