Jake's Paul Next Steps

Jake Paul wants to fight in MMA, but the merger he just completed may finally give him the infrastructure to do it.

Paul has not competed since suffering a broken jaw in a knockout loss to Anthony Joshua last year. The recovery has been lengthy, but the business has not stood still. Most Valuable Promotions has been reshaping its structure throughout 2026, and the merger with PFL represents the most significant move yet: "I've been trying to make it happen for a long time and it's really just come down to negotiations behind the scenes.

Bidarian has driven the business side — securing broadcast deals with Netflix and Sky Sports, developing the women's boxing division, and pushing into MMA events while Paul was recovering and while the promotional landscape was shifting. The MVP MMA 1 card, which headlined Ronda Rousey against Gina Carano and featured Francis Ngannou, was positioned as a proof of concept for what Bidarian describes as a "fighter-first" approach to the sport.

"Since launching MVP, our goal has always been bigger than just building a boxing promotion. It has been to build the future of combat sports. In less than five years, MVP has become one of the most influential and culturally relevant brands in the industry, producing some of the biggest events in combat sports history, elevating women's boxing to unprecedented heights, and bringing millions of new fans into the fight game,” Bidarian said

PFL brings the next layer: roughly 400 fighters under contract, an established tournament format, existing broadcast relationships, and operational scale that MVP did not have on its own.

"This merger accelerates our MMA ambitions while strengthening our ability to continue investing in boxing," Bidarian

Dana White's response to that framing this week was characteristically dismissive — two organizations nobody watches merging to create a bigger organization nobody watches, he said. The UFC's position is that the gap between itself and every other MMA organization is large enough that a merger between competitors creates noise rather than competition.

What is undeniable is that MVP-PFL now has more resources than either had separately, a working MMA roster, and a face in Jake Paul who generates attention regardless of what he is doing. Whether that combination translates into fights that move the needle remains the question.