Can YouTube star Logan Paul find redemption in boxing?

Editor’s note: This story contains mature content.

On a September morning in Los Angeles, one of the internet’s most popular entertainers is not in the mood to entertain. He’s not here for the jokes and antics that have defined his YouTube career, Logan Paul says into a camera, his blond hair cut short, his fingers each adorned with a silver ring. This year, he insists, he’s a boxer first.

But when he walks onto the stage near Staples Center, sunglasses on, biceps peeking out from the sleeves of his flamboyant silk shirt, it quickly becomes clear what kind of mood Paul is in. Minutes into the introduction, he starts flicking a cup of ice water at his opponent, British YouTuber Olajide “KSI” Olatunji, prompting security to get between them. When it’s his turn to talk, Paul grabs the mic from the podium, stalks the stage with a hungry energy and rattles off a series of insults. “You look a little thick, and you smell like herpes” is one of the more memorable ones. He works the crowd, getting people to chant in full, youthful voice, anything from “U-S-A” to KSI “has no d—.” KSI retorts, “Go ask your mum. Your mum’s right there. Hey, how’s my d—?” Paul goes over to his mom, Pam Stepnick, whose YouTube channel “Vlogmom” has 793,000 subscribers, and asks if KSI does in fact have one. “No!” she announces confidently.

It feels like a scene out of a drunken frat party, only hosted by sober adults who make a living from providing entertainment for the few hundred kids there (and hundreds of thousands more online). The youngest stand on a planter to see. The oldest look like they’re in college. There’s a solid KSI contingent, but most of them are Logan Paul fans. “He’s inspiring,” a teenage girl says about why she likes Paul. “I like the way he respects his fans.”

These kids are the reason Logan Paul and KSI are here today, why these two internet stars with little boxing experience and 20 million YouTube subscribers each have been sanctioned by the California State Athletic Commission to stage a professional fight at Staples Center on Nov. 9. Because when they orchestrated their own amateur fight last year, so many of these kids tuned in that the adults couldn’t help but figure out how to cash in. They might have had to Google their names, but they understood what Logan Paul and KSI could do for them. As mainstream entertainment yearns to reach young people on the internet and internet stars yearn to go mainstream, Logan Paul and KSI — and their combined 40 million followers — could be boxing’s perfect match.

To be clear, neither of these guys is a professional boxer, and how they fell into boxing is one of the great flukes of the internet. KSI, the 26-year-old son of Nigerian immigrants to the U.K., started his career posting videos of his exploits on FIFA. One of Paul’s earliest videos showed him prank-calling a restaurant under the name “Mike Buttski.” Neither of them had ever boxed until 2018. But they both have viewership numbers that mainstream entertainment outlets dream of, and their fight last year dwarfed most professional bouts in pay-per-view buys.

An 18-year-old KSI fan says he used to like Paul but feels the 24-year-old “crossed a line with the Japanese forest thing.” That “Japanese forest thing” was the first time many people outside the YouTube generation had heard of Logan Paul. In December 2017, Paul and his friends took a trip to the Aokigahara Forest outside Tokyo, known as a common suicide site, and filmed a video featuring a man hanging from a tree. In it, Paul, wearing a fuzzy “Toy Story” alien hat, says, deadpan to the camera, “What, you never stand next to a dead guy?” The incident was the most controversial of Paul’s controversial career. The internet declared him canceled, and he lost fans, sponsorships and a lucrative partnership with Google. For a moment, it looked as if Logan Paul’s career might be over, that this one stunt too far would turn his fans, not to mention commercial partners, against him for good.
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