Terence Crawford, Dozens Of Other Boxers, Wanted Jake Paul Fight, MVP CEO Says

Anthony Joshua landed the bout, but there was no shortage of big-name opponents lining up to fight Jake Paul ... including Terence Crawford, fresh off his Canelo Alvarez win, according to the CEO and cofounder of Most Valuable Promotions!!

"As soon as we knew we were going to move away from Gervonta Davis, we had a list of opponents. And the three names Jake gravitated towards were Ryan Garcia, Terence Crawford, and Anthony Joshua," Nakisa Bidarian told Babcock shortly after the Dec. 19th megafight was announced. "And there were probably 30 fighters who accepted to fight Jake. AJ being one of them, Crawford being another, and AJ is the one that we came to an agreement on."

When we followed up on Bud, asking if he was actually down to fight Jake, Nakisa responded ... "Yes, 100%."

While Paul-Crawford may be a big bout for the future, the 28-year-old, 12-1 boxer has his hands full with 36-year-old Joshua, a two-time unified heavyweight champion who has not only a vast edge in experience (32 pro fights vs. 13), but also size (6'6", 251 lbs. vs. 6'1", ~225 lbs.).

But that might actually be JP's advantage, according to Nakisa.

"It's a dangerous fight for Jake, but it's a more winnable fight for Jake than Gervonta Davis. And I say that in terms of, yes, Tank is a much smaller man, but he's quick, he's fast, he's precise, he's super skilled, and he had knockout power," Bidarian explained.

"AJ is big, strong, and has knockout power, but he's definitely slower than Tank. He's definitely less skilled than Tank. And so it will give Jake, the boxer, who's been in the sport a lot less than Joshua, the opportunity to display a better skill set than he would have against Tank from my perspective."

We also talked to Nakisa about Jake's training camp and whether he plans to pick the brain of someone like Oleksandr Usyk, a smaller heavyweight who has had lots of success against AJ.

"We have a great relationship with Usyk and his team. You probably saw, I think two weeks ago, Joshua was in camp with Usyk's coaches. So I don't know who's picking whose brain, but Usyk's definitely in the conversation here."

There's much more with Nakisa ... the guys talk about potential paychecks for AJ and Jake, and how many people could tune in worldwide on Netflix.