Nick Khan Explains How WWE Made Deals With Bad Bunny & Logan Paul
Bad Bunny and Logan Paul have had a lot of success in the WWE ring over the past years and Nick Khan has shared how the company ended up using both stars.
The phrase “anything can happen” has been mentioned by WWE for decades to tell fans that the company is always going to try to do things that their fans may never expect.
In the last few years, we have seen two men take WWE by storm as special attractions: Bad Bunny & Logan Paul.
While Bad Bunny and Logan Paul have yet to be in the same match together, they have both been in Royal Rumble matches (Bunny in 2022, Paul in 2023) and competed at major WWE events like WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Backlash and Crown Jewel.
Bad Bunny is a Grammy Award-winning singer that is especially big with the Spanish-speaking crowd. After winning his first WWE match – a tag team battle with Damian Priest at WrestleMania 37 in 2021, Bunny faced Priest at Backlash earlier this month. It was an impressive performance by Bunny, who looked like a natural wrestler rather than one of the world’s most successful musical acts.
Logan Paul came from the world of YouTube, podcasting and celebrity boxing. After starting out in a tag team match, Logan Paul has more than proven himself against some of the best WWE superstars ever like Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and The Miz.
Nick Khan is the WWE CEO that recently spoke during MoffettNathanson’s Inaugural Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference call with this story about what led WWE to bring in Bad Bunny.
“It started during the pandemic. There was a New York Times Sunday magazine cover with Bad Bunny on it. I didn’t know Bad Bunny’s music that well at the time. This was pre-vaccine COVID, so October 2020. Read the article, and a young lady who works with us said, ‘I don’t know if you know, but Bad Bunny is a huge wrestling fan.’ Showed me his Instagram feed. Triple H, when he was active, did this water routine with his entrance. Bad Bunny did it at a Miami Heat game. He’s a huge fan.”
“We sat there on Bad Bunny and this guy, who was not yet the number one artist, but certainly seemed on a path to that, he was not touring. He was sitting at home like all the rest of us. We reached out to him, ‘what do you think of this?’ ‘Yeah, I’d love to do it.’ He came in, lo and behold, our Spanish viewership on the show he was on spiked by 30 or 40 percent. Obviously, the relevancy factor mattered. He wanted to do more and more.”
As for Logan Paul, Khan said that the company was pitched about him by people involved in entertainment relations for the company.
“We also replicated that in a different demographic category with Logan Paul, who we were getting pitched on internally by our entertainment relations folks. ‘Logan Paul is going to be the next big thing.’ He came in and took it seriously, as did Bad Bunny. It registered. It mattered. Our young audience spiked.”
“Our bread and butter are our full-time superstars, but to be able to bring in Bad Bunny and Logan Paul and Pat McAfee at different points, it just increases awareness, which is good for us.”
Nick Khan isn’t the only one talking about Bad Bunny & Logan Paul together because WWE announcer Corey Graves pitched a Bunny-Paul match for the future.