First things first: do not call Nakisa Bidarian “Jake Paul’s manager”, and do not call him a liar. These, according to the 47-year-old, are two of the biggest misconceptions around a man who has gone from a warring Iran to the UK, Los Angeles, Toronto, Dubai, Wall Street, the UFC, and Most Valuable Promotions, the boxing company he founded with YouTube star Paul – his business partner, not managee.

Bidarian, clearly, lived many lives before his current one. Child refugee, investment banker, financial adviser. Now he is a promoter, one of the closest associates to boxing’s most notorious disruptor, Paul. Bidarian is the man behind the 28-year-old “Problem Child”.

But once, he was a boy born in Iran and raised around the world. “My family fled the country because of the Iraq war,” he tells The Independent. “My older brother had the potential of being drafted into the military at age 12; they were sending kids to walk over landmines.”

At that time, Bidarian’s mother prioritised morals over money. “She didn’t take any money from my father, because he wasn’t a good man. And because she was 18 and supposed to go to college, my grandad didn’t agree with the marriage. He said: ‘If this doesn’t work out, don’t come to me.’ Thirteen years later, she didn’t. She got a job at a shoe store and a donut shop.”

She kept customers on their feet and got her family back on its own. In this period, they moved to the UK, US, and Canada, with Bidarian working in management consulting before heading to Wall Street as a graduate. However, he found he did not enjoy life in New York City. “I like money,” he says, “but I’m not a hustler. It felt like everyone there was hustling.”

Some around Bidarian scoffed at his decision to move back to Dubai, where he briefly lived as a teenager, but a job at Morgan Stanley led him to the Fertitta brothers – Frank and Lorenzo, then-owners of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Through a transaction facilitated by Mubadala, where Bidarian was working, Abu Dhabi acquired 10 per cent of the UFC in 2010. “I’d never heard of the UFC,” says Bidarian. Six months later, he was asked to meet the Fertittas and explore setting up a new investment fund, targeting entertainment assets. The fund was to be based in Las Vegas and headed by Bidarian. Ultimately, Abu Dhabi pulled out of the opportunity, but the Fertitta brothers wished to keep working with Bidarian. “I knew s*** all about MMA, but I think that was attractive to Lorenzo.”

Bidarian became the UFC’s Chief Strategy Officer in 2012 and worked on Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor’s contracts. “I’m sure Dana [White, UFC president] thought: ‘Head of strategy? He knows nothing about the sport.’” But Bidarian went from CSO to Chief Financial Officer, playing a vital role in the 2016 sale of the UFC to Endeavor. In the aftermath, Bidarian had a revelation: “Without the Fertittas, it wouldn’t be the same there. Me and Dana were not seeing eye to eye.”

Eventually, however, Bidarian found himself seeing eye to eye with Paul – coincidentally, someone with whom White also does not see eye to eye. Still, the connection was not instant.

In 2019, a friend asked Bidarian to meet Paul, then aged 22. “I knew what a YouTuber was, but I didn’t know who Jake was. That day, he told me: ‘I wanna act, invest, rap, box.’ That wasn’t attractive to me. I told my guy, ‘I know nothing about boxing.’”

But? “It was clear Jake was different.”

So, Bidarian helped Paul negotiate a fight with fellow YouTuber AnEsonGib, vastly improving upon the $ 500,000 offer Paul had received. Soon, though, there was friction. “He posted some videos attacking Conor and Dana,” Bidarian recalls. “I called him and said: ‘Man, I know these guys. This is a bad look for me.’ Conor was a friend.

“He’s like: ‘Tell them I’m a crazy f***ing kid! Who cares?’ He had some people call Conor’s people, offer like $ 10m to fight, and I asked Jake: ‘Who are these people? You know I know Conor.’ I basically said: ‘Nice knowing you, I wish you the best. By the way, you’re not even that focused on boxing.’ He’d put out a rap video. It didn’t make sense for me.”

Bidarian and Paul next crossed paths in 2020, when the former was asked to help Triller with their broadcast of Mike Tyson vs Roy Jones Jr. Bidarian, as executive producer, identified a lack of pull for a younger generation. He reached out to Paul.

And he made an intriguing offer: $ 500,000 for an undercard fight but without knowing what the opportunity was, then $ 10m for a follow-up bout. His logic was that if Paul knew he was fighting before Tyson, he would demand more money, which Bidarian did not have budget approval for. Paul ultimately agreed, and each party delivered; Paul knocked out NBA veteran Nate Robinson, and Bidarian got Paul $ 11.2m for his next fight, with ex-MMA champion Ben Askren. White in fact said he would bet $ 1m on an Askren win, only for Paul to score a first-round KO.

And Askren is tied to Bidarian’s qualms with White. “Part of what confuses me is that Dana never liked Ben,” Bidarian claims, suggesting White’s dislike of Paul trumped his dislike of Askren. In a bid to help Askren, per Bidarian, White connected the wrestler with legendary boxing coach Freddie Roach and gave him full access to UFC’s training facilities. White’s efforts were in vain. “More importantly,” though, “Jake realised boxing was his saviour – the path for discipline and giving back.”

Bidarian and Paul formally partnered in 2021. “From day one, he said: ‘This is my new manager.’ I said: ‘Don’t call me that! You don’t need me as a manager,’” Bidarian says, circling back to the start of this article. “Marcos Guerrero manages Jake’s life. I’m Jake’s adviser.”

Bidarian identified the opportunity for a boxing promotion “anchored” by Paul, but not named after the YouTuber. “It’s good for ego, but no big fighter will stay with you long-term.” Paul coined Most Valuable Promotions (MVP), and the pair established three priorities: to be fighter-first, focus on young athletes, and position women’s boxers as equal to men.

On the final point, Bidarian references his experience with Rousey, the face of the UFC before McGregor. Bidarian and Paul made a women’s fight the co-main event for one of Jake’s bouts, and “people in boxing laughed. ‘You have girls as your co-main?’ We said: ‘Women, yeah.’” They identified seven-weight champion Amanda Serrano as a key signing, now as much a face of MVP as Paul is, and whose deal has given way to numerous big-name women’s signings recently.

Bidarian told Serrano: “‘I promise, I’ll make you $ 1m in one year.’ Her manager laughed, but Amanda always says, ‘Nakisa lied; it only took nine months!’” He and Paul helped Serrano and Katie Taylor earn the first seven-figure paydays in women’s boxing in 2022. This July, Taylor and Serrano completed an iconic trilogy.

I have to ask what gives Bidarian the confidence to make these financial promises. “It’s nothing to do with my capabilities,” he replies. “It’s to do with that fighter, and if they do their job. Then you add my business acumen, what I think is possible if the right product is packaged properly.”

Speaking of packaging a product properly… I also have to ask whether Paul’s emphasis on fighter pay is just good PR. Bidarian counters: “When I first walked into his house in 2019, one of the first things he said was: ‘I want to start a fighters’ union, fighters aren’t paid well enough.’ It wasn’t to counter-balance hate, it was deeply genuine.”

Bidarian now faces his own share of hate, but: “You can’t let opinions bother you, especially if you’re attached to Jake. The biggest false claim on social media is that I’m a liar. Anyone who knows me knows the integrity of what we say is critical. When I first started with Jake, he’d post fabricated stuff for a reaction – but not anymore. Once you lie, and it becomes clear you’ve lied, you’ve lost all credibility. I look for the stat that makes sense for our story; I don’t look for the negative.”

Plus, “I don’t say Jake’s the greatest fighter in the world; I say he’s an unbelievable entertainer, putting on fights where you don’t know the outcome.” Bidarian cites polls, which suggested that most fans believed a 58-year-old Tyson would beat Paul in their controversial, underwhelming, but seismic clash in November – a fight seen by 60m households on Netflix, won by Paul on points.

“I didn’t know who would win, I was nervous,” says Bidarian. “People say: ‘You sold us a bad fight.’ I didn’t sell you anything, except reality. Odds tell you Jake’s fights are generally closer than most high-level fights, in terms of outcomes that oddsmakers look at.”

Bidarian’s wording has me wondering whether he’s looking for the stats that best suit his story. Still, you have to wonder what odds he’d have been given for forging the career he has, back when he was a young boy fleeing Iran.

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