Logan Paul’s boxing match with KSI is still a month away, but the news for the controversial YouTube star continues to be terrible as he trains for the fight.
On Friday, the Daily Beast reported that one of his friends, Arman Izada, pleaded guilty to pandering (the legal term for being a pimp) and that he allegedly threatened to kill one of the prostitutes who worked for him.
The BBC also said Thursday that it would not air a previously scheduled interview with Paul to promote the KSI match because it “was not good enough.” The well-respected radio station had been heavily criticized for promoting the chat with Paul.
Add that to Paul walking out of a press conference with KSI last week after the British YouTuber ripped Paul’s girlfriend, Chloe Bennet, and his father getting punched in the back of the head by a random person after the press conference, and it’s been a rough month for Paul.
After Greg Paul—the father of Logan and Jake Paul—was recorded getting punched from behind, Izadi, who has also appeared in plenty of Jake Paul’s YouTube vlogs and who has his own channel that has 126,000 subscribers, revealed that his cars had been damaged by unruly fans in the melee after the Logan Paul-KSI press conference. Izada said in a video that Deji—KSI’s younger brother who is fighting Jake Paul on the undercard of KSI-Logan Paul—was the one to blame for the car’s damage.
“You told the fans that if they see anybody, to go after them … now you have a fucking problem with a real Vegas motherfucker,” Izadi said. “I’m coming after you for the damages [to his car] and then I might just come after you, player. You don’t fucking tell people to attack my friends.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2-EOMwwwwc
Deji responded in his own video calling Izadi a “scumbag,” and now, there are additional details about Izadi’s past.
According to the Daily Beast, Izadi was arrested on an attempted battery charge in 2012—a charge to which he pleaded guilty—and a year later, he was arrested on 20 charges that included robbery, kidnapping, and pandering.
One woman he employed accused him of violently assaulting her.
From the Daily Beast: “One of the prostitutes alleged that she attempted to quit working for Izadi, only to have him waterboard her in a shower. According to the woman’s account, Izadi only calmed down when she agreed to get his name tattooed on her neck. ‘I’m going to torture you all night long before you die,’ the woman recalls Izadi telling her at one point in the incident.”
Izadi has said he was innocent on the pandering charge, but he pleaded guilty to it. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Izadi made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the women he pimped. Izadi later said he was set up by a cop who was investigated by the FBI for becoming involved with prostitutes himself, and that apparently was why 19 of those 20 felony charges were dropped against Izadi.
While Izadi only indirectly affects Logan Paul at the moment, the BBC this week decided not to air an interview with him after a public outcry.
We were going to hear from Logan Paul & KSI on their boxing match tonight.
— BBC Radio 1 (@BBCR1) July 26, 2018
After listening back to the interview we don’t feel it’s right.
We understand some of your strong views on Logan – but ultimately if we don’t think the interview is good enough – we don't air it.
People are still angry with Paul for airing a video at the end of last year that was taken in a Japanese suicide forest and that showed a dead body, a decision that drew immense ire from around the world and got Paul financially punished by YouTube.
In the past few months, though, Paul has made a largely successful public comeback with his feud against KSI. And considering the fight will be livestreamed on YouTube for an $8 fee, will probably sell out the Manchester, England, arena in which it will be staged, and will likely result in millions of pageviews and plenty of merchandise sales, this monthlong roadblock is probably only a temporary problem for Paul as he maintains his superstar status in the online world.