Royal Rumble | 28 Jan 24 | |||||
Logan Alexander Paul (born April 1, 1995) is an American social media influencer, professional wrestler, YouTuber, and actor. He is currently signed to WWE, where he is the current WWE United States Champion in his first reign. He has over 23 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, and has ranked on the Forbes list for the highest paid YouTube creators in 2017, 2018, and 2021. Paul has also run the Impaulsive podcast since November 2018, which has over 4 million YouTube subscribers.
Paul gained a following in 2013, posting sketches on the now-defunct video-sharing application Vine. He registered his first YouTube channel, TheOfficialLoganPaul, on October 18, 2013, where he started posting regularly following the closure of the Vine app. He later created the Logan Paul Vlogs channel on August 29, 2015, which has since become his most-subscribed YouTube channel. As of August 2023, the channel has received 23.6 million subscribers and almost 6 billion views.
As an actor, Paul's television and film work includes guest appearances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Bizaardvark, and roles in films The Thinning (2016) and The Thinning: New World Order (2018). He has also explored other avenues; he released his debut single "2016" in 2016, and fought English media personality KSI in an amateur white-collar boxing match in 2018. The fight ended in a majority draw. In the 2019 rematch, which was a professional bout, KSI won by split decision. After a couple of brief appearances in WWE in 2021, he made his professional wrestling debut as The Miz's tag team partner in a tag team match at WrestleMania 38 in April 2022, which they won and Paul received praise for his performance. He then signed a multi-event contract with WWE in June that year and has since performed at events such as SummerSlam in July 2022, in which he defeated The Miz in his debut singles match, and Crown Jewel in November 2022, in which he lost to Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns in the main event. After signing another multi-year contract in 2023, he won the WWE United States Championship later that year.
Paul has been involved in several controversies, most notably in relation to a trip to Japan in December 2017, during which he visited the Aokigahara forest (a notorious suicide site), filmed himself finding the corpse of a suicide victim, and uploaded the footage to his YouTube channel. His promotion of scams and failed ventures, including CryptoZoo—in which he failed to compensate more than $1.5 million to investors despite promising to do so—has drawn the ire of many.