YouTuber turned boxing sensation Jake Paul won’t be happy until he has taken over MMA not as a participant but as a business competitor.
Jake Paul has been targeting MMA ever since he knocked out former NBA star Nate Robinson last November on the Mike Tyson vs. Roy Jones Jr. undercard. He has made it no secret that in terms of future opposition, his end game would be to have big-money bouts against top draws Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz.
In the meantime, he’s been keeping himself busy knocking out Ben Askren in April and looking to do the same to Tyron Woodley on August 29. All the while, he’s been chirping at MMA fighters and UFC President Dana White and amassing more publicity for himself in the process.
According to Paul, his unshakable presence in the media isn’t just to draw attention to himself but indeed to the sport of boxing as a whole. The real end game, Paul says, isn’t just about him scoring lucrative fights against MMA’s biggest draws. It’s about having the sport of boxing outscore MMA on the larger scorecard of success.
“MMA overtook boxing, you know, years ago. And MMA was sort of more popular, and I wanna make that push along with my fellow boxers,” Paul told ESPN Cleveland in a recent interview. Some I’ll talk shit to. I’ll talk shit to Canelo. I’ll talk shit to whoever. But at the end of the day, we’re all boxers, and we need to make this sport more popular because it benefits all of us. So we, as boxers, need to take over MMA and make it more popular, and that’s part of my goal.”
Despite this ambition of contributing to the “MMA takeover,” Jake Paul has expressed an openness to jump over to the other side and try his hand at MMA in the future. Now that he has both a boxing and a wrestling background, the former Disney star would be a legitimate prospect who could later go on to be a massive draw in MMA, which would theoretically lead the proud boxer into a conflict of his above-stated interests.
What are your thoughts on Jake Paul’s goal of helping boxing “take over” MMA?
