Having beaten one of MMA’s worst strikers in Ben Askren this past weekend, YouTuber Jake Paul is letting his success inflate his ego to new levels, to the extent that he’s now calling out recently retired two-division champion Daniel Cormier.
“So many fake motherf*****s in this generation,” Paul said on his brother Logan Paul’s ‘Impaulsive’ podcast. “Daniel Cormier, (mimicking) ‘That’s my boy Ben, he’s gonna beat Jake, he pushed him in the face so he’s gonna win now, chirp, chirp, chirp.’ I knock him out and he’s on Twitter, ‘Ben, are you serious, bro, you went down like that? Ben are you kidding me? Ben, I can’t believe you did that to the MMA community.’ Shut the f*** up b****. I’ll beat the f*** out of your fat ass too, just like Stipe did. Cleveland s***. I swear to God, I’ll beat the f*** out of Daniel Cormier.”
Even Paul’s own brother, an MMA fan, appeared to feel that he was crossing the line calling out the former UFC light-heavyweight and heavyweight hall-of-famer in that fashion and got him to tone down the trash-talk a couple of notches.
“I respect him, I think he’s great, he had an amazing career,” Paul acknowledged. “I’m appreciative of what he’s done for the MMA community. But don’t switch up on your boy like that! It shows your true character. And by the way, I will fight him. Let’s run the pay-per-view.”
For his part, Cormier has admitted that the opportunity to knock some sense into Paul is appealing, but ultimately recognises that it’d be beneath him to join the Jake Paul circus after his illustrious past achievement.
“This dude would never fight me,” Cormier said on his ESPN podcast. “I would kill him. Why would I ever fight someone like that? But my immediate reaction was, ‘I can’t stand this kid.’ So it works! I can’t stand this kid! But who punches down? You don’t punch down to somebody. I’m the guy that’s in the Hall of Fame. I’m the guy that won two world championships at the same time.
“I’m not gonna punch down to some kid that’s on YouTube that’s, like, ‘Fight me!’ Like, why? What have you done to earn the right to fight me? So, no, it’s silly and stupid. But I would like him to fight Tyron. I would like to see him fight somebody more real. Don’t fight Ben Askren at 190, bloated.
“Fight a middleweight. Fight Luke Rockhold! Let me see you fight Luke Rockhold or somebody like that. And then I will not only say that you have base skills, I will say you’re a real fighter. Because right now it’s all pretend. It’s all pretend.”
Cormier makes a good point, and one that many others are increasingly pointing to. The call-out of DC is unrealistic, but beyond that, Paul does have a habit of calling out people that are far smaller than him and has shied away from mentioning those who are close to the same weight range as him.
And of course the biggest elephant in the room is that while there’s been an increasing interest in recent years for MMA fighters to step into the boxing ring, there remains a deafening silence when it comes to getting the likes of Paul to put-up or shut-up by stepping into the Octagon and having a real fight.
