By Dane McGuire
Yet again the three ring circus fight career of Jake Paul was the talk of the town after a lopsided victory over UFC legend Nate Diaz.
In the opinion of this writer, Diaz took at best three of the ten rounds with his best showing being in the fourth. Paul put Diaz on the canvas in the fifth stanza, but things did go to the judges. The scores were as follows for Paul: 98-91, 98-91 and 97-92
Paul is now 7-1 with four knockouts but his single loss came against the only true boxer he has faced to date, Tommy Fury. Even though Paul could have finished Diaz, this may have been done to stretch out the entertainment value. Paul says otherwise.
“He’s tough,” Paul said about Diaz afterwards. “He’s real tough, that’s what he’s known for. I knocked him down, won basically every round but he’s a warrior.”
Diaz later gave Paul respect and there had been talk of a second clash, this time in MMA. Paul discussed this in the ring after the bout.
“I want to run it back in MMA,” Paul said. “I want $10 million, PFL, let’s run it back in MMA. MMA let’s do it. There’s a lot of names [in boxing]. Tommy Fury rematch, he won by a split decision. I’m going to try to get that back. I’m just happy with this win. I never expected to be here.”
Despite the loss, Diaz still believes he can Put Paul in his place when it comes to a scrap outside of boxing’s limiting rule-set.
“I’m not trying to f****** talk s***,” Diaz said at Saturday’s post-fight press conference. “He’s boxing high-level MMA guys and he’s sparring hard and working with good people, and then he starts talking s*** to me throughout the camp. It comes with the territory and all is fair, love and war, I’m always about that. Say whatever you want, that’s fine. But then when you start making things personal, trying to make things personal, saying s*** he shouldn’t be saying, it hurts people’s feelings when I say this ain’t a real fight.
“Because if it’s a real fight, remember Logan Paul [lookalike Rodney Petersen] in New Orleans? No problem. This is not a real fight to be talking to me like that. This is a boxing competition. So that’s what I meant by he can’t really fight. It’s not overly disrespectful. If you can’t really fight, don’t be talking s***.”
Paul is a brand ambassador for the Professional Fighters League and spoke more in depth about what’s next, telling MMAJunkie:
“I think that’s it,” Paul said. “I think that’s it. Now it’s time for me to go into the cage and into their sport and into their realm. Hopefully they’ll respect that. I’m down to learn a new craft. I think I’m going to be amazing at it.”
“They’ll say it’s rigged,” Paul said. “They’ll say he got paid to take a dive because they won’t even believe it. I’m going to show them the impossible and prove to the kids out there that you can do anything if you’re crazy enough.”
Diaz is all for another go ‘round, so it’s only a matter of time at this point.
“Right now we’re going to go home and we’re going to talk about it, and we’re going to figure out whether we want to do MMA or boxing, and then we’ll see what they want to do,” Diaz said. “They said they wanted to do the PFL thing, and I think that if we want to do that, we’re going to have to co-promote and do Real Fight vs. PFL, and I’m with that. But my goal is to get a rematch in any art.”
“We’re going to see what happens with him, see if he really wants to do that,” Diaz added. “If not, I’ll be back in this hunting him down too. Either way is fine with me.”