Daniel Cormier may have just spent the last couple of day buttering Jake Paul up for a freakshow fight, but it seems like Jake Paul isn’t interested.
Instead, the younger Paul brother seems interested in the younger Diaz brother.
“I find it funny, because [Cormier]’s challenging me to something I’ve never trained in,” Paul said in an interview with ESPN (via MMA Fighting). “And he’s trained boxing and striking and standup and has been in there with Stipe [Miocic and] Jon Jones. He lost those fights, but he’s been in there with the best of the best striking, so why not box? Oh, you want to go against me in something that I’ve never trained in before? Of course. That’s like me finding someone off the streets, literally who has never boxed a day in their lives, and being like, ‘Alright, come in here, I’m going to challenge him.’”
“If he comes and boxes me, I will beat him. And maybe a part of him knows that, which is why it’s funny. Why would he not accept that offer? If we fought, that would be the most amount of money that he will ever make in any of his fights, by far.”
But Paul wants a challenge. Paul wants Nate Diaz.
“I think people will immediately write me off,” he said. “Even someone watching this interview right now is like, ‘Oh, this kid’s crazy. Nate Diaz is such a dog, he’s going to kill Jake, he’s out of his mind.’ But they’re going to tune in and watch, right?
“It’s two massive names, and it would be a massive pay-per-view, and then when they see me obliterate him, they’re jaws are going to be dropped – they’re not going to know how to react. They’re going to think it’s rigged again. And at that moment in time, I’ll be undeniable to fight Conor McGregor, because I beat the guy that beat you, Conor. And the Jake Paul vs. Conor fight is a massive fight.”
“I’m like, why wait? I don’t need to be in this sport forever. I’m not trying to get 100 fights. Let’s do the biggest fights right away.”
Jake Paul has made it no secret that his endgame is a Conor McGregor fight. And why not? Without the UFC taking a huge chunk of the purse from him, he stands to make 9 figures in a fight like that. And we have to admit, a Nate Diaz fight would be a decent set up. Alas, we doubt UFC president Dana White will be signing off on any more fighters to stray from the UFC to box Paul after Paul publicly bashed the UFC’s pay scale. And Nate Diaz is very, very locked down with the UFC.