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Jake Paul hasn’t taken a break from his war of words with Dana White, with the release of his new diss track and some thoughts about the UFC’s reported actions ahead of Francis Ngannou’s title fight against Ciryl Gane.

The contract battle between Francis Ngannou and the UFC took an interesting turn last week, with the revelation that the promotion had apparently threatened their heavyweight champion’s management team with legal action. It seems Ngannou’s people have been speaking with Jake Paul’s people about the Xtreme Couture fighter’s ongoing boxing interests, and the UFC wants to put a stop to it.

The ‘Predator’ claimed that his team received an email from the UFC shortly before he was set to step into the Octagon for his title unification bout against Ciryl Gane, outlining their plans to take Ngannou’s management to court. Whether they carry through on that threat, they’ve already created at least one ripple effect. Namely giving Jake Paul more ammunition to work with in his ongoing war of words with the world’s largest MMA promotion.

Paul recently released a new Dana White ‘diss track’ complete with music video. And speaking to MMA Fighting about the project he gave his thoughts on the UFC’s treatment of their champ.

“Dana White is too busy sending out lawsuit threats to his heavyweight champions minutes before they enter the cage to fight another man,” Paul said, speaking of his feud with White over fighter pay. “I think he actually sent my partner [Nakisa Bidarian] the same thing at 9 p.m. that night when Dana’s supposedly being president at his big PPV event for a public company.”

“Imagine if Adam Silver sent a lawsuit to Lebron James minutes before he took the floor for the NBA Finals, then, refused to present him with the NBA championship trophy after he won,” Paul added. “It’s pure disrespect to the athlete and the sport.”

Those “trophy” comments refer to White’s noted absence from his typical spot cage-side during Ngannou vs. Gane, and the fact that the UFC president also wasn’t in the cage to present the belt to the defending champ after his victory.

White scoffed at suggestions that his absence was an intentional slight to Ngannou due to the rocky relationship between fighter and promotion, telling reporters that “…for anybody to think that I was showing any type of disrespect toward Francis… I saw Francis all week, you idiots,” adding that he was dealing with “some stuff” backstage that required his attention instead.

For Paul’s part, he maintains that his battle with UFC brass is all about pushing the company to treat their talent better and deliver a larger share of revenue. Paul claims that all proceeds from his music video are “going directly to fighter causes,” and recent news about his acquisition of shares in UFC parent company Endeavor is all part of his plan to put pressure on the UFC.

“This isn’t about boxing or MMA,” Paul explained. “This is about doing what is right. UFC can and should do better given the control it has exerted over MMA fighters. Either treat them as independent contractors, like Uber does its drivers, or give them the compensation and benefits they deserve as employees.”

Lately Paul has been on a hiatus from his celebrity boxing career, as he focuses on promoting an upcoming women’s boxing superfight between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano. No word yet on just when he might return to the ring.

Bellator most recently held an event in Paris in Oct. 2020. 

Bellator returns to France and brings along a heavyweight championship fight between Ryan Bader and Cheick Kongo as its headliner.

Bader successfully defended his title with a unanimous decision over Valentin Moldavsky at Bellator 273 on Saturday night. Moments after his win, promotion officials announced that ‘Darth’ already had his next defense set, and it would be against a familiar face. The No. 2 ranked Kongo then entered the cage for a face-off with the reigning champion, and the rematch was confirmed.

The upcoming event will take place on May 6 in Paris at Accor Arena. Bellator broke ground here as the first major mixed martial arts promotion to hold an event in the country following the legalization of the sport in Jan. 2020.

“Bringing Bellator to France in 2020 was one of the highlights of my career, and I knew that it was the start of a long run of big events in Paris,” said Bellator president Scott Coker in a press release. “Here we are ready for our second trip to France, and this time we are bringing a heavyweight world title rematch featuring arguably the most recognizable French mixed martial artist in our sport’s history. It’s personally important to me to help grow the sport in France and give these athletes a chance to perform on a large stage.”

Coker spoke to assembled media at his post-fight press conference and explained why he went with Bader vs. Kongo II next. The first meeting at Bellator 226 ended in a No Contest once Kongo could not continue after being accidentally poked in the eye by Bader. A second meeting was inevitable because of its controversial ending, and the Bellator president believed now was the time to make it.

There was a belief that Bader would be linked to Fedor Emelianenko again for his retirement fight, but that was not the direction the promotion ultimately went in. However, depending on the outcome of this rematch, Coker said Bader vs. Emelianenko II could still be a possibility in the near future.

“This is a fight that we’ve been putting together for a while,” said Coker (video provided by MMA Fighting). “They fought in San Jose a couple years ago. It was kind of a — I think it was an eye poke or something that was not a very clear decision or winner. So, let’s run it back. We’ve been trying to put that fight on for some time and we had a date in Paris that we wanted to go in May. It’s the week before the fight in London with ‘MVP’ [Michael ‘Venom’ Page] vs. [Yaroslav] Amosov, so we put the fight together.

“We said whoever wins, Moldavsky or Bader, will fight Cheick Kongo,” continued Coker. “Fedor did tell me before the fight, he said, ‘If Ryan Bader wins, I’d really like to fight him for the belt.’ And I said, ‘Well, Kongo is going to fight him in Paris and then we can see what happens.’ But May to July is not a lot of time, we’ll see what happens. This is a very crazy business. You know things change rapidly, it’s a very fluid business, so let’s see what happens.”

This past August, Kongo earned another shot at Bader with a second-round submission over Sergei Kharitonov at Bellator 265.

Those looking forward to the return of legendary Polish Power will have to wait a bit longer after former UFC light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz was forced to withdraw from his March 26 fight night main event against Aleksander Rakic.

That news, first reported a few days ago, initially came with no details on what injury had pushed Blachowicz out of the contest. But now Jan has taken to Twitter to share the issue, and it’s a bit of a scary sounding one.

“Unfortunately I will not fight March 26th at UFC Columbus,” Blachowicz wrote. “I have an injury in my spine around the neck area. That makes it impossible to train with heavy weights. I need to fix that now. I hope we will meet with Rakic in the Octagon in the first half of this year.”

Blachowicz was looking to bounce back from a poor showing against now-champ Glover Teixeira, who took the belt off Jan at UFC 267 in October of 2021 (watch the highlights here). Previous to that, the Polish heavyweight was on a five fight win streak that included a win over Dominick Reyes for the vacant 205 pound title and a first title defense against Israel Adesanya, who attempted to move up from 185 pounds to become a two division champion.

Blachowicz swatted Adesanya back down with a confidence that made people wonder whether he’d sit atop the division with ease for some time to come. So it was quite the surprise when 42 year old Glover Teixeira dragged Blachowicz to the ground and submitted him in the second round, ending his reign.

Hopefully Blachowicz’s timeline of a return sometime before the middle of 2022 works out. Spine and neck issues are no joke.