”It’s a bit strange,” McGregor said about the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight while promoting his “Road House” film at SXSW. “My interest is low. I don’t know. I don’t understand it.”
Conor McGregor is not interested in watching Jake Paul box Mike Tyson.
That doesn’t sit well with “The Problem Child,” who may be overreacting — or simply continuing the slow build to his eventual “final boss” fight. Either way, Paul did not hold back when responding to the “old heads” like McGregor who are “still trying to hate.”
Blame this surprising turn of events.
“So Conor, you’re saying that interest is low for the fight but the last fight you announced, there were 1,000 articles written in a multiple-day span, people talking about your last fight,” Paul said on his B/S with Jake Paul podcast (transcribed by Craig Pekios). “In that same multiple-day span, there were 10,000 articles written about (Paul vs. Tyson).”
“No fight ever has done these numbers in terms of faceoff views, Instagram reels,” Paul continued. “Just on our main pages alone, it’s like 50, 60 million Instagram views on both of our posts — not to mention every single other sports page posting it. That’s never happened in the history of the sport to reach those numbers. So this is, in my mind, the biggest fight the world will ever see.”
A victory may lead to that highly-anticipated Clint Eastwood fight.
“There’s no reason for them to be jealous,” Paul said. “I get that people are jealous, but this is helping the sport of boxing. Isn’t that what people should want to see — getting more kids into the gyms, spanning two generations together, doing it on the biggest scale possible? When the old heads like Conor are still trying to hate, why are you trying to pull people down? Your ego is that (big)?”
McGregor, 35, has not competed since breaking his leg back in summer 2021.
Paul, 27, believes his Tyson fight will reach more viewers than McGregor’s 2017 clash with undefeated boxing icon Floyd Mayweather Jr., which generated a staggering 4.3 million pay-per-view (PPV) buys.
“It’ll be more viewed, 1,000 percent — for sure more viewed,” Paul insisted. “Obviously, it’ll be free (for Netflix subscribers), so we can’t compare pay-per-view numbers.”
Paul fights Tyson live on Netflix on Sat., July 20, 2024 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.