Jake Paul claims Dana White is beginning to come around to the idea of having him fight in the UFC one day.
The YouTuber-turned-boxer has had a long-standing rivalry with White over the past couple of years, with the pair going back-and-forth in the media over issues such as fighter pay and Paul's wacky match-ups. And despite the bitter feud that included a brutal diss track on White by Paul, the social media star believes that he might get a shot at fighting in the top MMA promotion.
Paul is 5-0 as a professional boxer, having beaten former Bellator champion Ben Askren and UFC champion Tyron Woodley both by way of brutal knockouts last year. And he thinks that his high school wrestling background could see him take to MMA and move into the UFC seamlessly.
“I think it’s timing and proving myself more in the boxing side of things," Paul said during and appearance on Teddy Atlas’ podcast The Fight. "And pretty soon the UFC and the MMA side, it’ll be undeniable for me to get into the Octagon, or fight for one of these other organizations against a big name.
"So I think it’s all a timing thing and Dana [White] seems to be open to it, right? He said on my brother’s podcast he might let Logan fight in the UFC and I think he’s coming around to me and starting to see what I’m about and what I actually stand for.
"Obviously, he doesn’t like me harping on the fighter pay side of things and sort of harming his business, and being a shareholder in Endeavor and pushing on the investment side of things. There’s definitely a feud there, so we’ll see what happens.”
White and the UFC have prided themselves on being the elite fight league, and have wanted to keep celebrity fights and freak show events to a minimum, particularly since signing to be broadcast on ESPN in 2018. But White does have something of a history with strange match-ups, having put the likes of professional wrestler CM Punk and boxing star James Toney in the octagon previously.
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Punk was quickly dispatched of by Mickey Gall in his UFC debut, but was given another shot against Mike Jackson the following year. He was brutalised over a gruesome 15 minutes by Jackson, whose win was later moved to a No Contest after he tested positive for marijuana. His record now stands at 0-1 in MMA.
Meanwhile, Toney only got one opportunity, where he was quickly submitted by Randy Couture in a monumental mismatch. Paul has considerably more wrestling experience than either of those two examples, and as a 24-year-old 5-0 boxer, could certainly develop into a solid MMA fighter.
He has also been having talks with Bellator and PFL, telling Mirror Fighting last week: ""There's just a lot of really cool stuff going on and hopefully maybe we'll get into the MMA cage and throw some leg kicks on some people.
"There's conversations going on with Bellator about some unique stuff and some other MMA fight leagues as well."
