UFC veteran Sam Alvey has told of how he once dropped Logan Paul during a sparring session, and nearly broke the YouTube star's jaw.
Logan and his brother Jake Paul began boxing in 2018 when they were called out for white collar boxing matches by KSI and his younger sibling Deji in Manchester. And in order to get the best preparation for their fight, they drafted in a host of names from the boxing and MMA worlds, including coach Milton Lacroix, boxer Niko Valdes and then highly-rated UFC fighter Alvey.
The fighter was recently released from the promotion after nine fights without a win including eight losses and a draw. And he is now angling for a fight with Logan's brother Jake, almost five years after he claims he wouldn't spar him after watching his older sibling take a beating during a sparring session.
“Before their first fight, they invited me to come out and help them train, so I helped spar with Logan Paul,” Alvey told Ariel Helwani on last night's episode of The MMA Hour. “This would’ve been five years ago, six years ago, something like that.
"I ended up meeting with their boxing coach, standing in line for an MMA junkie award or something. And his boxing trainer and I, we split messages and they brought me out to help them train for a day, so I got to spar with Logan Paul. And it was a lot of fun. Logan seemed like a good dude. I wasn’t crazy about Jake.
“He was a douche. He was. I’m smiling Sam, I’m not supposed to be saying that, but he was a douche. Logan seemed OK. Logan, I actually almost broke his jaw in the sparring session. I was doing the best I could to carry him, to just be a training partner for him, throw some.
"But he just kept getting hit and at one point he kind of fell back, ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ But I was supposed to spar his brother too. Jake wouldn’t do it afterward. I said, ‘Jake, I’ll take it easy, I’ll give you whatever work you want.’ But Jake wouldn’t spar me that day. And then I was never invited back.”
Alvey shared a photo from the training session on Instagram at the time, where he could be seen smiling alongside the brothers and their training team. Also pictured were their coach Milton Lacroix, who still anchors Logan's corner, as well as jiu-jitsu star AJ Agazarm, Talya Orban and Valdes.
Would you like to see the sparring footage of Sam Alvey and Logan Paul? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!
But as the Paul's boxing careers sky-rocketed to mega-money fights with the likes of Floyd Mayweather, Tyron Woodley and KSI, Alvey has struggled in recent years. At the time, he was on a two-fight winning streak in the UFC and had recently beaten former world champion Rashad Evans.
However, after that sparring session with the Pauls, he would never win a fight in the promotion again, and is now a free agent. But in that free agency, he is keen to try and get in with Jake, who had turned down working with him back in 2018.
“Every MMA fighter wants it, but now it kind of makes sense is the Jake Paul fight,” Alvey said of his next move. “Everybody wants to do it. I like to joke that I haven’t won in a while, which is the kind of guys he likes to fight, so that makes sense. I’m the same size as him, which will be a little different for him.
"He tends to like fighting people that are smaller than him, so he’ll have to make a little exception for that. But I’m the first guy that he would have fought that is a knockout guy. I am a guy that has always been a striker, and I would be the first non-wrestler.
"I’m not quite a boxer. I’ve never boxed. I’ve kick-boxed, 7-1 professional kickboxing, but I’ve never boxed. But I am a striker. So it might be the way he sees himself fighting next. I think it makes sense. There’s a chance. We’re reaching out to [Showtime], we’re seeing what happens.”
