Jake Paul Mercilessly Insults The Entire Sport of MMA in Latest Rant

Jake Paul had choice things to say regarding the entire sport of MMA, as the creator-turned-boxer appears to have gone back to his roots of mercilessly trolling MMA fighters, and people in the UFC, to gain clout and promote himself ahead of key moments in his surging combat sports career.

‘The Problem Child’ denigrated MMA during an interview this week with All The Smoke Fight, suggesting that the sport has gone backwards in its evolution, rather than forwards. He added that what we are seeing is no longer a mixing of the martial arts, but a reliance, instead, of stand-up disciplines. This evolution, Paul said, neglects the various aspects of MMA that made the sport fascinating to begin with —like wrestling.

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For Paul, “MMA is not what it was.”

This is in contrast to boxing, Paul said, which “is bigger than ever.”

While boxing was slow to return to live events during the initial shuttering of sports when the coronavirus pandemic made its way across the planet, MMA — and, more specifically, UFC — came out of the gate hard and fast and was offering high-level MMA events in May 2020; just eight weeks after the world turned upside down.

Boxing, though, did come back with terrific, marquee events, particularly in 2023 when Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia combined to sell more than a million pay-per-views, and Errol Spence Jr and Terence Crawford collided in one of the most significant welterweight fights of all time. More recently, Riyadh Season has given boxing a shot in the arm with unification matches between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk, and Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.

This, of course, is without even mentioning the boxing event that Paul was a part of late last year, when he lured Mike Tyson back into the ring for an eight-round bout that saw 108 million people tune in for at least a minute or so on Netflix.

“The biggest sporting event of the year, of 2024, was boxing, whereas MMA is becoming a s***** version of boxing, essentially. It’s kickboxing.”

“Because everyone is getting good takedown defense and everyone is a black belt in jiu-jitsu. So there’s no more submissions really,” said Paul. “There’s not a lot of takedowns, and even if there is it’s f****** boring, but everyone is good at takedown defense. So it’s literally kickboxing.”

He continued: “Guess who the biggest star of the sport is in MMA? Alex Pereira, who is a kickboxer. Because he’s knocking everyone out, blah, blah, blah. And he’s the best one because no one can take him down, no one can submit him so he’s just knocking everyone out.

“The UFC has less significant strikes per rounds, and that’s with five-minute rounds. So boxing is going to stand the test of time because it has. It’s been [around] since the 1500s. 500, 600 years of boxing. I don’t think MMA — I’m not long on MMA, because it’s becoming boxing.”