Reports are beginning to emerge that Conor McGregor’s fight with Logan Paul was originally intended for his brother.
Since 2020, Jake Paul has been pushing for a bout with McGregor, making aggressive callouts and defeating a number of UFC champions on his route to boxing stardom. However, those calls have always fallen on deaf ears, with the Irishman regularly dismissing his star power and his wins.
Now, it seems that McGregor is going to give in to the money on offer, and head to India to face Jake’s older brother Logan Paul. He announced earlier this week that he has made a preliminary agreement for the bout, and continues to promote it on social media.
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Jake Paul says he refused to negotiate for Conor McGregor fight without UFC involvement
After Conor McGregor made the announcement earlier this week that he had agreed to face Logan Paul in a boxing fight next year, fans were left scratching their heads. Jake is the more renowned boxer of the pair, and is the smaller of the two, altogether cutting a more appropriate figure for such a matchup.
However, Jake came out and stated that he and his Most Valuable Promotions team which includes for UFC CFO Nakisa Bidarian, would only negotiate if the MMA supremo were at the table. McGregor is famously locked into a contract with two more fights left, and has been pushing for an octagon return.
“Now it all makes sense why Conor McGregor and his management team have been desperately trying to get MVP to negotiate for a fight between us,” the younger Paul brother wrote on X after McGregor’s announcement.
“As we told them them privately & I’m now saying it publicly… The only way we’re willing to explore me vs Conor in a pro boxing / MMA fight is if Dana White / UFC are at the table directly or make it clear they are ok with discussions. Conor is washed. Needs the Paul’s. Logan by however he wants.”
Ariel Helwani says Conor McGregor fight was meant for Jake Paul, not Logan
Since the initial tweet, McGregor has continued to take to social media to make his feelings clear about the bout. He has played up to the UFC vs WWE aspect of the fight, noting that Paul is one of the most well-known stars in the wrestling world at the moment.
Meanwhile, veteran journalist Ariel Helwani said on his show on the Uncrowned network that talks are still at an early stage. He noted that the billionaire Ambani family in India initially came up with the idea of recreating the success of Jake Paul’s clash with Mike Tyson last month, which broke streaming records.
However, as the younger Paul has stated, they met with a stumbling block when he refused to negotiate without having Dana White at the table. Instead, Helwani says, they went for the next best option in Logan, who has a larger social media following but is not known as well for his boxing.
Jake is 11-1 as a professional and fights regularly, while Logan has been in the ring four times, winning just one of those efforts by DQ against Dillon Danis last year. He drew and lost to YouTube rival KSI in their series of fights, and went the distance in an unscored exhibition with Floyd Mayweather in 2021.
Jake and Logan Paul have history over ‘stealing fights’
This is not the first time that Jake and Logan Paul have come between one another’s fights. Jake faced Nate Diaz last year after a lengthy build-up, but his brother felt that he had been moving towards that bout and had it taken from him.
Jake disputed this, leading to an awkward verbal altercation on the elder sibling’s podcast Impaulsive and the episode ultimately being deleted. “How did you get the Nate Diaz fight, because I thought I had it locked up?” Logan asked Jake in an heated segment.
“I thought for sure I had it locked up, how did you get that fight?” Jake replied with a cold answer, telling his brother: “You never had it locked up.” Logan reacted by adding: “He told us we did. He was playing me. He was playing me hard.”
Jake then explained that he is viewed in the fight world as a more serious opponent given his winning record. “I told you that,” he continued. “I told you he’s playing both sides… Basically, some of the people he worked with, he doesn’t know what the f*** he’s doing. Like, he does and he doesn’t.
“But just throwing money at someone doesn’t make them want to do it. At the end of the day, what it came down to, honestly, is that he thought the world would view our fight as way more legitimate than you. Him fighting you, to him was a money grab because you hadn’t ‘beaten anybody.’”
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