Jake Paul recently revealed that Nate Diaz has apparently chosen not to take a second fight against him under MMA rules. This might be a little surprising seeing as MMA is Diaz’s world and he would have a significant advantage in experience compared to Paul. The pair first met in a boxing match earlier in the year and Paul actually ran away with the fight, winning a unanimous decision. As with a lot of celebrity boxing matches, it’s likely that this was all a pretty lucrative endeavor for everyone involved and an MMA fight would be just as worthwhile.
In fact, Jake Paul has previously put a $10 million offer over to Nate Diaz in order to meet him in an MMA fight for their rematch. Paul recently sat down with TMZ Sports to reveal the response he got:
“We’re at the drawing board right now. Nate Diaz ducked the $10 million offer, so he’s not the bad*ss that everyone said he was. I wanted to fight him in MMA and do something that no boxer has really ever done, which is, in the prime of their career, go over to MMA. MMA fighters have gone over to boxing, but I want to go over to MMA and Nate Diaz ducked the offer.”
One sticking point when it comes to a potential MMA fight between Nate Diaz and Jake Paul is their existing contractual obligations. Paul has already signed a contract with PFL for an MMA career with a provision that allows him to continue boxing for any promotion he chooses, while Diaz isn’t under contract with anyone at the moment. In fact Diaz recently started his own combat sports promotion, Real Fight Inc., although they have yet to stage their first event. Paul thinks that Diaz refusing the fight boils down to something simpler than that though:
“With those guys, I don’t know if they have reason. I don’t even know if they think. There wasn’t a transparent reason. I think it was just something that he realized there’s a lot of risk for him. If I beat him in MMA — which I just dog-walked him in the boxing ring, made it look easy, and if I beat him in MMA, I take his legendary status. So I don’t know if he was like, maybe the risk of this isn’t good enough for the $10 million.”
Many people would have doubted that Paul and Diaz would ever meet in a boxing match so while the MMA fight also seems unlikely at this point, anything can happen in the world of combat sports.
