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UFC veteran Nate Diaz is preparing for his professional boxing debut against Jake Paul on Saturday. He sat down with Ariel Helwani at the open workouts and the conversation got interesting.
Nate Diaz rejects Jake Paul’s $10 million MMA offer
Nate Diaz is a notoriously unpredictable personality. Yesterday’s decision to walk out of the face-to-face pre-fight interview with Jake Paul was a classic Diaz move. Today he came on The MMA Hour and made some amends to Ariel Helwani by giving a pretty entertaining interview.
Also, he didn’t walk out, he just “went to the bathroom and when I came back you guys were all gone.”
Helwani asked him what he’s got up next and Diaz was noncommittal although he did say it would probably be MMA next and he rejected the idea of fighting Jake Paul for PFL.
“I don’t fight for that organization,” Diaz when asked about Paul’s $10 million offer. “If we do something, we’re going to do something real. Maybe a real fight. Co-promotion, if anything.”
He denied that he’s thinking past Saturday’s boxing match with Paul and said, “It will probably either be back in the UFC, or do something like this in an MMA style – or boxing, either one.”
Nate Diaz not excited about Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg in the UFC
The conversation took a random turn when Helwani asked Diaz what he thought about the much-hyped, very unlikely-to-happen cage fight between billionaires Elon Musk of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
When the topic of a co-promotion came up, Helwani segued into a discussion of the much-discussed Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg bout.
“I don’t think they should fight. I think they should be nice to each other. You don’t need to be fighting. Maybe just grapple each other.”
Jake Paul reveals identity of Nate-alike sparring partner
Nate’s opponent this Saturday, superstar influencer Jake Paul, spoke to David Adesanya, about the upcoming bout and revealed the identity of a well-traveled sparring partner. (Transcription via MMA News).
“We have the best imitator of Nate in the world,” Paul said. “It’s this guy named Saul, he’s an awesome guy. He’s been super helpful in this camp – shout out to Saul. And Masvidal used him to prepare for Nate Diaz. And so Masvidal hit me up and was like ‘Yo, I have the perfect guy to help you train.’
“When I started sparring him, I couldn’t believe it. I was like ‘This is Nate Diaz.’ So he’s given me an amazing look. And Dustin Poirier was using him to get ready for Nate – obviously that fight fell out. And then Masvidal, he used him to get ready for Nate. So I feel like I’ve literally been sparring Nate in the lead up to this fight.”
Paul has his own ideas for Musk vs Zuckerberg
Paul has spoken previously about his ambitious ideas for the unlikely billionaire bout. He’s also picking Musk FWIW.
“I have a $100 million offer for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to take this fight to the Middle East, to promote it, to put it on for charity,” he announced during an episode of his podcast. “[I] can guarantee $100 million to charity. We wanna get involved and help make this a reality.”
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