Jake Paul has hit back at Conor McGregor after the UFC legend questioned whether there was any interest in his upcoming bout with Mike Tyson, claiming the event will be ‘the biggest fight the world will ever see’.
A stunning announcement earlier this month confirmed that heavyweight icon Tyson, 57, would be coming out of retirement to enter the ring with YouTube sensation Paul, 27, a fighter 30 years his junior.
The spectacle, scheduled to take place at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas – home of the Dallas Cowboys – on July 20, will be streamed live on Netflix.
Several high-profile figures in boxing have voiced their concerns given the enormous age gap between the two men and Tyson’s trainer this week played down warnings from doctors that Iron Mike risked sustaining brain damage.
Former UFC champion McGregor, meanwhile, said he ‘doesn’t understand’ the appeal of the match-up, though sent his best wishes to Tyson, who has been putting in the hard yards in the gym.
‘Oh jeez, it’s a bit strange, you know,’ McGregor recently told The Illuminerdi YouTube channel.
‘The interest is low… I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I wish well for Mike.’
Paul has repeatedly been forced to defend his decision to agree to the controversial fight, even blasting his brother Logan for branding Tyson ‘too old’ and ‘senile’ earlier this month.
And speaking on his BS podcast, the Problem Child took aim at McGregor’s comments, highlighting the apparent interest in the bout compared to the UFC star’s proposed fight with Michael Chandler.
‘So Conor, you’re saying the interest is low for the fight, but the last fight you announced, there was a thousand articles written in a multi-day span, people talking about your last fight,’ Paul said.
‘In that same multiple-day span, there were ten thousand articles written about this.
‘No fight ever has done these numbers in terms of face-off views and Instagram reels.
‘Just on our main pages alone, it’s like 50 or 60 million Instagram views on both of our posts. Not to mention every single other sports page posting it.’
Paul suggested McGregor and those criticising this summer’s event were simply ‘jealous’.
‘This is, in my mind, the biggest fight the world will ever see,’ he added.
‘There’s no reason for them to be jealous.
‘I get people are jealous, but when the old heads like Conor are trying to hate, it’s like, why are you trying to pull people down?’
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