Michael Bisping says Jake Paul is back to his usual style of opposition after he suffered his first boxing loss.
Paul lost a split decision to Tommy Fury in February, which marked not only his first loss, but his first time facing an actual boxer. Prior to that, the YouTube star-turned-boxer defeated the likes of former MMA champions Anderson Silva, Tyron Woodley and Ben Askren.
For his next fight, Paul (6-1) has been matched up with ex-UFC star Nate Diaz (0-0) in an eight-round boxing match Aug. 5 at American Airlines Center in Dallas. The fight will be at 185 pounds under the DAZN banner with a live pay-per-view broadcast.
Bisping likes the fight, but took aim at Paul for once again targeting older MMA fighters.
“Nate Diaz, this will be a fun fight,” Bisping said on his YouTube channel. “Nate Diaz is no walk in the park – very, very tough, extremely hard to finish. Granted, he’s not a boxer. He’s almost 40 years old. He’s got a great submission game – you can’t use that. But the hands of Nate Diaz are good. You cannot deny that.
“I’m not hating on Jake Paul, but this is the pattern, this is the flow. It’s an almost 40 non-boxer. It’s a guy that’s a submission specialist with decent hands, and he’s much smaller. Diaz is very tall – he’s not a small man by any stretch of the imagination. But he did fight the majority of his career as a lightweight, OK? So it is going to be very interesting to see how this goes down.”
Paul said his team wanted him to take an “easy” fight like KSI, and that he opted to fight the tougher challenge in Diaz instead. Bisping sees Diaz as a formidable opponent, but one that fits Paul’s usual bill after the loss to Fury showed he’s not ready for an actual boxer.
“You do learn more from your losses than what you do in your victories, but he’s not talking about that,” Bisping said. “He’s saying, ‘Listen, everyone just thinks I’m vulnerable.’ Well, you were clearly showing that when you first went up against a professional boxer – not a basketballer, not a wrestler, not a past-his-prime MMA guy. (Fury) was a boxer. He was young, he was a novice boxer, and you got beat fair and square. So you are more vulnerable, but it’s not the best thing that’s happened to your career.
“He stepped up against Tommy and he got his ass kicked. Let’s be honest. Maybe not kicked. He got beat fair and bloody square, though.”