Getty Internet personality, actor and professional boxer Jake Paul is set to fight former MMA champion Ben Askren.
Jake Paul is headed into his pay-per-view boxing showdown against ex-UFC star Ben Askren on April 17, but another UFC fighter said he would love to get his hands on the YouTuber.
UFC middleweight contender Kevin Holland doesn’t necessarily think he’ll actually get that opportunity.
“Yeah, but Amanda Nunes is going to go knock that punk out, and we ain’t got to worry about it no more,” Holland said.
Seriously though, Holland knows Paul already dismissed the idea of competing in a boxing match against Nunes, but the 28-year-old UFC star said he doesn’t expect Paul to accept him as an option either.
“He don’t want that smoke. If he won’t get in there with Amanda, he definitely won’t get in there with the right-hand sniper,” Holland said.
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Why Not Holland?
Why not Paul vs. Holland? The UFC star has some ideas about that.
For one thing, Holland is a UFC middleweight, so he weighs around 185 pounds on fight night and walks around in his regular life somewhere near the 200s.
For another, Holland is 28. He’s an elite athlete in his prime.
Paul is 2-0 in boxing, but he’s yet to face a legit prizefighter. That will change against Askren next month, but Paul, 24, will be naturally larger and much younger than Askren, 36, who competed in the UFC’s 170-pound welterweight division during his career.
Paul’s previous two fights were contested in boxing’s cruiserweight division. That weight class has a limit of 200 pounds, and Paul weighed around 10 pounds under it for both those fights.
Still, even being somewhere around 190, Paul will have around 20-pound weight advantage on Askren entering their big boxing match. Moreover, Paul has consistently called out older and smaller fighters, most notably UFC superstar Conor McGregor.
“Shoot, I’d want to weigh 20 pounds heavier than everybody I fight, too,” Holland said.
Moreover, even in cases where Paul has verbally attacked the likes of boxing superstar Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, he’s been super clear that he would only want to face Alvarez a few years from now.
Paul does take boxing seriously enough to know he’s not quite ready for Alvarez.
Alvarez, 30, is boxing’s top pound-for-pound fighter according to most pundits, and he’s already won world championships in boxing’s 154-, 160-, 168- and 175-pound divisions.
Paul would be no match for Alvarez at this point in his career, and the YouTuber might feel the same way about Holland.
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Both Fighters Consider Themselves Entertainers
Holland and Paul do have something in common. Both consider themselves to be entertainers over anything else, and both stars have parlayed that mindset into success in their chosen fields.
Sure, Holland took the more traditional route of climbing up the ranks the old-fashioned way, but he did so with one goal in mind.
“I’m here to entertain. It’s part of the job description. It’s how we get paid as fighters,” Holland said.
Holland has always seen himself in that light. Even before the fighter made his way onto your television set as one of the fastest-rising UFC stars in the sport, Holland knew what business he wanted to master.
“I feel like it was always there. I feel like I always knew it was part of the entertainment business. At the end of the day, it’s not just a fight. If it was just a fight, I would be doing a lot of things differently,” Holland said.
So Holland is an entertainer first, a fighter second, and he loves it.
“Honestly, I love interviews. I love cameras. I love this lifestyle. To me, this is all amazing. I wouldn’t ask for anything else,” Holland said.
He even shares Paul’s propensity for providing the media with dramatic quotes.
“At the end of the day, me knocking somebody unconscious and leaving a dead body for the whole freaking arena to see, that’s entertainment. People like to see that type of stuff. People tune in to violent stuff,” Holland said.
A boxing match against Paul might not be on the way for Holland, but neither’s career is likely to skip a beat over it.
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