Hasim Rahman Jr. revealed that Jake Paul‘s coaches told him not to knockout Jake during their sparring sessions a couple of years ago.
Most of the time, sparring in combat sports has a code. Some coaches, such as Eric Nicksick of Xtreme Couture, believe sparring footage should not be released. Some other coaches say it is up to their fighters. But there are no rules for “The Problem Child,” and because of that, Rahman Jr. has fired back.
Rahman Jr. and Paul will be fighting next month on August 6, but the two boxers have sparred before.
Paul released some of the footage that was chopped up, something that Rahman Jr. predicted and did not like.
Don’t knock out Jake
On the MMA Hour on Monday, Rahman Jr. revealed that he was told not to knockout out Paul during their infamous sparring session.
“I was gonna tell him, ‘in boxing, you know what I’m saying, this don’t count, like the sparring don’t count.’ But to Jake, sparring is like a fight, because, obviously he has no amateur experience,” Rahman Jr. said. “So, if he’s doing well against a professional, he’s thinking, ‘Oh, I can really do this. I can really do this to this guy. These sparring sessions are like Jake’s fights. So, I was just trying to, you know, humble him a little bit and tell him like, I’m in here handicap, bro. Like literally when you watch it back, you’ll see that I rarely use my right hand, and I’m only giving you one hand, and I’m only staying one way. Like this is not what you’re hyping it up to be. On top of that, he has three or four cameras rolling, and when you’re the person on camera- I know how Jake Paul gets down. I know he’s gonna chop it up and edit it the way he did and make it look like the way he did.”
So, that’s what you see when I was upset in the videos like, now you’ve been disrespectful. I don’t know what that’s about. I don’t know how you’re gonna try to make it look. It was nothing to do with the actual boxing sparring session. It was to disrespect the sport…I actually was asked by your coaches not to knock you out. So, I was told that ‘if you knock him out, you’re most likely not gonna get paid. At the time, like I said it was during the pandemic. I’m getting $100 a round. This is just easy works fine for me. So it was definitely something I didn’t want to throw away. But at the same time you’re not gonna disrespect me and disrespect the sport.”
.@_HasimRahmanJr recalls his sparring session against Jake Paul 🥊 #TheMMAHour
"I was actually asked by your coaches not to knock you out."
▶️ https://t.co/kCKMeBctT0 pic.twitter.com/6cuqQKP2kh
— MMA Fighting (@MMAFighting) July 18, 2022
Unlimited resources
Even with all of the funny business that occurred during their sparring session, Rahman Jr. knew Paul could box. But, he knows that he has unlimited resources.
“I knew he could fight the first time we boxed and he told me he had a background in wrestling in high school and stuff like that. So, he’s an athlete, and then he has this, this huge following. And he pretty much has the money that he needs to train at his dispense. He can do pretty much do what he wants, train when he wants,”Rahman Jr. said. “I wouldn’t say I’m impressed, and I wouldn’t say surprised but this is what could happen if you have an endless amount of resources to do anything you need to do. I mean, he’s just the first to do it. I don’t think that you know, it’s something spectacular that anybody couldn’t do it. If I could take I can take five amateurs that are in the USA boxing system right now, they’ll look three times better than Jake if they had the resources that he had.”
The good thing is Rahman Jr. will be able to prove his point in a little less than two weeks at Madison Square Garden.
