- KSI criticized Jake Paul’s performance against Nate Diaz
- The Brit claims “The Problem Child” is ducking him
Jake Paul made waves in the boxing world once again after beating former UFC star Nate Diaz this past weekend. It didn’t take long before KSI share his thoughts on the fight. As expected, Paul’s fellow YouTuber-turned-boxing star wasn’t impressed.
Paul did nothing in There
Speaking to Ariel Helwani in The MMA Hour, KSI thoroughly and heavily criticized “The Problem Child’s” performance against Diaz. According to KSI, Diaz was obviously a shell of himself inside the ring but Paul still wasn’t able to capitalize on it and did nothing but avoid gassing out for 10 rounds.
“I feel like he’s regressed, if anything. I don’t think he did very well against an opponent who hardly jabbed,” KSI assessed. “Watching the fight, I was like, ‘Nate isn’t jabbing at all. He’s not setting anything up.’ Jake wasn’t setting anything up. He was just surviving the 10 rounds. Low output, low I.Q., I don’t really understand what Jake was trying to do. I think he tried going ham in the first round, [but] realized he didn’t want to gas out because he had nine more rounds and then just decided to go at this really slow pace and just survive the 10 rounds while jabbing and moving. That was kind of it.”
“I think he regressed. I just felt like the shot selection was poor,” he added. “I felt like he did well to punch a punching bag, I guess. All Nate was trying to do was the old classic tactic of double guarding, trying to tire his opponent out, taking all the damage, trying to parry stuff, just literally walking down, but Nate doesn’t have any power to be able to do anything with that, and Jake didn’t capitalize. There were hardly any left foot turns, Jake didn’t do enough to the body, he was holding a lot. I just thought it was quite poor, personally.”
KSI went on and slighted Diaz as well, stating that the Stockton native was a great MMA fighter but a terrible boxer.
“I don’t feel like Nate posed a threat. He has pillow hands, especially in the boxing ring,” KSI said of Nate. “When it comes to MMA, he might be able to knock down someone because of how small the gloves are, but in boxing he doesn’t throw anything from the hip. It’s like he’s slapping. And the amount of shots Jake took was tremendous but it hardly did anything, so that’s why I felt Jake was able to weather the storm and won unanimously, but obviously Nate didn’t jab.”
Jake was Scared
KSI and Paul have been feuding for quite some time now but a fight between the two never came to fruition. It can be recalled that back in August last year, Paul challenged KSI when the latter’s opponent, Alex Wassabi was forced to withdraw due to a concussion. However, the fight did not happen, and “The Problem Child” ended up facing Tommy Fury. On the other hand, KSI wound up taking on Joe Fournier.
KSI then offered to become a backup opponent for the Diaz boxing match when the bout was put in limbo due to the ex-UFC star’s involvement in a street brawl in New Orleans. However, Diaz was able to be cleared and carried on.
Despite how things played out, KSI claims that Paul could agree to fight but instead, he opted to duck him out of fear.
“We’ve been trying to make the fight happen. After me vs. Fournier, it was meant to be me vs. Jake,” KSI said. “But then Jake decided he didn’t want to go down that route and decided to fight Nate instead. We have been trying to fight. Jake doesn’t want to do it. Jake doesn’t feel like he’s good enough to beat me. I think he felt like he was good enough to be me last year when I came back from music to get into boxing. He tried to capitalize on me when I wasn’t sharp, when I wasn’t as good as I am now. Now that he’s seen how I’ve taken out my opponents, my movement, my tenacity, blah, blah, blah, he’s seen all of that and it terrifies him.”
KSI is coming off a win over Fournier which was later overturned to No Contest. He is now set to face Tommy Fury on October 14. Meanwhile, Paul is looking forward to a rematch with Diaz in MMA under the PFL banner.
