Daniel Cormier appears to have made amends with Jake Paul.
Back in 2021, Cormier and Paul found themselves on opposite ends of a heated feud. At the time, Paul was coming off a brutal knockout of Ben Askren and was hyping up a fight with Tyron Woodley, and doing so in a way that Cormier took umbrage with. As the beef continued to simmer, things boiled over when Cormier and Paul nearly got into a physical altercation at UFC 261. Ultimately, the heat between the two died down, and now, with Paul’s recent signing to the PFL, Cormier revealed he and Paul have squashed the beef.
“Jake Paul, today, announced that he has signed with the PFL,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “A couple of weeks ago, Jake Paul and I were messaging each other about an appearance on my show, DC & RC, and we were going back and forth talking about his future, and honestly, Jake and I have had some run-ins. But when I started messaging him, he’s a kid that’s very respectful. We had respectful conversations, we really did. We didn’t argue, we didn’t fight.
“He’s a kid that, he has an idea of what he wants to do. Now, these kids today are different. It was like [Israel] Adesanya with [Jon] Jones. Where I would kind of hold back, Adesanya would just say whatever it is he wanted to say about Jones. If there was an accusation, he would levy the accusation even if they hadn’t proven it true. That is what kids like Jake Paul do today. He’s very boisterous, he’s very verbal, he speaks big, but he was respectful.”
Over the past year, Cormier’s tune on Paul had changed somewhat. He’s admitted that Paul has done a good job of promoting fights and that he’s clearly improving as a boxer, but Cormier was still among those loudly calling for Paul to challenge Anderson Silva in the ring, instead of other smaller former MMA fighters with no boxing experience.
But now that Paul has done that, having won a unanimous decision over Silva in October, it appears he’s fully earned Cormier’s respect.
“But will Jake Paul actually fight in the PFL?” Cormier asked. “A lot of boxers say they’re going to fight, but the never actually do. Here’s the thing about Jake Paul though: He’s from Ohio, a wrestling hotbed. Ohio has some of the best high-school wrestling in the entire country.
“Jake Paul was a high-school wrestler there and so was his brother Logan, and they weren’t bad. So although it seems as though Jake Paul does a lot of things to drum up interest, I believe this one. He’ll actually fight.”