In the aftermath of UFC President Dana White’s comments that Logan Paul might only find himself seriously injured in an actual match, the social media celebrity recently fired off a tweet accusing him of trying too hard to appear like he says and does good things for the love of mixed martial arts. The tweet also mentioned former WWE Champion CM Punk as an example of someone White allowed to fight on pay-per-view despite his lack of MMA experience.
As recalled by MMA Junkie , the 23-year-old Paul first announced his intentions to become a UFC fighter toward the end of August, after his YouTube boxing match against rapper KSI, which sold close to 1 million pay-per-views. This drew scorn from a number of UFC mainstays, including welterweight Darren Till, who told Paul not to “embarrass our sport,” and heavyweight Chase Sherman, who said that the YouTuber should “earn [his] s**t” and pay his dues in the sport before making such a bold announcement.
Former UFC up-and-comer Sage Northcutt, who is currently a free agent, accepted Paul’s informal challenge to “catch these hands,” which prompted a mocking response on Twitter from the social media star, where he asked the 22-year-old fighter to “bring it on.”
Dana White chimed in on the Logan Paul issue earlier this week, following the controversial press conference featuring UFC 229 headliners Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov, as he told reporters that Paul “would get murdered” in the UFC, meaning he would get “hurt badly” if he got to fight for the mixed martial arts promotion.
“If I ever let him fight in the UFC, I should be arrested.”
Logan Paul invokes CM Punk in response to Dana White: ‘Stop acting like you do it for the sport’ #MMA https://t.co/WNdYeqairm
— MMA Talk (@MMA_TT1) September 22, 2018
According to MMA Junkie , Logan Paul responded to Dana White’s remarks on Thursday night, tweeting that the UFC boss was “thinking real simple” by assuming he would be seriously injured.
“You let CM [Punk] fight. Stop acting like you do it for the sport. Paycheck = fight. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
Despite being older than most UFC veterans and having no MMA experience prior to his retirement from the WWE, Punk, aka Phil Brooks in real life, got to fight at two UFC events, getting submitted by Mickey Gall in the first round at UFC 203 and losing via unanimous decision to Mike Jackson at UFC 225 . Unlike Punk, who was exclusively known as a pro wrestler prior to his UFC debut, Paul has prior experience in amateur wrestling, as MMA Junkie noted that the YouTuber was once a high school wrestling star in Ohio.
Prior to Logan Paul’s aforementioned retort to Dana White’s comments, the UFC boss addressed the possibility of comparisons to CM Punk’s situation, as he put the 39-year-old former WWE superstar over as someone who has shown a lot of passion for mixed martial arts.
“[Punk] put his reputation and everything on the line to come [and] fight here, and I respect him for it. Obviously, it didn’t work out for him, but he’s got a lot of heart and a lot of balls to do that,” said White.
