Jake Paul is set to get into the ring with Anthony Joshua on December 19th in what is undoubtedly a huge money fight funded by Netflix’s deep pockets. Not getting any of that sweet payday? Francis Ngannou, who refused to even consider fighting Paul because it was beneath him.
That hasn’t sat well with Paul, for obvious reasons. Not only was he disrespected, he’s now facing the much tougher Joshua who rinsed “The Predator” out when they fought in March 2024. During the press conference for Paul vs.
Joshua (watch the whole thing here), “The Problem Child” had some less than kind words for the Cameroonian fighter.
“He’s just an idiot,” Paul told MMA Junkie. “I’m like yo, what are you doing if you’re so confident, if you feel so disrespected? You’re having all this bad publicity about your name over the past year and a half. This is the opportunity to correct that and stop me.”
“I mean, he’s basically also talking shit to Mike Tyson for fighting me,” he continued. “So Francis, you’re nowhere near the legend, you will never be even close to the legend of Mike Tyson, and you’re saying it’s disrespectful to get in the ring.”
“When when I go in there and do 10 times, a 100 times better than Francis, we’ll see how he feels then,” Paul said during the press conference. “The guy’s a joke. He’s a dumbass. He’s stuck in mud. Francis to me is an easy fight as a boxer. So that’s all we need to talk about with him.”
Even Anthony Joshua got in on the Francis bashing.
“With Ngannou, he should he should be up here,” Joshua said. “If he was serious, he wants to fight rather than talk, be about it, don’t talk about it. If you’ve got something to say and you need to prove yourself in boxing, the best way to do it is to let your hands go.”
“For me, personally, you didn’t see much talking from me. We come up here and we do the talking in the ring. All that talking on TV channels and stuff about what you shouldn’t do and what you should do. Just keep quiet. If you’re about it, be about it. And that’s why we’re here now.”
There was a lot of talk about Francis Ngannou fumbling the bag after he left the UFC and he turned right around and secured the biggest bag in a year of any MMA fighter not named Conor McGregor. Will he have the last laugh down the road, or was this really as big of a fumble as Paul and Joshua say?
