UFC welterweight standout Randy Brown believes Nate Diaz will get “destroyed” inside the squared circle with social media sensation Jake Paul.
After 15 years of competing inside the Octagon, Nate Diaz will make his highly anticipated pro boxing debut as the Stockton Samurai is set to square off with Jake Paul inside the American Airlines Center in Dallas on August 5. Despite having one of the more celebrated stand-up games in mixed martial arts, Diaz is listed as a +245 underdog a month before the bout is scheduled to go down. According to Randy Brown, those odds sound about right based on Diaz’s skill set versus that of his opponent.
“I think Nate Diaz doesn’t have great boxing, I think he has great elements of boxing, I think there’s things that he incorporates well from boxing in his game and he has great drop punches because he carries his hands very high so there’s no tell and then he just drops them on you,” Brown told InsideFighting.
Jake Paul is currently 6-1 in his career as a professional boxer. Most of those victories have come against non-boxers, including former NBA star Nate Robinson and ex-MMA world champions Ben Askren, Tyron Woodley, and Anderson Silva. His lone loss came against the one legitimate boxer he has faced in his career, Tommy Fury.
Randy Brown Doesn’t Like Nate Diaz’s Chances Against Jake Paul
With an undeniably solid record against former UFC stars, many fight fans, including Randy Brown, aren’t giving Nate Diaz much of a chance when he straps on the 10-ounce gloves for a scrap with ‘The Problem Child.’
“I think he [Diaz] gets destroyed in a boxing match. Jake Paul is a boxer by this point, we have to give credit where credit is due and he’s a boxer,” Brown said. “He might not be an extremely high-level boxer but at this point, he’s boxing primarily you know that’s where he spends most of his time whereas a lot of MMA fighters we have to split our time between so many different things. It’s been a few years now, realistically I look at him now as a really good amateur” (h/t MMA News).
Making his promotional debut on season five of The Ultimate Fighter, Nate Diaz went 16-11 during his 15-year run with the UFC. Diaz has gone toe-to-toe with some of the biggest lightweights in the history of the sport, including Anthony Pettis, ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, Gray Maynard, Jim Miller, Takanori Gomi, Benson Henderson, Rafael dos Anjo, and Rory MacDonald. His biggest career win came at UFC 196 when he submitted Conor McGregor via a rear-naked choke.