YouTube celebrity and boxer Jake Paul has claimed it is a ‘very realistic’ possibility that he will fight Conor McGregor next year.
Paul is coming off the back of a win over another UFC fighter, the retired Ben Askren, in April after he knocked out the veteran grappler. The event was said to have netted Paul at least $10 million, and possibly well in excess of that figure.
The Askren victory represented Paul’s third fight, and victory, to maintain his unbeaten record. Before Askren he beat Nate Robinson, and fellow YouTuber AnEsonGib before him.
Last December Paul offered McGregor $50 million for a boxing match, but McGregor’s next fight is scheduled to be a trilogy match with the UFC’s Dustin Poirier on 10 July.
Speaking to The Sun, Paul said: “Potentially, it’s very, very realistic for sure.
“I think it depends on how he does against Dustin on July 10.
“I’m more talked about than Conor McGregor at this moment. Kamaru Usman is going back and forth on Twitter with McGregor and the tweets are getting a lot of engagement.
“But then he tweets about me and it’s one of his number one tweets ever. There’s just more buzz around my name right now and Conor just got knocked out, had one of the most embarrassing losses of his career.
“I’ve had two highlight knockouts in a row on two massive pay-per-views. I’m just letting the numbers speak right now.”
Paul continued: “I think right now we’re at the same level of draw in the combat sports world.
“Doing the pay-per-view numbers that we just did, and I sort of carried that event on my back, when we went into that fight, Ben Askren had 500,000 followers.
“No one really knew who he was besides the UFC fans. So it’s like if you put in a name like Jake Paul and Conor McGregor together, it’s a massive event.”