Nate Diaz hits out at Jake Paul employee before pair almost come to blows

Nate Diaz branded a supposed Jake Paul employee a “stupid a**” after he called out his older brother Nick for a boxing match in unsavoury fashion at a press conference. UFC legend Diaz, 38, and YouTube star-turned-boxer Paul met for the first time in a press conference ahead of their August 5 boxing match.

However, a Paul employee stole the spotlight during question time, claiming he’d beat Diaz’s older brother Nick – also a mixed martial artist – in a boxing match. “Nate I’m actually a boxer myself and I have been trying to get on this undercard, I’m just wondering if you think I could fight your brother, Nick, if he’s anything like you I think I’d beat his f***ing a**,” they said.

Diaz did not take the question lightly and called out “Derrick” for his stupidity, with his eagle-eyed team in the room for the disrespectful trolling attempt. “Brother, are you just going to walk around the streets or some s***?” Diaz replied. “You know my homeboys see you right now? That was stupid, huh? That was stupid. What’s your name?”

“Hey, Derrick from Better Media: stupid a** motherf*****. The f***?” Diaz added. “You deserve to have your a** whipped.”

“Derrick” also admitted that he was “definitely pretty nervous” after Diaz’s sharp response. Paul apologised to Diaz and also told the employee to “shut up”, as well as vowing to “fire him later”. Whether Paul was joking or not is unknown.

Paul, who is 6-1 in his professional boxing career after losing his last bout to Tommy Fury, believes his fight with Diaz will be the biggest of the year. “Nate Diaz was always the plan after Tommy, that’s what I always said in the build-up ‘Nate Diaz is after Tommy,’ it was always the plan,” Paul said.

“This is a big fight, a fight I’ve wanted for a long time, he got out of his UFC contract. Now this is probably the biggest fight of the year, only topping me vs Tommy. So I want to make big events, big fights happen, and strike while the iron is hot. Let’s settle the s*** talk and I’m ready for war, I’m excited to be here – I’m going to do what Conor McGregor couldn’t do and I’m going to knock this man out.

“I’m filled with vengeance, ambition, hunger, drive more than ever before. I have a lot to prove, two chips on each shoulder and it’s do or die for me, truly this fight is do or die. I have to leave it all on the line and I think that’s the same for Nate Diaz.

“He’s leaving the UFC on a win and he wants to come into this game, make a bunch of money, knock out the YouTuber kid, and go back and finish his legacy off. That’s why this is such an amazing fight. But I just lost so if I lose again where does that leave me? So it’s two people who can’t lose, don’t want to lose, who never back down, keep on fighting and that’s why this is war.

“This is the only thing I’m focused on and I’m filled with that hunger and I have more conviction now about what I’m going to do in this sport.”

Diaz, meanwhile, revealed that he had been trying to get out of the UFC for a while. “My plan in fighting is always to fight the biggest name and the best fighters there are,” the Stockton-born brawler said. “I’ve been trying to get out of the UFC for a long time because I knew what I was worth, what fighters are worth, and what I should do. It was a long road but when I was on the way out he was doing the biggest and best things for fighters and in fighting.

“I was glad I had a worthy opponent to make an attack on so it seems I’ve got it. I appreciate everything I’ve done and had to go through because it got me to the point where I understood what I needed to do and what I wanted to happen and what should happen. People don’t really watch the blueprint of what should be done but I was watching the whole time and time will tell.”