{"id":837378,"date":"2026-08-01T08:09:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837378\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T08:09:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:09:21","slug":"jake-paul-gunning-for-mma-fight-w-nate-diaz-or-mike-perry-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837378\/","title":{"rendered":"Jake Paul Gunning For MMA Fight W\/ Nate Diaz Or Mike Perry Next Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jake Paul
\n Eyeing Nate Diaz In Mixed Martial Arts
\n … After MVP + PFL Merger<\/p>\n

\n Published
\n August 1, 2026
\n 12:30 AM PDT\n <\/p>\n

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Jake Paul<\/a> won’t just be running the new MVP MMA promotion after the merger with PFL … he’ll also be fighting, and he’s got two big-name opponents in mind!<\/p>\n

The Problem Child chopped it up with Babcock<\/a> on Friday … and was asked if he was targeting his longtime rival, Nate Diaz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, Nate Diaz. Mike Perry<\/a> would be great,” the 29-year-old fighter said.<\/p>\n

“We love Mike Perry. The Nate conversation has been ongoing. It just never made complete sense. I think up until this moment, things just got a lot more serious with this announcement. So, I want the Nate Diaz MMA fight very, very bad.”<\/p>\n

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Paul’s company, Most Valuable Promotions, is merging<\/a> with Professional Fighters League, and fights will ultimately run under the MVP MMA banner.<\/p>\n

Jake and Nate’s beef goes back years. The two stars already fought in the boxing ring in August 2023 … which JP won by unanimous decision.<\/p>\n

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Paul had the advantage in the squared circle … but a mixed martial arts fight would seemingly favor Diaz, who has been fighting MMA professionally since 2004.<\/p>\n

Jake and Mike also have some history, too.<\/p>\n

Perry was a sparring partner of Paul’s in early 2021 … and after clips leaked of the session, the guys traded barbs back-and-forth.<\/p>\n

Like with Diaz, Paul beat Perry in a boxing match in 2024.<\/p>\n

Both matchups are attractive to Jake … and would be for fans, too.<\/p>\n

As for his vision of MVP MMA, we asked Jake if the goal was to compete with the UFC, and Paul made it clear they weren’t going to take a back seat to anyone.<\/p>\n

“One thousand percent, it’s war.”<\/p>\n

“I look at this like Coke versus Pepsi and there’s already so many comparisons made with us on a day-to-day basis, but we got more viewership than they did on their White House card where Donald Trump<\/a> is promoting it. I love Donnie and we’re going to make MMA great again.”<\/p>\n

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Bottom line for Jake.<\/p>\n

“We can compete. We are competing and we’re out competing. So, it’ll be exciting and interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jake Paul Eyeing Nate Diaz In Mixed Martial Arts … After MVP + PFL Merger Published August 1,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,44,85,635,26898],"class_list":["post-837378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-tmz-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}