a severely broken jaw<\/a> he received after Anthony Joshua brutally stopped him in their boxing match in December. The jaw was broken in two places and required teeth to be removed and multiple surgeries. But while Topuria was trying to look out for Paul\u2019s health, Paul was fired up and ready to go immediately, leading to Topuria\u2019s most incendiary comments of the interaction.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ll spar you with no headgear,\u201d Paul said. \u201cYou\u2019re a little guy. You\u2019re 5\u20196\u201d. You can\u2019t even ride rollercoasters, brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOK, maybe the best thing that I have is not my height,\u201d Topuria retorted. \u201cMaybe I\u2019m not the [tallest] guy in the room, but I\u2019m going to \u2026 give you a combo that I put you at the height of my balls. I\u2019m going to *pow* and you\u2019re going to be at the height of my knees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce it happens and we spar, the talking will be over, and that\u2019s great,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n
The back-and-forth continued between the two for some time, with Paul noting that he beat Anderson Silva in a boxing match, prompting Topuria to address that aspect of Paul\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gave me a name that I respect a lot,\u201d Topuria said. \u201cHe\u2019s a legend in the sport and did amazing things. The moment when you fought him, he was 45 or 46 years old. It\u2019s not the same. The spirit of someone 29 years old is not the same of someone 46 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, and that was year three for me in the sport,\u201d Paul responded. \u201cI could say the same thing, that he had been doing it 10 times longer and come up with excuses if I lost. But at the end of the day, it was a matchup, and I beat his ass.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two then bickered back and forth about how much money Topuria makes in the UFC, before concluding with tentative plans to settle this all with a legitimate sparring session.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever I\u2019m saying online, I would tell you face-to-face, and not in a bad way, because I don\u2019t disrespect you,\u201d Topuria said. \u201cBut, for me, if we\u2019re talking about sport and skills and technique and all that, I don\u2019t think that you are great. I wouldn\u2019t put you in a list of the greatest boxers or fighters or whatever. You said something right, that I don\u2019t dictate those lists, but this is my personal opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you\u2019re entitled to it, but when people say that, I\u2019ve been waiting for the moment where a big UFC fighter is actually down to spar after talking shit, because it\u2019s going to be funny when people see what happens,\u201d Paul responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to fight you,\u201d Topuria concluded. \u201cI swear. Let\u2019s fight. Let\u2019s do it. Let\u2019s spar. Whatever. I spar every week. I do it. That\u2019s my life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilia Topuria wants to get into boxing, and he may already have his first big opponent lined up.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,49,48,701,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-503626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-latest-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}