Anderson Silva hopes combat sports fans can, at least, tip their caps to Jake Paul for stepping in to face Anthony Joshua later this month.<\/p>\n
Silva, one of the greatest fighters in MMA history and a former, longtime UFC middleweight champion, is facing Tyron Woodley on the same card as the Paul vs. Joshua heavyweight matchup on Dec. 19 in Miami, streaming exclusively on Netflix. \u201cThe Spider\u201d shared the squared circle with Paul in August 2022, with Paul winning a competitive decision.<\/p>\n
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Despite winning most of his fights, Silva doesn\u2019t understand why Paul gets a bad rap from fans, but believes most of the negativity should go away now that he\u2019s facing Joshua.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, when you go inside the ring, everybody has a chance,\u201d Silva told MMA Fighting. \u201cAnd I respect Jake a lot because Jake proves for every single person how he\u2019s ready for a fight. He\u2019s a real fighter, and people start talking a lot of bad things about Jake because, \u2018Oh, Jake do this and that, Jake never fight with a real fighter.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo now, these people can\u2019t say nothing because Jake [is set to] fight with the big and giant and amazing fighter, and amazing boxer. What are the people going to say now?\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul was initially scheduled to face Gervonta Davis in an exhibition bout in November, but a sexual assault lawsuit filed against Davis led Most Valuable Promotions to postpone the event and seek out a new opponent for Paul. Coincidentally, the promotion needed to find a new opponent for Silva, who was slated to face past two-time UFC opponent Chris Weidman on the November card, but an injury scratched Weidman from the bout.<\/p>\n
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Silva still gets to compete on the same card as Paul and will see \u201cProblem Child\u201d compete as a massive underdog against Joshua. Silva hopes \u2014 win, lose, or draw on Dec. 19 \u2014 that Paul will get more respect from the boxing community.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, maybe Jake loses, the people say, \u2018Oh, I knew it, it\u2019s not a real fight,\u2019\u201d Silva said. \u201cSo wait a minute: Jake is not the same weight class as your opponent, but Jake comes inside the ring and fights with [one of the] best fighters in boxing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what are you talking about with Jake? I think nobody can talk about Jake if Jake is doing his own job and respect your opponents, and do the best job. And I respect Jake a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anderson Silva hopes combat sports fans can, at least, tip their caps to Jake Paul for stepping in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[30020,6565,2560,21474,6566,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-318174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-anderson-silva","9":"tag-anthony-joshua","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-gervonta-davis","12":"tag-jake-paul","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}