CLEVELAND – Jake Paul isn’t a fan of the chaos that came after Thursday’s press conference with Tyron Woodley, but he wouldn’t recover.
At the end of the press conference festivities, Paul and Woodley had an early showdown at Sunday’s boxing match at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, which airs pay-per-view on Showtime. It was largely casual, until one of Paul’s team members began exchanging verbally with Woodley’s mother.
The situation escalated from there, with members of the team and family on both sides involved in a strong warm-up. Eventually, the cooler head prevailed and nothing too serious came out of it.
“Of course (I didn’t want that to happen),” Paul told MMA Junkie after the incident. “This is Women’s Equality Day. If it was literally anything else, I’m just sitting around talking about how much I love my mom, what I love about my girlfriend, and of course there must be an altercation involving women. It sucks. Everything that looks is messy. Here we try to have a professional event and now things are more personal. You will probably need more security in all these places. Things are no longer cordial. Tensions will definitely be higher in this fight. “
Paul said the situation was especially surprising, as behind the scenes the side castings of the two fighters have been civilian. Woodley’s mother was sitting next to Paul’s mother, in fact, before it all started to fall apart.
“It’s really weird,” Paul said. “They have been friends since they met in Miami in the first match in history. My mother and Tyron’s mother, have sat together and talked. It seems strange. How did this happen? Everyone got involved and shit talks and accusations and everything came and went. It’s just messy. “
Although Paul was not very happy with everything, he said he brings more intensity to the fight. Emotions increase even more than they already were, and even though Woodley was the hottest athlete at the time, Paul said the fight now is also “more personal” for him.
“I think it’s more personal for me too,” Paul said. “Just watch their team act the way they did. He’s probably sitting there saying the same thing. He wants to get all the gangsters. But they were also very disrespectful. My team is being professional. Were they wrong? Yes. But they will never just come out of their pockets and act like that. There had been something that was accumulating and then exploding. Everything is more personal and I will make him and his team pay for it ”.
As for the overall situation, Paul would not change the past, he said. He is not going to instruct or encourage the team member who started the whole process to apologize – as Woodley asked – and is only willing to move forward to fight now.
“Damn no, we’re not sorry,” Paul said. “It simply came to our notice then. Shouldn’t we have done it? May be. But we don’t feel it. “
Watch the full interview with Paul in the video above and watch the altercations after the next press conference.