After watching Alex Pereira beat Khalil Rountree, Jake Paul is even more confident that he can beat him in boxing.
Paul called out light heavyweight champion Pereira for a boxing match after he scored a TKO win over Mike Perry in July. “Poatan” answered, ready for a fight.
Pereira is fresh off a fierce round 4 TKO of Rountree and retains his light heavyweight title in Saturday’s UFC 307 headliner. He lost the first two rounds before finding his groove and beating Rountree.
Paul believes Rountree exposed Pereira in this fight.
“I would beat him a thousand percent,” Paul told Adin Ross about boxing in Pereira. “That’s the thing, Rountree has actually kind of shown that he’s not a big performer. “He doesn’t like body shots. In MMA, Pereira would take my head off. “But boxing is a completely different sport, both the pace and the style.”
Paul (10-1) will face 58-year-old boxing legend Mike Tyson (50-6-2) on November 15 at AT&T Stadium in Dallas. With Pereira currently under a UFC contract, a fight with Paul is highly unlikely.
“It’s got holes in it,” Paul said. “I mean, Rountree rocked him, hurt his body a few times, but he didn’t keep going.” If anything, this fight showed me that Alex Pereira is great. But I know I would beat him in a boxing match and I would still like to do that. There’s pressure on him. If he gets out of the UFC contract like Nate Diaz did, he and I can talk at some point.
Pereira, a former Glory kickboxing champion in the two-weight class, boxed once professionally – a TKO victory over Marcelo de Souza Cruz in 2017 in Brazil.
Related
UFC 307 social media reactions: Alex Pereira’s historic title defense over Khalil Rountree leads to superfight requests
Dana White mocks Jake Paul for denouncing Alex Pereira, who ‘sells 400 times the damn pay-per-views’
Jake Paul explains why he called out UFC champion Alex Pereira
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Jake Paul says Khalil Rountree exposed Alex Pereira’s holes: ‘I know I would beat him’ in boxing