EX-UFC heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier threatened to ‘slap’ Jake Paul after the YouTuber gatecrashed UFC 261.
Fans in attendance at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida broke into a chant of ‘f*** Jake Paul’ after the social media star was spotted in the crowd during the final prelim fight between Randy Brown and Alex Oliveira.
And that set off the normally calm and jovial Cormier, who the YouTuber targetted after his brutal KO victory over Ben Askren last weekend.
An irate Cormier said: “I swear to god, I just saw Jake Paul.
“I pointed at him, I said, ‘Don’t play with me.’ Because I’ll slap him in the face. I don’t play those games, Joe.”
A fired-up Cormier confronted the outspoken Disney star and wagged his finger in his face between fights.
Despite the heated confrontation and threatening to ‘slap’ Paul, Cormier has refused to entertain the prospect of fighting the 24-year-old.
During the latest episode of the DC & Helwani Show, he said: “This dude would never fight me.
“I would kill him. Why would I ever fight someone like that?”
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“But my immediate reaction was, ‘I can’t stand this kid.’ So it works!
“I can’t stand this kid! But who punches down?
“You don’t punch down to somebody. I’m the guy that’s in the Hall of Fame.
“I’m the guy that won two world championships at the same time.
“I’m not gonna punch down to some kid that’s on YouTube that’s, like, ‘Fight me!’ Like, why?”
After branding Cormier a ‘fat boy’ on Twitter, Paul took further aim at DC during an appearance on his brother Logan’s podcast.
He said: “So many fake motherf*s in this generation.
“Daniel Cormier, (mimicking) ‘That’s my boy Ben, he’s gonna beat Jake, he pushed him in the face so he’s gonna win now, chirp, chirp, chirp.’
“I knock him out and he’s on Twitter, ‘Ben, are you serious, bro, you went down like that? Ben are you kidding me? Ben, I can’t believe you did that to the MMA community.’
“Shut the f*** up b*. I’ll beat the f*** out of your fat ass too, just like Stipe [Miocic] did. Cleveland s.
“I swear to God, I’ll beat the f*** out of Daniel Cormier.”
