“Alex Pereira, you said you want to box. I’m the king of this. Come over, we can make it happen. I want you, Alex Pereira,” Jake Paul confidently declared from the ring after finishing BKFC fighter Mike Perry in the sixth round. In response, UFC light-heavyweight champion Pereira connected with Paul over Facetime to convey his interest in fighting him. The 37-year-old MMA champ shared the Facetime call on his Instagram account with the caption, “Let’s go!! Chama.” But, there is one issue.

Alex Pereira is contractually bound to the UFC, and the fight cannot occur without the promotion’s head honcho Dana White’s permission. Unfortunately, White is not entirely sold on Jake Paul’s star power and is not open to his fighter facing the Problem Child in a boxing match. In a recent conversation on the FULL SEND PODCAST, Jake Paul’s long-time foe, Dana White, disabused the notion that the ‘Problem Child’ is a PPV star.

Doing it for attention?

Recently, Dana White sat down with the FULL SEND PODCAST crew to discuss Jake Paul’s influence in combat sports. First and foremost, the crew members of the podcast and White were all on the same page when it came to the fact that the former Disney star would be decimated by Pereira in the Octagon. “[Alex] would kick [Jake’s] head to another planet,” Dana confidently said. Moving on to discussing whether Alex Pereira was a bigger PPV star than the Problem Child, White nodded in agreement.

“Jake calls people out for attention. Alex is a superstar right now. So Jake calls him out, and Jake gets press,” Dana explained while throwing shade at the YouTuber-turned-boxer. Furthermore, White stated that Paul’s recent boxing match with Mike Perry “didn’t sell any f**king PPV”.

Although the official PPV numbers for the Jake Paul vs Mike Perry are not out yet, an unofficial X account reported that the bout had only received 67k total global PPV buys which was poor compared to the usual numbers that combat sports events garner. On the other hand, convinced of the Brazilian kickboxer’s selling power, Dana asserted with conviction, “[Alex] sells 400 times the f***ing PPVs.”

White further implied that Jake Paul could not be taken seriously as he fights “older people that are smaller”. Safe to say, even though Alex Pereira is older compared to Jake Paul, he is currently one of the most elite strikers in the UFC, who is closer to his weight limit. The UFC head honcho feels Jake Paul has no intention of fighting Pereira, and believes his callout was a mere gimmick to attract more eyeballs towards him.

However, if things were the other way around, would Dana White entertain Jake Paul’s entry into the UFC?

The door is closed for Jake Paul!

When one of the podcast hosts asked Dana White, “You would never consider like a Jake Paul or another influencer coming to fight in the UFC?”, the UFC CEO responded, “That’s not what we do.”

Explaining his reasoning behind not wanting to sign Jake Paul, Dana White stated that in the UFC “best fight the best” and Jake Paul’s pattern of opponent selection doesn’t align with the ethos of his fight promotion.

“What Jake Paul and those guys do is completely different, and again the kid’s doing his thing I’m not sh*tting on them, and listen if smaller, older guys want to fight him, then they’re doing their thing,” White said with a hint of sarcasm.

Jake Paul’s intentions in combat sports can be very tricky to figure out. On one hand, he has expressed his desire to become a world champion, but on the other hand, his boxing record is populated with washed-out old UFC fighters like Tyron Woodley, Anderson Silva, and Mike Perry, or semi-retired boxers. Calling out Alex Pereira, another UFC champion, casts doubt about whether he is taking the sport of boxing seriously.

Do you agree with Dana White’s assessment of Jake Paul? Let us know in the comment section below.