MMA Fighting - Reaction: Chaos Erupts At Jake Paul vs. Tyron Woodley Pre-Fight Press Conference

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

MMA Fighting's Shaun Al-Shatti, Damon Martin, and Alexander K. Lee react to a wild Jake Paul vs. Tyron Woodley pre-fight press conference and the chaos that followed the event. Follow Shaun Al-Shatti: @ShaunAlShatti Follow Damon Martin: @DamonMartin Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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What is up, my friends? I am Sean O'Shaughty of MMA Fighting, and I am joined by my guys, Alexander K. Lee, and of course, Damon Martin, on site coming at you from Cleveland, and we are coming at you just minutes after the conclusion of today's Jake Paul, Tyron Woodley pre-fight press conference.

And what a scene it was, fellas. It was already a tense presser, But then afterward, we really devolved into a bit of mayhem here. You had orange shirts everywhere. You had Tyrant's mother and sisters seemingly getting into it with Team Paul. So, Damon, I know you're on site. You were in the middle of the fray. You were in the middle of all this chaos.

Paint a picture for me, man. What did you see? What was going on today? So it was kind of bizarre because I'm sitting basically right kind of to the left of the presser. So right behind, like right in front of Jake Paul. and as they're getting ready to face off at the end of the press conference, Tyron Woodley is getting ready to stand up, and one of the guys from Jake Paul's entourage started shouting,

he's scared or he looks scared or something to that effect. And after saying that numerous times, then Mama Woodley answered him back and said something to the effect of, my son doesn't get scared, or he's not scared, or nobody's scared. Again, I'm paraphrasing here. And then they just started chirping back and forth at each other, and it was basically this guy. from Jake Paul's entourage and Mama Woodley just going back and forth with each other.

Now, I know there's been some reports out there saying that he insulted her. I didn't hear that. I didn't hear him call her any name. I definitely heard him chirping back and forth with her. That's 100% true. They were going back and forth, back and forth. He was saying something about, I don't need to go to school, and she was shouting, I'm a no-limit soldier.

And it was kind of crazy. And then when Tyron realized it was his mom involved, he obviously got, pretty upset, which again, understandable. That's his mom. And then Tyrant's sister got in the guy's face, and that's the video you see that we published that I got from my seat, where

she got right in his face and more or less was like, if you want to throw it down, I'll throw it down. So yeah, it got nasty in a hurry, man. It kind of blew up. I mean, I honestly, I swear I thought it was going to be a fight. Like, I was right next to it, and I was standing up to shoot the video, and I'm thinking it's about to, like, it's about to

explode in here. And luckily it didn't, but I mean, I thought it was going to pop off. I seriously thought it was going to explode. How bad did it get, like in the room? Like, what was the feeling in the room? Well, it, okay, so when it started, their turban back and forth at each other, and it was, you know, they weren't, I mean, they weren't getting too nasty, but they were definitely going back and forth.

And again, the one guy from Jake's entourage is definitely, you know, shouting it at Mrs. Woodley. So, you know, again, you know, it's the guy's mom. You know, obviously she's going to be as fierce as ad because she's going to be as big as fan. You understand that. That's where you kind of, in my opinion, you're just like, okay, let's just end it here. We don't need to be talking to his mom. And then when Tyron realized it was his mom involved, and he kind of came off the stage and sent one of his guys over and one of his guys kind of rushed over.

And then some of the guys from Jake Paul's entourage kind of came over. And they're kind of like right in each other's faces. And like, at that moment, that's what I thought it was going to pop off between the entourage is because they were trying to get in between the guy and Tyron's mom and Tyron's sister. And then, like I said, the entourage just kind of swarmed in. So there's like a group of like nine or ten people all in this little tight little circle shouting each other, trying to pull each other apart. And eventually cooler heads prevailed.

And I know there was a little bit more shouting in the hallway and things like that. But at that point, it kind of calmed down. But it got nasty. And it was more once at that point, like I said, when Tyrant's sister got up there and was shouting at the guy, I was like, she's about to take him out. Like she's seriously about take this guy out right now. And then like I said, the entourage is going over there. And they were not really shouting.

They were more just kind of like, you know, the ugly looking at each other. Like, what are you going to do kind of looks, you know? And then like I said, they eventually got in between and everything kind of calmed down. But I mean, like I said, I've been to a lot of press. I was at the, I was at the Nate Diaz, Connor McGregor, let's throw bottle cans at each other in press conference. Same, yeah. And I had a bottle of water go whizzing by my head at that one. and that was kind of crazy.

But this one, like, I legit thought it was going to spill over, and I was about to have to, like, move out of the way of a fight because, like, that's how bad it got. Yeah, people talk about fake, people talk about hype and theatrics when it comes to this fight, and just in general, the Paul brothers and Jake Paul and what he's doing here. It really felt like there was nothing fake about this. That was genuine what was coming out of Tyrant.

And, I mean, we've seen this in MMA. You don't talk about a guy's mom, right? Like somewhere out there, Michael Kiesso was flying into a rage after sensitive disturbance in the force here this afternoon. A.K., what did you make of all of this? I'm a mama's boy, so seeing that cut deep, I mean, seeing that incident, when the reports started coming out as to what it was that set it off, I was like, man, I don't blame anyone from Woodley's team or Woodley himself for what

they do next. I don't encourage violence at all. I believe in non-violent solutions to every problem. But like NBA He covers violence for his sport Listen listen but like NBA A former NBA player Matt Barnes once said Violence is never the answer

But sometimes it is And I quote that all the time I'm probably broke people who have heard me say that before But I do I honestly think like That the only thing It was pretty cordial The press conference itself Like I mean there was a lot of trash talk

Some pretty nasty trash talk But you got the sense both guys were kind of in control just in some ways going to the motions. The post faceoff, scurfuffle, whatever people want to call it. I like that you combined those two words there for a second. Skirfuf, scurfum. Why scurfell?

I'm stealing that age. Yeah, it's like a scrufflep. Yeah. Scrap. I don't know what you want to call it. I mean, there was nothing about going to motions to that. Again, like Damien was saying, I can't imagine.

It must have been scary because it's a pretty small room. If one or two individuals had chosen to just start throwing fists, I mean, you would have had a real incident. But as it turned out, this was kind of the perfect press conference a few days out from the fight, right? I don't know if you could have a better, had a better press conference than this. Am I wrong? I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, as I was sitting there when it started, and I put, I message you guys when the press was starting. They had Tommy Fury see right behind Jake Paul.

And they've been kind of jaun at each other. And there's been a lot of talk. Maybe if they both win, they would fight next. And I honestly thought, man, maybe we're going to see something to pop off between those. those two because I've covered enough Tyron Woodley press conferences to know that like he can talk trash but he's usually pretty subdued. He's not the guy who gets physical. He's a professional. You know what I mean? Like Tyron's a professional. He's never going to push or shove or or start something like that. He'll, you know, he'll jawjacket a guy, but you're not going

to see him like shove anybody. That's just not who Tyrant is. He's a professional. So I actually thought maybe the Fury thing would pop off. And then it ends up being, you know, obviously the two camps and to his credit, not that it makes it any better. But you know, when I saw Jake real briefly after the pressors he was leaving with his team, he basically said, you know, everyone's in the wrong here. Everyone looks stupid. And he's right. I mean, listen, at the end of the day, I agree, I don't care who you are.

You don't start jawing with a guy's mom. I mean, I don't care. I know she's going to be his fiercest advocate and his biggest fan. She's supposed to be. It's his mother. That's when you just stop talking. Okay, I got you. Be done with it.

Keep you shouting in tiring. Keep shouting at him. keep shout out shout at his coaches, whatever. You don't shout at the guy's mom. And that should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. They kept going. And then that's when it got really ugly. And yeah, like I said, I mean, again,

maybe it's because I saw the mom and the sister get involved when I was like, okay, we're about to have some fist thrown here. As we said, just pure chaos. I have to read this off a tweet from our old buddy, Luke Thomas over at the Showtime team. Quote, I just spoke to Tyron's mom. Brian Campbell asked her if someone put hands on her. And her response was, well, is he dead?

Oh, my God. Mama Woodley, what a gem she is. What a treasure that woman is. You gotta love her. I have to say, though, just this whole week, especially today, I have really enjoyed non-weight-cut fight week Tyron Woodley. Like, he is totally a different man this week than we've seen from UFC Fight Weeks when he's on the verge of death, usually trying to get to that 170-pound limit.

He had some really great lines today. felt he was kind of bringing the heat in his opening remarks and you could tell that he was just totally unfazed by this whole situation. I would say he's almost like be mused by it in a weird way. And to me it's a very interesting contrast to what we saw from the last fight, right, where Ben Ascran, Ben Ascran had somewhat of a similar demeanor, but he was almost like someone who was just kind of, I don't know, like annoyed to be babysitting in a weird way, if that makes any sense. And meanwhile, Tyrant's out here talking and acting like he is in a mental state to just murder a human being. And then that was just dialed up to even more,

the 100 after all of this theatrics today. Damon, I mean, you were there. If you, if you were scoring this afternoon as a round, who won today? Team Woodley, Team Paul, how you how you frame in this? Well, you know, what's funny, you know, going into it, you know, tyrants, Tyrant's obviously trash talk with guys before. He's not, you know, he's not, he's not, you know, above or below that. He's trash talk with guys and gotten over on guys in trash talking. I've heard him zinging some guys pretty good. And it's been hilarious in the past. But I'll be honest, Jake Paul is a social influencer for a reason. That's what he does. I mean, this is kind of his thing. And so I thought, Jake's probably going to get

the better of him in the press conference, and then we'll see what happens in the fight. I think Tyrant got one on him today. I think he had a couple of good lines in there. And, you know, Jake was kind of having a good time and kind of playing a bit of the promoter, you know, kind of, you know, pumping up Amanda Serrano, which was great, you know, calling her the co-main event, which I thought was awesome, by the way, you know, giving her that kind of status. And, doing all the things he should be doing, but he was kind of having fun up there. Tyron was all about business, and you could tell, like, if they would have fought right now, Tyron would have been swinging, like, immediately.

He was ready to go. So I kind of leaned towards Tyron for this one because not only did he not get, you know, not only did he not get taken by the social influence guy, the guy who's supposed to, you know, the guy who's supposed to get the better of him in these kind of altercations. He came across really strong. He looked focused. And then, like I said, man, when you mess with his mom, dude, you might as well just back out of there because that dude.

I mean, I'll take Tyron Woodley again. I might take Tyron. You know, I might think Tyron's got a chance against Francis and Gano if it comes down to his mom right there because that dude will throw down and rightly so. So in that regard, got to give it to Tyne. Got to give it to T. Wood. What about you, A.K., takeaways from just the whole proceedings,

what we saw. Who you think won this? I was so impressed with Tyrone Woodley today. He's been good at press conferences before, but this was, I mean, this is a totally different beast. Like this kind of press conference. It's boxing, it's freak show boxing. It's not another fighter.

It's someone on a different, like almost coming in from a different plane of existence, a different plane of reality, this YouTuber turned boxer. So I thought he handled himself really well. He didn't let Jake Paul talk over him. That's a big one. That's a huge one, I think, when you're dealing with a guy like this. His lines felt fresher. Paul has a tendency to repeat himself at press conferences, which is fine.

Again, he comes from a meme culture where you want to, you know, if you feel like you have a good catchphrase or a good line. you kind of want to drill it over and over again so that your fan base kind of absorbs it. So that's fine. That's how he works. But I think anyone who's kind of paying closer attention to this one saw that Woodley was really calm. He was tagging from a bunch of different angles.

I'm just looking at some of the stuff that we tweeted out from our account. I like we said like, oh, your training partners are going easy on you. None of them want to hurt you. I thought that was a great way to come at it. They don't want to lose the bag. They don't want to lose the bag. And it's like, again, even if you're like,

if you're objective and you're on the fence, like who's making more sense here? You hear that. You're like, yeah, yeah, they probably don't. He made fun of the robot, which again, I don't approve of. But he said, yeah, he said, you come out with that dumbass robot, do whatever you want. You're going to get knocked out. And then he closed the really good line.

Shout us to dude wipes. He said, I should have brought him some dude wipes to clean himself up after I knocked the S word out of him on Sunday. So really nice volley from Woodley. I think, as we kind of said, because Paul is also playing the promoter, he's kind of having to wear a bunch of different hats. He wasn't like super focused on trash talking. Woodley, he might have contradicted himself a little with saying, like, I respect him one second, the next I don't respect him. So again, you know, if you're a fan of either guy, it's probably not going to change your opinion. You're like, you're not going to be like, oh, Woodley's was better

here. I like Woodley more. Oh, Paul was right. You know, the camps are going to be what they are. But at the same point, but for us judging, I mean, yeah, I thought it was a clear win for Woodley. And extra points for Mama Woodley. I mean, I'd say whole family Woodley, right? Like even the sister, the sister was getting in that guy's face. I don't know who the gentleman. someone was. I'm not even kidding. I want, I want, I want his sister to represent me now. Like, I don't know what she does. I don't know what, I don't know what she does for a living, but like, I want to hire her to be my agent because she was going to take care of you. I'm like, that's, that's the kind of, that's the kind of person I need in my corner. Like, seriously,

I'm going to hire his sister to like to like, watch out for me because that's the kind of person you need in your corner. I do love it too, Tyron afterwards. David, you, I think you recorded him sort of in the hallway walking away from all of this, but still sort of chirping at one this random orange shirt guy that he saw and essentially saying like i'll i'll turn this whole place into an earthquake like you guys don't actually understand the subtext of it basically being like this isn't you guys just play a game like we actually fight like this is not an actual competition if this turns into something like you guys do not stand a chance against any of us i did like sort of the dynamic that was at play there because you could just feel it coming from tyrant

the confidence that this man was just exuding also just uh just to just the other's there, Sean, as I was walking out in the back, I had a chance to run into A.J. McKee, Belator champion, A.J. McKee. He was in the back, obviously, with Anthony Taylor and those guys. So if trouble did pop off, I'm sorry to say Team Paul would have been in some serious due to because A.J. McKee, the best featherweight in the world, by the way, is back there. And I was like, ooh, man, I was like, oh, God, this is the last guy you want to have back here on the other side of the team against you guys. Max Holloway might have something to say about that, my friend.

I can't wait to see the next M.A. fighting global rankings. I can't wait now. Yeah, where was that? We need to save this for the rankings show, which, by the way, is debuting soon. But just to wrap all of this up, last few things here, what we saw today, did it change or sway you at all about how you were feeling about this fight beforehand, who has the upper hand, anything like that, any of that? Did it did what we saw all this chaos today, really angry, tired of the time? Does that change anything for you, Damon?

You know, a little bit, it does, honestly. It does because he looks really focused and really fired up. And I think there's a part of Tyron Woodley who understands that this fight is about reputation. I mean, he does not want to go out there. I mean, listen, Ben Ascran was a bit of a troll. Ben Ascran was an Olympic wrestler. No one actually seriously thought Ben Ascran had hands. And when he got knocked out, there was some surprise, but there's a lot of people who said,

yeah, I could kind of see that coming. he's not a boxer and he got knocked out cold it is what it is tyrant's a legit champion one of the greatest welterweights of all time so i think there's a bit of reputation on the line for him and so seeing him today seeing his demeanor seeing how serious he was and also as you mentioned sean great point he looked he looked he looked happy he looked i mean not happy but he looked like he looked like he looked like he wasn't deathly ill from a weight cut which is a big deal you know and this is a guy who said for years maybe i'll test myself a middleweight and unfortunately just never got the chance to do that now you know with this fight of the

catchway, he'll get a chance to go up and wait. But yeah, I would say it affect me a little bit. Does that mean I'm changing my pick? I know I've been very honest in saying I thought Jake would win this fight just because of who he is and I do believe he's taking this seriously. I don't know that it changed my pick, but I think we are going to see Tyron go in there and throw some serious hands now. AK, I mean, Damon just mentioned it. Jay Paul is the favorite. We just saw the live odds here this afternoon. He is a minus 190 favorite right now as we speak. Tyron is a plus 155 underdog. I'm sure we'll talk about it more on the preview show,

but after watching all of this, same question to you that I just asked, Damon, how are those odds looking to you right now? Did this change anything about how you were feeling about this fight beforehand? I mean, it's made me even more interested to watch. I was already on the plus side as far as interest goes. People know, you know, I know a lot of MMA fighting listeners and readers are like, oh, why do you guys, it's even just beyond like a freak sure elements to it. there's you know when we watch the essence of watching fights is you want to see two

people throw down and and and find out who wins and if you told me if you told me a year even like two years ago that there's some some YouTubers going to come up and become a pro up somewhat successful pro boxer and is going to fight UFC champion Tyrone Woodley would you want to see that even two years ago I'd have been like yeah that sounds kind of cool and like in the two things that two years have happened since of course the whole dynamic of that of that narrative has changed so But yeah, I'm even more interested. Like I said, I really enjoyed the press conference.

I think it turned out as well as they could. Thankfully, again, nothing too bad happened after. Hopefully we don't find out that anything like really crossed the line as far as what was said between the two camps. Like Damon, I'm probably still leaning towards Jake Paul. I love Woodley's mentality. I love his attitude that he seems to have going into this. He does seem refreshed. But I just think there's certain limitations he has at this stage of his career.

that will not be able to be overcome on Sunday. But I am even more interested now in watching this fight. And I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that. I have to admit, guys. I've been saying this whole time since the moment this was booked, the day that this was booked, I said I feel really bad because Tyron probably is not going to end well for him. And this is a guy who, Daman, you mentioned it.

I mean, one of the greatest welterweights of all time. He's certainly a top five welterweight in the history of our sport. And yet his inglorious exit from the UFC, see it's not how you like to see your legends go out. So I did feel bad for him initially that, hey, you might just get sort of a worse version of a retirement on the way out here. He's kind of selling me, though, guys. I'm not going to lie.

I'm kind of getting swayed, just like a little bit by what we're seeing from Tyron this week. That man is just so locked in in a way that I really haven't ever seen before. And it's just, again, the confidence, the way he's treating all of this of just, like, y'all don't even understand what I've been through. that type of thing. I don't know, man. Maybe I'm falling for it, hook line, and sinker, but it's kind of swaying me a little bit. Am I silly? No, that's, again, that just says how good this press conference was. It worked. I don't think you're silly. It worked on me, too. Like I said, I was with you, Sean. When this fight got made, I said the exact same thing you said, and now I'm kind of like,

you know what? I don't know. I think we're about to see a real, a real dog fight on Sunday night. This just, if nothing else, this is not the Ben Ascran fight. This is not going to be the man, ask your fight. This is not going to be two minutes. This is going to be something. This is going to be something different. They got me. I'm not going to lie. They got me. Over under 800,000 paper views this thing sells after today. I say over. I say over. I don't think it's, I know, I know Tyron said this is going to be the biggest card of the year. I think it will be the biggest boxing card of the year, but I don't think

they're going to beat Connor and Porre. In terms of buys. I mean, Connor and Porre did what, $1.8 million for the second fight and then 1.6 for the first one, or technically the rematch back in January. I don't think they'll reach those numbers, but to say they get to a million buys, I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility here. I think I agree with you. I think if you say, I think people say it's going over 800,000. They have to be assuming that it's going to hit a million, or at least close to a million. Like when people, like, you know, if you think it's going over 800,000, you're not saying like 850, 900, you're probably thinking a million. That doesn't feel out of the question for me. We'll see. We'll see. I'm sure we'll get

more? I don't think so. I think it's closer to $800,000. I'll say even slightly below. I'm going under. Man. Well, I mean, it's only Thursday, so we're still a few days away. Go forward, Damon. I said this. When I talked to, when I talked to Jake, when I did the interview with him before the fight, I said, listen, you know, there's a reason why, you know, these are the kind of fights that makes sense for him, because, listen, if he ends up fighting Tommy Fury next, will it be a big fight? Sure. Will there people, will people buy it? Sure. But Tommy Fury is just not known here in the States. I mean, he's just not a big come on. He actually might be a much, more dangerous opponent, but he's not that guy. And so will it do well? Sure. But fighting Tyrone

Woodley, a former UFC champion who was very well known, fought in some of the biggest pay-per-views of all time. You know, he was, Ty, one of the things you got to compliment Tyrant about during his UFC career is he was always so smart about where his fights were booked. He booked a lot of fights on like Conner cards and it really raised his profile. And he came into this fight and he's hyping it up. So yeah, like that's why this is going to do 800,000. Even if it does 800,000. That's massive. I mean, that's a huge number for a massive number. Definitely. A three-no boxer and a guy who's never boxed before his life. And you mentioned the Tommy Fury aspect of it. Also, too, one thing you lose with Tommy Fury, you lose the MMA audience, right? Like,

no one in MMA cares about Tommy Fury unless you're over there in UK watching Love Island. Like, that's just not an entity that we're invested in or we care about. Whereas Tyrone Woodley, we all have so much personal experience with him. it's it's it's it's working man it's working uh just one last thing here before we get out of here i just have to add i hate this about boxing pressers the the preamble everything that goes on with these pressers makes no sense to me for the first like 20 minutes who the hell is this for who wants to hear 20 minutes of these television executives just blathering on and on it feels so self-indulgent to me and it's it feels like it's just these dudes talking to hear themselves talk

and I get like we we rip on UFC pressers quite a bit for just being pretty terrible, which I would say they are and they are increasingly getting so over the years. But at the very least, we have to give them credit for figuring out how to cut through all the clutter like this. Because the first 20 minutes of all these boxing pressers are just absolutely insufferable and I can't stand it. Yeah. Sean, you've been, I've seen you at enough UFC shows before we work together. And now that we're teammates, when we used to go to UFC shows and we see each other, there would be those occasional cards you go to in like a town where the UFC hadn't really been much before outside of Vegas or whatever and they would end up bringing in like the mayor or maybe some like you know dignitary and like somebody else and they would talk and they would open the press conference for like 10 minutes of talking everybody in the media would be looking at Joe like this is so awkward and pointless and like we were just like can we please get started with like the actual press conference and that was like 25 minutes today I just I don't get it I don't get it I don't get it I don't know that I'll ever get it, but maybe it's not for me to get.

Anyway, let us wrap up here. This has been the Jake Paul versus Tyron Woodley pre-fight press conference reaction pod. Thank you so much for joining us. Please keep it locked to MMA fighting as we continue to bring you coverage from down on the ground there in Cleveland. It's only Thursday. We've got a long way to go. That man is David Martin. That man is Alexander K. Lee.

I am Sean Oshaddy. We love you guys. Stay safe out there. We'll talk to you soon.