Jake Paul
Jake Paul spent his day trying to free Jon Jones. “Can Jon Jones request a release like Shakur Stevenson so we can go ahead and do this Francis Ngannou vs Jon Jones fight?” he wrote on X, tagging both @JonnyBones and @francis_ngannou. He followed with “They already said they are never working with Francis. So let Jon fly and we can give the fans what they want. Please and thank you.” He never says who “they” are, but everyone reading knows the building he’s pointing at.
The manners are the funniest part. Paul has made a career out of being the loudest guy in any room, and here he is ending a pitch for the biggest heavyweight fight nobody’s made with a polite little sign-off, like he’s asking a neighbor to move their car. It’s also the only post today that’s actually about matchmaking. Jones vs. Ngannou is the fight fans have been yelling about for years, and if Paul wants to be the guy who drags it into existence, I’m not going to stand in his way. Your move, Jon.
Conor McGregor
Conor McGregor went full locker-room poster on X. “I’ve always said it: We’re not here to take part. We’re here to take over,” he wrote, then added “They came to compete. We came to end it.” and closed with “Back yourself. Do the work. Take over.”
View post on X
There’s no opponent named, no date, no event. Just pure Conor motivation, the kind you’d find printed over a squat rack at a gym that charges $200 a month. I’ll take it, because a McGregor in hype mode is more fun than a quiet one, but I’d trade every line of it for a fight announcement.
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Gaston Reyno
The wildest finish of the day came with Gaston Reyno’s caption. “Se hizo el desmayado para escaparse… Y GANÓ LA PELEA!” he wrote on X, attaching a clip. Roughly translated, the guy pretended to pass out so he could escape, and then won the fight.
Reyno didn’t name the fighter in the post. Over in Japan, Tatsuya Kawajiri was praising a playing-dead tactic from the same night’s Shooto card, so you can do the math yourself (more on that below). Faking a knockout and winning anyway is the kind of thing that only works once, and only on a defender who stops to check his own work.
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Shinya Aoki
Shinya Aoki posted something heavier. “いじめも誹謗中傷も無くなりません。これは本当のこと。その上でどう生きるか。” he wrote on X. In English, he said bullying and slander will never go away, that this is just the truth, and that the question is how you live knowing it.
Aoki didn’t attach any context, and I’m not going to guess at what set him off. Coming from a guy who has spent decades as one of the most polarizing figures in Japanese MMA, it reads like a philosophy he’s lived with for a long time.
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Renato Moicano
Renato Moicano had to issue a public service announcement. Quoting a user who argued that a licensed fake isn’t fake and that @moicanoufc or @moicanoac doesn’t matter because they’re all Moicanos, he fired back with “Se esse homem te pediu dinheiro emprestado não fui eu!”
Translation: if this man asked you to borrow money, it wasn’t me. The real Moicano is @moicanoufc, and he’d like everyone to stop wiring cash to a guy with a similar handle. Funny post, practical advice.
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Tatsuya Kawajiri
Kawajiri, the old Crusher himself, was still buzzing after Lemino Shooto 9. He wrote on X that the main event between Shohei Nose and Shoji Saito was a brutal, life-or-death war worthy of fight of the year talk, and he told anyone who missed it “まだ観てない人は見逃し配信で観て！！！” (go watch the replay). He also tipped his cap to a fighter named Sugimoto, calling his playing-dead strategy impressive.
When a guy who went through the wars Kawajiri did calls something a death match, I believe him. The Lemino Shooto account posted that the replay starts at midnight Japan time, with the Golden Performance Award and Golden Match Award winners still to be announced.
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