Dana White announced a boxing fight on Tuesday and the comment section turned into a weigh-in. Here’s who said what, starting with the guy holding the microphone.
Dana White
White posted on X that the matchup is locked in, writing “BOOOOOM!!!! Wilder vs Opetaia is OFFICIAL in Cardiff, Wales.” His sales pitch was two numbers, “Wilder has a 95% knockout rate and Opetaia is undefeated 31-0,” and he tucked in a plug for #FuryJoshua going live on Netflix on December 11th. I respect a promoter who leads with stats. I respect him less when the stats he picked are the two that make the fight sound even.
Jake Paul
Paul quoted White’s post and went straight for the numbers White left out. “Hold up….so a top 10 P4P fighter in Jai, who is 31-0 is fighting a 41 year old Deontay Wilder who has been. knocked out in 4 of his last 7 fights?” he wrote, then followed with “Tell me more Dana about how you always have the best fighting the best.” Paul’s math (his figures, for the record) is the kind of thing that matters to anybody pricing this fight. A career knockout rate tells you what a guy did at 32. Four stoppage losses in seven fights tells you what his chin is doing now, and Paul is betting the second number. He also landed a jab at White’s habit of saying the UFC always makes the best fights, which is the most fun part of the whole thing, since these two have been trading shots for years.
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Conor McGregor
McGregor quoted the same White post and kept it to four words and an emoji: “Wow what a fight! 🔥” Paul and McGregor looked at the exact same announcement and came to opposite conclusions inside a few hours. By the engagement counts, White’s post pulled 249, McGregor’s 174 and Paul’s 153, so the hype side won the scoreboard narrowly. I’d still rather hear Paul’s case than the fire emoji.
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Georges St-Pierre
GSP had the busiest post of the day by a mile, 2,041 engagements, and it had nothing to do with Cardiff. “Exactly 9 years ago today, I had my last fight at Madison Square Garden in NYC and captured the UFC middleweight world title,” he wrote, adding “What a memory!” A welterweight great going up to 185 for his final fight and leaving with the belt is the kind of thing that ages well. It also beats a lot of what gets booked today on the “best fighting the best” front, if Paul wants another example.
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Sean Strickland
Strickland took a break from fighting people online to campaign for youth boxing. “We need to bring back boxing for kids. How does the boys and girls club have volleyball but not boxing!?!?” he asked on X, before adding “Bro you think a kid getting his ass kicked everyday in life wants to go do home work and play volleyball lol.” It’s a sincere point delivered in pure Strickland, and honestly it’s one of his more reasonable takes this year. The bar is on the floor, but he cleared it.
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Michael Chandler
Chandler is still waiting on his next UFC assignment and took a different one in the meantime: special guest enforcer for an unsanctioned match on WWE NXT, per a post he quoted from Joe Scott, with Montana facing Dion Lennox. “Woke up with a pit in my stomach…but that sensation is nothing new to a man who constantly throws himself into the fire,” Chandler wrote, telling fans to tune in on The CW that night. Enforcing the rules in a match with no rules is a strange gig. Chandler made it sound like he was walking into a title fight, which is exactly why WWE wants him.
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Genki Sudo
The former UFC and K-1 fighter gave us the most wholesome post on the board. Sudo wrote that he’s three months into learning the fiddle and, as a three-month challenge, played MIND SHIFT by his own group WORLD ORDER. He called himself still pretty bad at it, writing “まだまだ下手くそですが、もっと上手くなるぞ！” (roughly, he’s still clumsy but promises to get better). Three months in and he’s already recording himself. Most guys I know quit guitar before learning the second chord.
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