UFC star Anthony Smith calls on fans to boycott future Jake Paul fights

Smith hit out at the YouTuber for targeting ‘past-their-prime’ mixed martial artists who have absorbed years’ worth of damage

UFC light heavyweight Anthony Smith has called on fans to ‘boycott’ future Jake Paul fights.

YouTube star Paul outpointed UFC legend Anderson Silva on Saturday (29 October) to move to 6-0 as a professional boxer, with four of those wins having come against mixed martial artists.

In his previous bout Paul knocked out Tyron Woodley in December, four months after outpointing the ex-UFC champion, and before that the 25-year-old knocked out Ben Askren – a former MMA champion who competed in the UFC.

Ahead of Paul’s win against 47-year-old Silva, Smith said on the Believe You Me podcast: “If Jake Paul beats Anderson Silva, we should all f***ing boycott the rest of his fights until he f***ing fights some that are on his level, or whatever level we deem him to be on.

“You talk all this s*** about MMA fighters, you talk s*** about UFC, and then you pretend that you want to bring fighters up, and you want everyone to get paid better, but then you trash everyone every time they fight.”

After beating Silva, American Paul called out UFC icon Nate Diaz, who was involved in a backstage altercation with Paul’s team at the Desert Diamond Arena in Arizona.

Smith added: “Now we’re putting food on your f***ing table for you to drag our legends? Older, shorter, smaller, past-their-prime legends that have spent their entire career running their bodies into f***ing car accidents.

“We hold these guys near and dear to our hearts, and then this f***head pulls them out of semi-retirement and knocks them out on pay-per-view and then still s***s on all of us?

UFC light heavyweight Anthony Smith fought for the division’s title in 2019 (Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)

“Go f*** yourself. Like, why are we still pandering to this piece of s***?”

At the time of Paul’s victory over Askren, the latter was 36 and had retired from mixed martial arts after undergoing hip surgery. Meanwhile, Woodley was 39 at the time of both of his losses to Paul and had lost his last four MMA fights.

Prior to Paul’s fights with Askren, Woodley and Silva, the 25-year-old beat fellow YouTuber AnEsonGib and ex-NBA star Nate Robinson via knockout.