Jake Paul rips UFC’s ‘little insecure boys’ over Conor McGregor announcement stunt

Dana White didn’t wait for the MVP MMA debut event on Netflix to be over before announcing Conor McGregor’s UFC return Saturday night.

On Saturday night, while Francis Ngannou was making his walkout at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood — his first MMA fight under the MVP MMA banner, on Netflix, in front of what Jake Paul was calling one of the most-watched MMA events in history — White pulled out his phone and went live on Instagram to officially announce McGregor vs. Max Holloway at UFC 329 on July 11, the headlining bout for International Fight Week.

Nobody pretended this was a coincidence.

“The cokehead is back,” Paul mockingly said, referring to McGregor. “Yeah, that’s cool, bro. That’s cool. Drop it during our event, [it] doesn’t matter. That just shows how pressed they are. Little, insecure boys [are] trying to piggyback off our event and try to put some news over top of us. It’s not gonna work, buddy.”

“I mean, that’s kind of catty,” added Ronda Rousey, who headlined the card against Gina Carano. “But it also shows that they see MVP MMA as a threat that they would do that in that moment… and do it at that time. I feel like it’s also a compliment because it elevates MVP MMA, and it makes their declaring that they see us as a real rival. I think that’s such a compelling story, and now they’re helping us tell it.

This is a play right out of White’s playbook. When the Professional Fighters League (PFL) announced it had signed Ngannou in 2023, the UFC immediately pivoted to its own announcements to bury the coverage. White has been operating this way for two decades, using the news cycle as a weapon, a pattern that fits with how he generally runs the UFC. As Matt Yoder wrote here earlier this month after White’s Breakfast Club appearance with Charlamagne tha God, White has built a media environment so favorable to himself — banning reporters he doesn’t like, dismissing the 2022 domestic violence video without any real accountability, controlling access to his fighters and his narrative so completely — that the rare interview where someone actually pushes back becomes notable on its own.

“Dana White is used to getting his way and ruling the UFC universe with an iron fist, controlling media coverage and creating and forwarding his own narratives,” Yoder wrote.

As for McGregor, the fight itself is genuinely interesting regardless of the trolling around the announcement. McGregor hasn’t fought since breaking his leg against Dustin Poirier in July 2021. He was supposed to return at UFC 303 in June 2024, against Michael Chandler, a fight that had been building for over a year through a season of The Ultimate Fighter, but pulled out six weeks before fight night with a broken toe. Now, July 11 — five years and one day after the Poirier leg break — is the date, against a Max Holloway who is a completely different fighter from the one McGregor beat in 2013 during his climb through the featherweight ranks.

Whether McGregor can actually perform at this level remains to be seen. What Saturday settled was that White, for all his stated indifference toward MVP MMA, was watching closely enough to pick his moment with some care.