Jake was pow­er­ful enough to with­stand Diaz’s awk­ward­ness. He wore him down in the first round and knocked him down in the fifth with a left hook that near­ly sent Nate fly­ing over the ropes.

“He’s tough”“,” Paul said after the fight. “But tough­ness doesn’t work in this sport. I knocked him down and won almost all the rounds. He’s a war­rior, you know. I threw a lot of punch­es, but he still con­tin­ued to attack.”.

Diaz used all the same tech­niques that made him a fan favorite dur­ing his long career in mixed mar­tial arts: he taunt­ed, feigned injuries and made the fight uncom­fort­able in a vari­ety of ways. If in the ear­ly rounds these unusu­al tech­niques unset­tled Paul, then by the 10th round Paul no longer paid atten­tion to them and used Nate’s behav­ior as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to land clean blows on his oppo­nent, who was will­ing­ly putting him­self out of posi­tion.

As a result, Paul won the fight on the score­board, the judges gave scores of 97–92, 98–91 and 98–91.

Fol­low­ing the win, Paul reit­er­at­ed his desire to fight Diaz in mixed mar­tial arts, the MMA pro­mo­tion with which Paul is signed and in which he has equi­ty. “I want $10 mil­lion from PFL. That’s all my pro­pos­al. Let’s close this issue in MMA. Let’s do every­thing hon­est­ly.”

Diaz quick­ly agreed to the pro­posed rematch, stat­ing that his pro­mo­tion Real Fight Inc. must be involved: “For me, I won this fight, but MMA sounds good.”

Diaz also expressed his desire to return to the UFC, where he com­pet­ed from 2007 to 2022. If he goes that route rather than accept Paul’s offer to fight in the PFL, Paul will be left with an obvi­ous poten­tial oppo­nent.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Jake defeat­ed for­mer UFC cham­pi­on Tyron Wood­ley by split deci­sion. This fight became the most intense in the blogger’s entire box­ing career.