Either way, the retired UFC star confronted Paul Saturday at UFC 261 in Jacksonville, a week after Paul’s first-round boxing knockout of former UFC fighter Ben Askren.

Paul, who attended the event with NFL wide receiver Antonio Brown, was receiving “f–k Jake Paul” chants from the crowd, which Joe Rogan noted during ESPN’s broadcast. Cormier, who’s also part of the broadcast, said he “pointed at [Paul] and said ‘don’t play with me,’ because I’ll smack him in the face. He’s right there. I’ll slap him. I don’t play those games, Joe.”

Cormier, 42, then went over to Paul, 24, and had a heated exchange with the YouTube star that was broken up by security.

Last Monday on his ESPN show with Ariel Helwani, Cormier — a former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion — responded to Paul calling him out for a fight in a tweet in which he called Cormier “fat boy.”

“I’m not gonna punch down and fight a guy that’s on YouTube. It’s stupid,” Cormier said. “I’ve fought for world titles my whole life. Why would you start to punch down at a guy that’s trying to, I don’t even know. This dude would never fight me. I would kill him. It’s like, why would I ever fight someone like that? But my immediate reaction was, ‘I can’t stand this kid.’ So it works.”

Paul responded on Tuesday during his brother Logan’s “Impaulsive” podcast, telling Cormier, “I’ll beat the f–k out of your fat ass, too.”

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Justin Tasch