On Saturday evening, YouTube star-turned-boxer Jake Paul scored a first-round knockout against retired mixed martial arts star Ben Askren.
With the victory, it made Paul 3-0 since his decision to begin boxing professionally, and it’s now brought several more MMA stars into the spotlight who want to go against Paul, as they feel they’d show him a real fight.
However, The Challenge: All Stars executive producer and cast member, Mark Long, believes one of his castmates would be up for the task of taking on Jake Paul in the ring.
Mark Long suggests All Stars castmate as Jake Paul’s opponent
Mark Long’s All Stars spinoff season features 22 OG competitors battling in daily challenges and eliminations in Argentina. They include some of the all-time legends of the game. In addition to former winners like Nehemiah Clark, Kendal Sheppard, and Katie Cooley, there are also multiple-time champions.
Among them are Mark himself with two wins, three-time winner Derrick Kosinski, and four-time winner Darrell Taylor who also appeared on The Challenge: Double Agents season.
On Saturday night following Jake Paul’s knockout win against Ben Askren, Mark tweeted to suggest his opponent should be a decorated star from The Challenge.
“When is @jakepaul gonna fight someone that actually knows how to fight? I know a guy,” Mark tweeted, following it up by tagging castmate Darrell Taylor and hashtagging The Challenge All Stars.
According to an MMA Fighting report, Paul had numerous opponents from the world of mixed martial arts after winning his fight. They included former UFC Welterweight Champion Tyron Woodley and former UFC Featherweight and Welterweight Champion, BJ Penn.
Most likely, Mark knows that he can get a bit of publicity for All Stars by trying to call out Jake Paul for a fight against Darrell in a viral tweet.
That said, Darrell has had some relevant fight experience. Based on his Challenge wiki page, Darrell trained in boxing for several years and won a San Francisco Golden Glove competition in the Light Heavyweight category.
All Stars competitor previously kicked off The Challenge for fight
Darrell, age 41, has appeared on nine regular seasons of The Challenge and won his first four of them. He’s also been on three spinoff series based on The Challenge, including All Stars which landed on Paramount Plus three weeks ago.
The OG competitor is also known for being able to throw a serious punch. In fact, that was the reason he got kicked off one of his seasons of The Challenge.
Darrell’s fifth season of The Challenge was The Ruins in 2009. During Episode 8 that season, his castmate Brad Fiorenza started jawing at him one night after drinking, and it led to a physical altercation between the two.
“This is not gonna end well,” castmate Johnny Bananas said during a confessional interview about the fight.
After Darrell stayed seated and refused to listen to Brad yelling at him to stand up and fight, Brad walked over and put his hands on him. That led to Darrell getting up and going right at Brad. After a brief bit of grappling between the two, Darrell landed a round of serious punches on his castmate. Brad stayed down on the ground. Castmates stopped Darrell, and footage later showed Brad with blood near his eye.
The aftermath of it all was that both competitors got kicked off The Challenge that season, which took away Darrell’s chance at a fifth-straight win on the show. It also left Brad with a seriously swollen eye for a while after the incident.
It all eventually healed with time, but the incident may show what All Stars competitor Darrell could do in the boxing ring. Right now, it seems Jake Paul has plenty of professional fighters lining up to take him on, though, so Darrell may have to wait a bit.
The Challenge: All Stars episodes arrive Thursdays on Paramount Plus.