Days out from his professional boxing debut against Jake Paul, Nate Diaz has some words for critics of the fight.

The former UFC fighter is due to make a sizeable payday in the August 5 boxing match in Dallas, Texas in a fight expected to attract a significant pay-per-view audience — but the fight, and the lead-in, hasn’t been without some controversy. Of course, any combat sports event featuring Jake Paul, the former Disney star turned prizefighter, is going to attract some negativity — but even Paul has appeared to be frustrated by Diaz’s apparent lack of involvement in pre-fight trash talk and promotion.

But speaking to ESPN over the weekend, Diaz said that he’s just here to fight and that if anyone has a problem with that, well, they don’t have to watch.

“That’s his problem,” Diaz said of Paul’s complaint. “I don’t really — I think my fighting promotes as it is, promotes my fights. I’m not gonna get into a little kid argument with the guy and act like we’re any realer than it is. It don’t get no realer than this anyway.

“I don’t need to act like it’s … I don’t talk a bunch of sh*t like he wants to do, I don’t want to stay and talk sh*t and go back and forth. He said something about me at the press conference and I’m like, I wasn’t there for no argument. I didn’t even want to go to no press conference to argue with nobody. Like, if we’re gonna argue, we’re gonna fight. So let’s just stay the f*ck away from each other until the fight. Pardon my language.”

But Diaz says that his unwillingness to engage in phoney styles of promotion shouldn’t distract from the fact that he’s more than ready to go when the first bell rings in Dallas on Saturday night.

“I’m ready for everything,” he said. “I’m ready to go to war right now and I’m ready to be cool until it’s time to fight. I don’t care. I’m at a point in my career where I’m not trying to scare anybody, I’m not trying to fool anybody. If people want to watch, that’d be great. If they don’t, that’s fine too. That’s where he got me twisted. I’m not in this gimmick fight with him. I only need him to know that I’ll whup his ass, I don’t need the whole world. I don’t need to go begging to watch. Don’t watch.”