'I'll always love her,' he tells ET.
Jake Paul is opening up about where things stand with Tana Mongeau.
ET caught up with the 22-year-old YouTube star at a press conference for his upcoming DAZN fight with Gib, where he revealed what sparked their recent break.
"I fell in love with boxing, and I fell out of love with Tana," he told ET's Katie Krause. "I'll always love her. I think we're just better off as friends. When we kind of made that decision, it was like a weight lifted off of both of our shoulders. It kind of reminded us, like, how the relationship started, which was friends."
"She's an amazing girl. It just wasn't the right time for us," he continued. "We both have things to focus on, and we're working on certain things together as well. It's great that we're still able to have a great, amazing relationship."
As for whether the two could ever get back together? Paul said he doesn't know "what the future holds."
"We'll see, I really don't know," he shared. "If you'd asked me three years ago if I'd be standing here right now doing a f**king interview about boxing and knocking kids out, I'd be like, 'Absolutely not. I'm on Disney channel and I'm a vlogger.' So, I don't know what the future holds, but you never know."
"There weren't rules, I think it was kind of just open communication," he added of their split. "I feel like she'll be dating people and obviously I'll be focused on this, but who knows what will happen after my fight, if I have free time. It's Hollywood and anything can happen."
Mongeau shared similar thoughts while speaking with ET at the same event. "Just because you take a break, does that mean that the day after you're like, 'I don't support you at all?' Like, of course I want to be here to cheer him on," she said of why she made an appearance at the press conference. "I feel like Jake really fell in love with boxing and it became kind of his whole entire world. I got really busy, and we both, we're just at a place where, like, I can barely fit you into my life, coming from both ends."
"I'm taking it day by day. I love him," she added. "I always will love him, and if it's meant to be, it will be."
Mongeau also opened up about the potential "divorce party" she and Paul are planning. "Honestly, we probably will [have one]. I know that sounds like an insane confirmation right now, like, 'Oh, my God, Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau are scheduling a divorce party, what's going to go wrong.' I don't mean for it to be like that," she explained. "It's more so just -- as hurt as I am, and as much as we're separating, taking a break for a second, Jake and I, I'm very fortunate to be able to still look at Jake and us both be so grateful for the entire experience and what it taught us."
"We want to have a celebration of this amazing year where we both changed each others' lives," she continued. "So we just kind of started making jokes about a divorce party and we might want to do it with all our friends. But we realized we're f**king insane for that, so I don't know."
As previously reported, Mongeau took to Instagram earlier this month to announce that she and Paul were taking a step back from their high-profile, whirlwind relationship.
"OK I don't rly know how to do a 'we're taking a break' post & this is weird as f**k," she wrote at the time, alongside a snapshot of herself and Paul laying with their puppy. "I'm happy to still be able to sit with Jake and laugh as we do this -- but for right now we both are taking a break to focus on our own very crazy lives."
"I'll never know what the future holds and I will always love Jake and everything we did," she added. "I'm grateful to know throughout this I've made a best friend for life & found someone to do life with when no one understood me."
Paul shared the same photo to his own page, writing, "As Tana and I sit next to each other writing captions about taking a break we’re literally laughing at how crazy and stupid the past couple months have been and cracking jokes at how silly this all seems."
"I wouldn't change anything that happened," he continued. "We're best friends and right now it's best for us to focus on our lives & see what the future holds."
For Paul, that means training for his upcoming fight, which takes place Jan. 30 in Miami, Florida.
"We have a rigorous training camp up in Big Bear, California. We're high in the altitude, the oxygen is thin there, so naturally everything is twice as hard," he explained to ET. "So if you do six rounds in Big Bear, it's like doing 12 rounds down the mountain."
"I'm training with "Sugar" Shane Mosley, boxing legend. He's teaching me how to be a champion, train like a champion, eat like a champion, think like a champion," he continued. "He's been a blessing in disguise. He's instilled so much confidence in me and just turned me into a different breed of fighter. I'm more prepared for anything than ever. It's just exciting."
Hear more in the video below.
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