Ben Askren on losing against Jorge Masvidal: "The first thing I remember.."
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UFC's knockout on July 6 (7th month) of 2019 is definitely one of its most memorable moments in recent years. In the following five seconds of the fight, Jorge Masvidal officially knocked out Ben Askren, but the knockout itself was even quicker.
Jorge Masvidal's popularity skyrocketed after he sent Askren into the realm of dreams with a flying knee. A fictional "BMF" belt was then won by "Gamebred" over Nate Diaz. Masvidal was one of the UFC's most popular fighters at the time, and he fought for two UFC titles.
Following his defeat by Kamaru Usman, he lost to Colby Covington. As Jorge's popularity has declined over the past few years, the person who helped him rise in popularity will soon publish a book. The book titled "Funky: My Defiant Path Through The Wild World Of Combat Sports" will be released on October 25 (month 10).
MMA Hour guest Askren discussed Masvidal with Helwani. "You're welcome, Jorge. If he is not grateful to me for everything, then he is ungrateful. He should send me a Christmas card every year for the next 20 years. But I'm serious, if he doesn't appreciate me for all that, he's ungrateful.
He probably doesn't want to thank me and that's why he's chasing Jorge. "The first thing I remember, and this is hilarious, I was sitting and I saw Luke Rockhold. I said to myself, 'Shit, it's Luke Rockhold, and that means I'm in the hospital.'
That's what I thought because I knew he had been knocked out earlier by Jan Blachowicz. After that I saw my wife and asked her what happened. She said "it didn't go well". I realized that I didn't even break a sweat, I wasn't in any pain and I definitely wasn't in a tough match.
I sort of understood that. '', said Ben.
Askren Ben
ONE Championship and the UFC exchanged Askren in 2018 for the UFC. In exchange for Askren, who currently holds the flyweight championship for the Asians, Demetrious Johnson left for ONE and became one of the greatest fighters in history.
While Askren has appeared three times in the UFC, he won against Lawler, lost to Masvidal, and lost to Demian Maia. That exchange was commented on by Helwani. ''ONE did a good job, because I didn't plan to do anything more for them.
I told them I was done and therefore they had me as an acquisition who would do nothing more. I was happily retired and they were able to get Demetrious Johnson who has now done quite a few matches for them. If the UFC wanted to keep Demetrious, they would have.
I think their relationship just wasn't good. There was a lot of bitterness between them, he wanted to leave and they let him go and it worked out great. I think there should be more exchanges in MMA. The only one that ever happened turned out great.
Even if we take the egos of the big four organizations (PFL, ONE, Bellator, UFC) into account, there are certainly fighters who no longer want to be in any of those organizations. If someone has 500 fighters and 50 of them don't want to be there, they should start looking at how to replace them.
It seems reasonable to me.' ', he tells MMA organizations. Therefore, we can conclude that ONE has exchanged a retired fighter for one Demetrious Johnson and brought him into the UFC. It is unclear what expectations the UFC had of Askren, but he claims the exchange went well.
The UFC succeeded if they were trying to demonstrate that a dominant champion from another organization would not be competitive in the UFC. They were sorely disappointed if they had hoped that Askren would be one of the top welterweights for several years.