Ben Askren says Nate Robinson reached out to him following his knockout loss to Jake Paul.
Former ONE FC and Bellator welterweight champion Ben Askren revealed that Nate Robinson reached out to him and offered him some words of advice following his knockout loss to Jake Paul on Saturday.
Paul was flattened by Paul in the first round of the Triller Fight Club main event at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, suffering one of the most humiliating losses of his career.
Robinson, a former NBA player, suffered a similar fate against Paul on the Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr. undercard in November and has been keeping his head low ever since.
Askren is taking the loss in stride but appreciates the fact that that Robinson reached out to him.
“Nate Robinson actually reached out to me,” Askren revealed to ESPN’s Ariel Helwani (h/t BJPenn.com). “I don’t want to say I’ve talked sh*t on him, but I said Jake Paul has been in there with two not-very-good boxers so we don’t actually know a lot about him. Man, give me a lot of respect for Nate Robinson. I never really specifically said anything negative about him, I just said Paul has been in there with two guys who’ve never boxed before”.
.@BenAskren told @ArielHelwani that Nate Robinson reached out to him after his loss to Jake Paul pic.twitter.com/1dnftzBmUF
— ESPN Ringside (@ESPNRingside) April 20, 2021
“Yeah, (so Nate reached out) Sunday morning or something. He said something like, ‘Yeah, I understand how bad it sucks, and the public will forget about it.’ I don’t know if I agree with him on that one, because I’ve been getting the Masvidal knee gif for two years. So the public doesn’t really forget. (He also said) ‘Hey, as long as you have good people around you, your life’s going to go on.’ To that part, I agree with him. I keep telling you, I love what I do for a living. I love my wife and I have some awesome kids and we had a great day yesterday, so yeah, life does go on.”
Askren received $500,000 to fight Paul which ‘Funky’ says is the biggest payday of his career. Triller Fight Club is reported to have sold 1.5 million PPV buys and generated $75 million in revenue.