Ahead of his UFC 261 welterweight title challenge this weekend, Jorge Masvidal has given his thoughts on former-foe, Ben Askren’s Triller Fight Club boxing match loss to Jake Paul last weekend — claiming “I told you so“.
Masvidal, who shares a notable rivalry with former Bellator and ONE Championship welterweight best, Askren, matched with the Iowa native at UFC 239 in July of 2019, where he scored the fastest stoppage in the history of the UFC, via a five-second flying knee.
Returning for the first time since July of last year in a short-notice ‘Fight Island’ appearance, Masvidal dropped a unanimous decision loss to the aforenoted, Usman at UFC 251 in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Out of action since, Masvidal was the subject of a callout from Usman after the champion’s successful title knockback against Gilbert Burns at UFC 258 in February, with the Auchi claiming that he wanted to make a statement against the Floridian this time around, and also leave him no excuses of the short notice nature of their first fight.
Whilst his own fight night is approaching, Masvidal shared his thoughts on the polarizing, Paul’s knockout win over Askren, claiming that despite the narrative painted prior to last weekend, Askren, according to him at least, wasn’t representing mixed martial arts against the YouTuber.
“All I gotta say is, I told you so,” Masvidal said during a recent interview with ESPN. “I told everybody — and the MMA world was mad at me that, you know, he (Ben Askren) was representing MMA. Never. Never not once ever was he representing MMA — how dare anybody say that guy is representing MMA, when every interview he’s ever done about strikers is, ‘I don’t need to strike, I can just wrestle these guys to the ground.“
“And he’s being saying that in interviews for ten years plus,” Masvidal explained. “And now we’re supposed to get behind this guy who doesn’t respect mixed martial arts. Because it is mixed martial arts, it’s not just wrestling, or just boxing, you know. So obviously, when he went in there — I called it. I was the first guy to call it.“