With the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren fight coming fast on April 17th, Jorge Masvidal explains why he helped Paul train to fight one of his MMA comrades.
Jorge Masvidal has been on a rocket ship ride to the very top of the UFC where’s he now one of the best paid fighters in the history of the company. All this started pretty humbly: off a big KO of Darren Till in a fight where Till was being positioned for stardom. And then there was the bone crushing flying knee knockout of Ben Askren that went viral across the web.
The Ben Askren knockout has become so infamous that Ben has regularly asked Masvidal to thank him for making him famous. Obviously comments like that haven’t sat well with the prickly “Gamebred,” who continues to take any opportunity he can to mess with Askren. Like helping Askren’s upcoming boxing fight opponent and YouTube sensation Jake Paul.
Paul and Askren will fight in boxing on April 17th in what’s being described as an MMA vs. Boxing showdown. So how did Jorge ended up siding with the pseudo-boxer? Well, according to him, pseudo-boxer is better than pseudo-MMA fighter. And he just dislikes “Funky” that much.
“He’s not a foe, you can’t call that guy a foe,” Masvidal said in an interview with ESPN’s Ariel Helwani. “He was a speedbump. And I have this big G-wagon, ANG top of the line, it was like ‘Did you feel that bump? What? The music was loud. Don’t worry about it.’ That type of thing. He’s not a foe. And he’s also not a representation of the sport, of my beautiful sport. He’s actually quite disrespectful of the sport. When they used to ask him during interviews ‘Why don’t you ever strike?’ ‘Cuz I can just wrestle these guys to death.’”
“I love wrestling, I’m a huge wrestling fan. But you have to show respect,” he continued. “You have to know this is MMA, you have to strike, use jiu-jitsu, use wrestling, all these things. Now this guy is supposed to represent what, our community or something against boxing? Hell no. Who the hell gave this guy an approval. The only reason he’s doing that is because I embarrassed him so much and made him so famous for getting knocked out, someone else wants to do the same thing to the guy.”
“I just want to make this clear for anyone: he is not a representation of MMA in any way. You know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah he paid his dues in MMA but to send that guy into boxing is not a fair representation of our sport,” Masvidal continued. “At all. The guy can’t throw a punch. The guy can’t spell jab. He doesn’t have it in him to produce the force to hurt someone with his muscles, yet we’re supposed to get behind this guy in any way shape or form? Get the f**k outta here, bro. And plus I can’t stand Ben, so it could have been anyone fighting him and I’d be ‘F**k Ben.’”
As for how he fell in with the Jake Paul crew?
“We had some mutual friends, we met a couple times and hung out,” Jorge said. “The pictures got out and immediately people started telling me what to do. And you gotta understand something about me: peer pressure doesn’t work on me, people telling me what to do in a negative way doesn’t work on me.”
“So as soon as people started getting upset I was like get ready to be really upset because I’m going to train this motherf**ker to knock out the dude that I can’t stand in any dimension. Would I love to see Ben get laid out again for all the s**t talking that he continues to do to this day? Hell yeah. And if I can add to that knockout? Why not. Just so Ben can think ‘Damn, maybe Masvidal showing him this or that led to my downfall?’ Count me in.”
The Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren boxing match goes down from Mercedez-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia on April 17th. You can find out all the details about the PPV card here.