Ben Askren Claims Jorge Masvidal Is Ducking Him

Ben Askren flew to last weekend’s London with the hope of facing the winner of the Jorge Masvidal vs. Darren Till main event. Of course, it seemed like he wanted Till to win. Now that Masvidal has, however, Askren claims the rising star is ducking him.

The vet picked up a shocking second-round knockout over hometown favorite Till, flooring him with a perfect overhand left to silence the crowd. After the win, Masvidal called for a title shot in his post-fight interview with Dan Hardy. “Funky” believes that’s a way to avoid fighting him. He revealed his opinion on the post-fight show (via MMA Fighting) that Masvidal doesn’t deserve a title shot after one huge win following two straight defeats:

“I would love to fight [Masvidal], but like I said, you heard that post-fight speech, I think he’s trying to find reasons not to fight me. He’s talking about fight for the belt — prior to this fight, he had two losses in a row. You don’t go from losing two [in a row] to winning one and then all of a sudden you have a belt when there’s all these guys in front of you. It just doesn’t work that way.”

Similar to Masvidal, however, Askren called for his own title shot against newly-crowned champion Kamaru Usman after his UFC debut win over Robbie Lawler at UFC 235. He most likely won’t get that shot, as it’s slated to go to former interim champ Colby Covington. Askren said he’d love to bypass Covington but also doesn’t think Usman wants to fight him either:

“No one likes Colby,” Askren said. “I don’t like Colby. I would love to skip over him and fight Usman, but it doesn’t seem like Usman wants that either. He’s not keeping that same energy, as the kids say. I would love to have him call me out. He didn’t. So, again, I thought Till was going to win tonight. I think we’ll go reevaluate. I’d love to fight Masvidal.”

It’s plain to see Askren was hoping to fight Till soon, especially after “The Gorilla” crashed his fan Q&A last Friday. While it would have been a great match-up, Askren’s next fight is now up in the air. Many including Dana White have detailed how he should rematch Lawler after his UFC debut ended in most likely the most controversial UFC moment of 2019 thus far. To that, “Funky” said he always wanted to face Till and only accepted Lawler when they offered.

He doesn’t see how a rematch improves his positioning:

“The first guy I asked [the UFC] for was Darren Till actually, and then they said how about Robbie Lawler,” Askren said. “I said, ‘Listen, I’m here to fight everybody, so if you want me to fight Robbie Lawler, I’ll fight.’ It didn’t take more than a phone call, right? I’ll fight Robbie Lawler, no big deal. But I didn’t want to. And so now I did it once and they want me to go do again. I just, I don’t see how that moves me farther up, and that’s where I want to go, I want to move farther up.”

Now that the welterweight waters are a bit murkier, Askren doesn’t know who his next fight will be against. He’ll have to discuss things with the UFC and go from there:

“I genuinely don’t know,” Askren said. “They haven’t brought the fight to me yet. They haven’t asked me to do it. I said I’d reevaluate after tonight, so I guess tomorrow maybe we’ll be talking to them and we’ll figure out what’s going to happen.”