ATLANTA – Jake Paul says Ben Askren was lucky that their Triller Fight Club headliner had retired when it did.
After losing weight early in the first round of his boxing match with Paul at the Mercedes-Benz Arena on Saturday, Askren got up again and tried to fight on. However, he was on wobbly legs and the referee decided he had seen enough and swung it away at 1:59 in Round 1.
Askren seemed upset that he didn’t get a chance to continue, but Paul said it would be much worse if he had.
“Of course he’s going to protest, just like any f * cking fighter who loses,” Paul told MMA Junkie after the fight. Fortunately for Ben Askren, because another big motherfucking right hand came before him, and he would have been unconscious for much longer. The referee saved him.
“He’s lucky. He would have been an even bigger meme. It would have been more viral if they had let him back into the fray. I had a big blow to him.”
Paul 24, said he knows people won’t give him his due after beating Askren, a former Bellator and ONE Championship titleholder who retired at the age of 36 to compete in the boxing ring. But in the end he doesn’t care.
Paul’s passion for the fighting game is real, he said, and he promises to take it seriously. He doesn’t want to know what it feels like to be on the other side of the coin Askren went through, and he said that is why he will continue to work for every fight – regardless of whether his opponent is considered legitimate. or not.
“If I had lost, I would have been the joke of the world for years to come,” said Paul. “But that was what drove me so hard to train every day in practice. Everyone wants Jake Paul to fail. Why? Because I’m the bad guy. They think I did this, they think I did. They think I’m an asshole. So nobody knows what it’s like to be me. “