Retired UFC fighter Ben Askren made headlines recently after he connected with past rival Jorge Masvidal as they let go of their longstanding grudge against each other and decided to become friends instead.
The initial meeting came after Askren suffered a medical emergency that put him in a medically induced coma before his life was eventually saved after receiving a double lung transplant. Askren detailed his harrowing health journey and subsequent recovery over social media as well as an upcoming documentary when Masvidal reached out to him asking if they could meet up.
“They’re doing a movie about what I went through,” Askren told MMA Fighting. “My wife actually was childhood friends with I believe it’s a movie producer and they said ‘hey, we’d like to do something.’ I said OK, I’m up for it of course. I think my story can be inspiring to a lot of people.
“Somewhere in that process, Jorge said ‘I’d love to sit down and have lunch and pray with you’ and I said listen dude, any time, you’re welcome to come. I’m still not traveling really at all so I said any time you want, you’re welcome to come. He agreed to come up. I had a baptism last weekend. It was good.”
Of course, Askren and Masvidal engaged in one of the most heated rivalries in recent history as the welterweights exchanged nasty trash talk before actually meeting at UFC 239 back in 2019.
The fight ended rather violently with Masvidal charging at Askren before scoring a flying knee knockout to give him the finish just five seconds into the opening round. That gave Masvidal the record for the fastest knockout and finish in UFC history.
Masvidal slammed the door on the rivalry by famously saying the extra punches he landed after the knockout were “super necessary,” especially after everything Askren said leading up to the fight.
Now seven years later, Askren admits that he manufactured his beef with Masvidal largely because he was trying to earn a UFC title shot and there just weren’t many good options available to him at the time. Goading Masvidal into a fight would get a lot of attention so Askren went to work and his strategy paid off.
Well at least until Masvidal hit him with that flying knee.
“Honestly, I felt a little bad because and I should have told him this, when I was going to fight him, I knew my clock was ticking with the UFC because of my hip issue,” Askren explained. “So I fought Robbie [Lawler] really early and as that month progressed, I realized the only person I was able to fight was him. So I had to get him to say yes. So I had to antagonize the shit out of him. I had to say a lot of stuff that maybe I didn’t fully mean because otherwise, I was going to be sitting on the bench.
“If you remember, this is seven years ago now, Tyron [Woodley] lost to [Kamaru] Usman, they weren’t going to give me the title shot, it was going to be Usman versus Colby [Covington]. That was the plan there. I wasn’t going to fight Tyron because he’s a close friend. ‘Wonderboy’ [Stephen Thompson], got knocked out by Anthony Pettis. I wasn’t going to fight Anthony because he was a close friend. Then Jorge knocks out Darren Till so I couldn’t fight him. I had no options. So I was like I need to focus all my energy on him and it eventually happened. I thought it was going to be good for me. It turned out to be great for him of course.”
Masvidal went onto defeat Nate Diaz for the inaugural “BMF” championship before he fought then welterweight king Kamaru Usman in back-to-back title fights.
That five fight run, which also included a knockout over Darren Till, made Masvidal one of the most popular and marketable athletes on the entire UFC roster and a huge part of his rise to fame came from that knockout over Askren.
Looking back now, Askren doesn’t necessarily regret how that rivalry started but he’ll fully admit that going after Masvidal was really the only way he could land an opponent who was both available and somebody he could beat to then catapult him into a title shot.
But finally connecting with Masvidal to put the past behind them was a cathartic moment for Askren.
“I said it on social media but I meant it: Holding grudges is a total waste of time for anyone,” Askren said. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to be best friends. I have other people who maybe even more contentious relationships with and it’s like we met, I forgave them, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be friends with them but it feels good to clear the air.
“With Jorge, he lives in Miami, I live in Wisconsin. I don’t know how good of friends we’re going to be but there’s definitely no hard feelings. It is what it is. It’s nice to be able to forgive or come to an understanding or agreement and say ‘hey, on my side there’s no hard feelings.’ I think he felt the same way. I think we actually have a lot in common. So that was great.”
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