By Sean Jones: Former UFC star Daniel Cormier has doubts whether Ben Askren threw his fight by intentionally losing to YouTuber Jake Paul last Saturday night in their fight on Triller pay-per-view in Atlanta.
Many fans are saying that the fight was “rigged,” “fake,” and that Askren purposefully took a dive.
The former MMA fighter Askren was seen laughing as he walked away with his wife after the fight ended. For a fighter that had just been stopped, fans wondered why he was so happy.
Was it an inside joke, or was it thought that he’d just gotten a massive payday for 2 minutes of work?
Askren’s situation wasn’t helped by how the referee waived off the fight in a shockingly quick manner after he was knocked down by a right hand from Jake in the first round.
While Askren looked fine upon getting back to his feet, the referee stopped the fight anyway. The fans were unhappy with the way the fight stopped.
Wait a minute, did Askren get us all? Like this is some magician stuff he wasn’t laughing on his way to the back was he? Cmon Ben lol @Benaskren https://t.co/Kb3jMkB0nR
— Daniel Cormier (@dc_mma) April 18, 2021
Some fans on social media think Askren took a dive to get out of the fight in the first round. What further reinforces that view is how fat Askren was after completing his 11-week training camp. They think that Ben bet on himself to lose the fight.
Unfortunately, anytime a fighter is blown out the way that Askren was by the novice Jake Paul, fans suspect there’s a dirty pool going on with the loser of the fight throwing it. Who can forget Canelo Alvarez’s fight with Sergey Kovalev in 2019.
Kovalev fought in a slow-motion manner, showing no intensity and doing nothing. When you compare how Kovalev had fought in his previous fight against Anthony Yarde just months earlier to how he looked against Canelo, it was like two different people.
With that amount of training time, should Askren have been able to melt off the potbelly that he had? Physically, he looked in the type of condition an athlete would have before training camp, not after.
On paper, Jake shouldn’t have been able to do what he did to the far more experienced former UFC fighter and Olympic athlete. Askren has shown himself to be a world-class athlete. In Jake’s case, he’s a mere YouTuber who recently took up boxing as a hobby.
He hasn’t been in the sport for long, and his opposition has been woeful, consisting of another YouTuber and an aging former NBA basketball player.