ATLANTA – Jake Paul says Ben Askren was lucky that his Triller Fight Club headliner stopped when he was.
After Askren was retired at the start of the first round of his boxing match with Paul on Saturday at the Mercedes-Benz Arena, he got up and tried to fight. However, he had some hesitant legs and the referee decided he had seen enough and did so with the mark at 1:59 of the first round.
Askren looked annoyed at not having a chance to continue, but Paul said things would have gotten a lot worse if he did.
“Of course, he will protest, just like any wrestler who loses,” Paul told MMA Junkie after the fight. “Good luck to Ben Askren, because he had another mother * who was stabbing the right hand that was coming to look for him, and he would have been unconscious for a long time. The referee saved him.
“She is OK. It would have been an even bigger meme. It would have been more viral if they had let him return to the fight. I had a very big punch for him.
Paul 24, said he knows people won’t give him his due date after beating Askren, who was a former Bellator and ONE Championship champion who came out of retirement at age 36 to compete in the boxing ring. In the end, though, 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’s like to be on the other side of the coin that Askren experienced and said that’s why he will continue to work on all fights, regardless of whether his opponent considers himself legitimate or not.
“If I had lost, it would have been the laughter of the world for years to come,” Paul said. “But this is what led me so hard to train every day in practice. Everyone wants to see Jake Paul fail. Because? Because I’m the bad guy. They think I did that, they think I did it. They think I’m an asshole. Therefore, no one knows what it is like to be me ”.