Ben Askren ready to come out of retirement to fight Jorge Masvidal at UFC 300
Ben Askren is ready to join Jorge Masvidal in un-retirement.
On Monday, Masvidal kicked off the new year by announcing he is ending his eight-month retirement. At the moment, there are no details on the when Masvidal will return. But whenever it happens, Askren said he’d be happy to un-retire and fight him again, particularly if the UFC needs a big fight for its upcoming UFC 300 show.
“Listen, if Dana called me and said, ‘Jorge Masvidal, UFC 300,’ I don’t give a damn – I’m out of retirement,” Askren said on Daniel Cormier’s YouTube channel. “I’ll fight him. I don’t care. I would love to.”
Askren played a pivotal role in Masvidal’s ascension to superstardom when he was on the receiving end of Masvidal’s famous flying-knee knockout at UFC 239. The two had a heated rivalry heading into the fight, and since then, Askren has repeatedly suggested he’d like another crack at “Gamebred.”
With UFC 300 still in need of big fights, an Askren-Masvidal rematch could make sense, but there would be a number of hurdles to jump through. First, both men have been retired from the sport and out of the anti-doping testing pool, so they would need to receive exemptions from the promotion to compete at UFC 300. And even if they got them, Askren remains skeptical Masvidal would agree to the matchup.
“But he’ll never say yes to that, unless he loses some more money or something,” Askren said. “But it would be great. I would love to. It’s one of those things. ... I don’t want to be begging and groveling for it. It’s unlikely to happen. So it’s like, if someone calls me and says it’s going to happen, OK, I’m there. If they don’t, I’m just going to live my life.”
Following their fight, Masvidal went on to win the BMF title by beating Nate Diaz. He then twice challenged for the UFC welterweight title and retired this past April after losing to Gilbert Burns at UFC 287. Since then, he’s been focused on his own fight promotion, Gamebred MMA.
Askren, meanwhile, fought just once more, losing to Demian Maia in 2019 before hanging up his MMA gloves. Despite his long layoff, he’s said he’s still in good enough shape to take a fight with Masvidal on just a few months’ notice.
“I’m ready,” he said. “I stay in shape. I’m wrestling a lot. I don’t strike much — I don’t strike at all, I just wrestle. But I’m in good shape. If he wants to fight, great. But I’m not going to campaign for it.”