For whatever reason, Ben Askren is a kind of magic wand for fighters and Internet stars who want to transcend the natural trappings of their gigs. When Jake Paul beat him in a celebrity boxing match last week, it was as if the floodgates burst open. Hundreds of fighters, actors, former athletes, current jock types and opportunists began lobbying to be next. Nate Robinson might’ve made Paul an intrigue; Askren made him the hottest callout in the fight game.
Heading into this weekend at UFC 261, the same case holds true for Jorge Masvidal. He was a good fighter before he fought Askren. He was edgy, street wise, into Gucci, all of that. He already had some silk jammies in his closet, and plenty of that good Miami drip. Yet nobody knew it or bothered to care much. It took that encounter with Askren, whom he knocked out with a flying knee just five seconds into the fight at UFC 239, to make him into an cult figure in fighting. It was only then that Dan Le Batard wanted to hear more about his father’s struggle to get out of Cuba.
Five seconds transformed Masvidal’s entire career.
If that never happened, nobody would’ve cared about his affiliations with Donald Trump (and very likely, he would never have had any associations with Donald Trump). There would never have been a Baddest Motherfucker title fight at Madison Square Garden, or a Recuerdo Mezcal line with the worm. He would never have fought Kamaru Usman on short notice for the welterweight title last July, and he damn sure wouldn’t be getting the rematch so soon hereafter.
Masvidal is still riding the celebrity status he earned during a unique run in 2019 when the stars aligned just right for him. He had a year like no other fighter in UFC history. He beat Darren Till in England, dished the three-piece with the soda to Leon Edwards half an hour later, made Askren viral, then won the BMF title against Nate Diaz. That earned him some preferential treatment, which he took good advantage of.
But it’s been a little weird since then. The vibe is slowing, in large part because Masvidal hasn’t been competing all that much. The BMF belt, which felt more like a Diaz conjuring than anything else, is just a keepsake from a drunk, wild night way back when. And the cult thing, as everyone knows, is a concubine that can’t help making eyes at other fighters. The muse is loose, man. It never hangs around all that long.
If Usman does to Masvidal again what he did the first time at UFC 251 —which was essentially dictate and dominate every inch of action for 25 minutes — you wonder how much of the star power the Da Vinci of MMA can retain. It’s not just the welterweight title that’s on the line this weekend, it’s that cult status. If Masvidal ends up in a grueling clinch-struggle on the fence, trying desperately to stay upright and occasionally failing to do so, the mojo from 2019 shrinks just a little more in the rear-view mirror.
If that happens, Masvidal — who fought for 16 years somewhat anonymously before he broke through in a big way against Askren — will begin to settle outside the ever-elusive swirl of fight game hysteria. He will slip away from the vital center of things.
Maybe you think I’m wrong.
After all, Masvidal does have active feuds going with several fighters right now. He has that unresolved thing with Leon Edwards from back when all this began. That can be revisited, because people like resolutions. He has a rematch with Nate Diaz hovering out there, which could do business (depending in large part on how Nate looks in his upcoming fight against Edwards). He has his former friend and former training partner Colby Covington knocking about, and Covington is said to be in the wings for Saturday night’s winner.
If Usman wins on Saturday night, a Masvidal-Covington fight will have to sit on some distant horizon. And that fight, as juicy as it seems right now, will have lost something. Part of what made Masvidal a star was that he was “baptizing” fools. He handled Nate with ease, and sent Askren to what he likes to call the “shadow realm.” Winning is super-necessary to the cult equation.
Can Masvidal beat Usman? Vegas doesn’t like his chances. And from the sounds of it, neither do most fans and media. The problem is, we saw what happened the first time. Usman’s wrestling was too much, and Masvidal had no real answer. Yet with the full training camp, there’s at least an ounce of intrigue. Maybe Masvidal has something up his sleeve. It was a similar situation back in the summer of 2019. Askren was going to wrestle him, and Masvidal’s only chance was to catch him with something savage, to baptize him on a level-change. He did that.
That moment made him a star. The privileges he earned that night have carried him all the way to this weekend. If he loses, Jorge Masvidal the man loses more than a title bid. But if he doesn’t, if shows up like he did with Askren, Street Jesus will have been resurrected.