One of the weird things that's happened with the whole Ben Askren saga is half an announcement
was made, right?
You guys know all about the trade.
DJ goes to ONE FC.
That was made crystal clear for everybody.
Ben Askren is then traded to the UFC, not made quite so clear in this way.
No press releases ever come out.
No announcement was ever officially made.
I don't know that one ever will be.
I don't know that one ever needs to be.
But it wasn’t crystal clear.
I talked to Ben face-to-face tonight and I said, “Well, is it a done deal?”
He goes, “Ah, it's basically a done deal.”
Well, what does that mean?
He goes, “Well, the ink isn't dry yet but, yeah, the deal’s done.”
I go, “Okay, but I'm confused.
Okay, you're at the UFC, you're sitting cage-side, you are calling everybody in the world out,
and you're now doing television productions that are UFC product.
You're in the UFC.”
And he's like, “Ah, basically good enough.”
Okay, I'm not totally clear on this but let's just skip it.
I guess this is the announcement.
The fact that you're here at a UFC, the fact that you're sitting cage-side, and the fact
that you’re doing interviews including a media scrum I guess is the announcement.
I guess he's in the UFC.
So, we start breaking down, well, who are you going to fight?
Because what’d Dana White say?
Dana White said it's going to be a top five opponent.
So do we know if that's a literal term?
I don't know.
Top five can sometimes mean a guy that's either ranked one, two, three, four, five—that
would be the literal sense—or it could mean, in looser terms, in colloquialisms, in fight
talk, you're going to fight a known guy.
I'm choosing to take this in literal terms.
So that gives us Tyron Woodley.
No, not going to happen.
That gives Colby Covington – not going to happen, because those two are going to fight
each other.
That gives us Stephen Thompson, that gives us Darren Till, and that gives us Robbie Lawler.
And so I'm looking at that, I'm looking at all the usual suspects, okay, and I'm going,
“The most likely one is Till.
Why?
Because Till is firing back and saying he wants to fight Askren.
Okay, I guess we got a fight.”
Well, no, not so fast.
It now appears that Till is moving up to middleweight.
As I've speculated to you guys before, it appears now that he is moving up to middleweight.
So he's out of the equation, which then would leave you with Robbie Lawler.
And the problem that I have with that, which is small, but the problem I have with that
is when Ben came in spitting fire and other guys spitting fire back, Robbie Lawler’s
never said “boo.”
As a matter of fact, Robbie Lawler’s entire career he's never picked on anybody until
they shut that cage door.
So I'm still scratching my head.
Am I left with concluding that it must be Lawler?
If we are taking Dana literal, well, yeah, by process of elimination I am.
I'm just not sure that I'm bullish on that because I like the point that I just made.
I'm just not sure that it makes the most sense.
Ben Askren is coming in with fire.
Listen, the fans, you guys, didn't even want him in the UFC a recent amount of time ago.
I was just at Madison Square Garden.
They put the camera on him, posted them on the big screen.
The crowd went insane.
He got the largest pop of the night.
To put that in perspective for you, Cody Garbrandt was there.
Crowd was thrilled to see him.
Absolutely, they were.
Luke Rockhold was here, but [00:03:10] crowd was happy to see him.
Ben Askren got the loudest reception of the night, which means all of you guys, in fairness,
all of the naysayers, are now all of a sudden, “We want to see this guy.”
So it's important that right out of the gate he gets matched up accordingly.
The other side of people being excited to see him means they're excited with what he's
doing.
They're excited with the fire and the vitriol and the anger that he is coming in with.
I think it's important that we keep that going, and the only way we can keep that dialogue
going is to make sure that he's got the right opponent across from him that's just as equally
happy to be matched up with him as Ben is going to be with them.