Morning Report | Ben Askren, Jorge Masvidal break down life-changing UFC 239 flying knee knockout: ‘Never, ever seen anyone do it like that’

Ben Askren and Jorge Masvidal will forever be connected by the flying knee heard around the world.

In a bout at UFC 239 in July 2019 that had career-altering implications for both men, Masvidal connected with a flying knee that left Askren flat on the mat, out cold in just five seconds. The all-time great knockout propelled Masvidal to a new level of stardom and a pair of UFC title opportunities, while Askren fought once more before retiring from MMA.

Askren was recently a guest on Masvidal’s Death Row MMA show, and the former rivals looked back on the epic finish, and why Masvidal’s opening gamble was so impressive.

“No one threw a flying knee prior to you the way you did it,” Askren said. “If you think about this, I was never worried about a flying knee because generally it’s when you’re a little tighter and you come almost straight up at them. You did more of a jumping trajectory and so I think, in my own head, is I completely misjudge your trajectory because I’d never, ever seen anyone do it like that before. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t think of someone prior to you who did that running trajectory.”

Prior to being stopped by Masvidal, Askren had never lost an MMA fight much less been knocked out. The two-time NCAA Division-I freestyle wrestling champion used a smothering grappling style to dominate the competition, capturing belts in Bellator and ONE Championship while going undefeated in his first 21 pro fights.

However, when he ran into Masvidal, he was caught completely off guard.

“I couldn’t predict it,” Askren said. “I didn’t know where it was coming from and then your brain builds these prediction patterns and I probably never hit the flying knee in my life before that and you weren’t coming from straight up, you were coming from an angle, and so my brain obviously misread it and then you’re done.”

Masvidal was considered one of MMA’s great journeyman throughout his career, highly respected for battling the best of the best, but never quite breaking through as a major name in his own right. Everything changed for “Gamebred” after he delivered one of the fastest and most exciting knockouts in combat sports history.

It wasn’t easy. According to Masvidal, he studied Askren’s style intently before deciding he would take a calculated risk to open their fight.

“What helped me is that there’s few guys like you,” Masvidal said. “With strikers, I have kind of more of a photographic memory for striking, for a lot of things. Even just doing it, your coach will be like, ‘One, two, three’ and he shows it and I’m like, OK, I know how to do it. For wrestling, I’ve got to ask questions, I’ve got to feel it. Same thing with the tapes. I would watch all your fights.”

“So I just noticed in a lot of your fights, if all of a sudden you were in a range that you didn’t like, you would shoot or you would find a way to clinch,” Masvidal continued. “Whether you’d get to two-on-one or you’ve got to underhook or you got into a single leg. So I was like, how about if I could do that? I could just all of a sudden change the speed on him, the closing, and when he goes for the wrestling, I’m prepared for it because the last thing I want to do is defend anything from you guys. I don’t want to be in a single leg, defending that, because you’ve been in that position 300,000 times. So even though I might have you sprawled out on your belly and I’m like, I’m doing good, I know it’s bad.”

Masvidal was simply looking to throw a change-of-pace technique in Askren’s direction to deter his wrestling attack. Instead, he ended up flattening Askren and sending the Las Vegas crowd into hysterics.

From both fighters’ perspectives, it was the perfect storm of knockouts.

“So I knew initially I want to come in with something that even if I miss, he’s going to be a little bit like, ‘Damn, let me not shoot in right away because I could run into the trouble,’” Masvidal said. “So as I started thinking and I started watching your fights, I’m like, alright he loves to crash. I noticed you like to crash a lot with the guys. You’ll take a hit and then boom, you’re in on him and stuff. If I make it seem like I’m going to punch and close the distance, I think he’ll give me what I want and I can anticipate the shot. That’s why I did the shot, not just jumping like that, but forward, because I wanted you first to feel that I’m close. I wanted you to feel that I’m in right hand range and then bam.”

“When you’re in a fight, to me, if you’re thinking about what you have to actually do, it’s probably too slow for the actual fight,” Askren said. “It’s got to be quick. So when I saw you, to your point, I probably said, ‘Shit, he’s getting close,’ drop, drop, takedown. I hadn’t seen the flying knee so that was where I got myself in trouble.”

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SOCIAL MEDIA BOUILLABAISSE

I swear he was 17-year-old Raul Rosas Jr. not so long ago.

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Need more fighters willing to break down classic finishes, even if one of them was regrettably on the wrong side of it. Might need to see Yair Rodriguez vs. The Korean Zombie someday.

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