Ben Askren weighs in on Dana White’s UFC 300 main event announcement: “You let us down a little bit”

Ben Askren is weighing in on Dana White’s UFC 300 main event announcement.

UFC 300 is now less than 2 months away, taking place on Saturday, April 13th, at the T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada.

The former Bellator and ONE champion, Ben Askren, is voicing his disappointment with Dana White’s recent announcement that the main event for the historic UFC 300 is a light heavyweight title fight between Alex Pereira (9-2 MMA) and Jamahal Hill (12-1 MMA).

Pereira, the current titleholder, will be putting his gold on the line when coming into the fight with Hill, having defeated his last two opponents, Jan Blachowicz (20-10 MMA) and Jiri Prochazka (29-4 MMA) respectively.

Images via: @alexpoatanpereira and @sweet_dreams_jhill on Instagram

Hill, 32, has proved victorious in his last 4 fights in the Octagon, most recently defeating Glover Teixeira (33-9 MMA) in January of 2023 at UFC 283.

It was during a recent episode of ‘Funky & the Champ’ podcast alongside Daniel Cormier that Ben Askren voiced his take on the Pereira vs. Hill announcement:

“You know, this is what I tell my athletes. Dana, you tried your best. You worked hard to get something. You let us down a little bit, but it happens sometimes! We can’t all be the best every time.”

Continuing, ‘Funky’ elaborated on the highly anticipated UFC 300 (h/t MMANews):

“Now, these are good fights, this (main event) is a fun fight, this is a great fight card. But it doesn’t feel UFC 300ish, it doesn’t. We needed something a little bigger, like Pereira vs. (Tom) Aspinall, Jon Jones coming back, (Conor) McGregor vs. (Michael) Chandler. He (White) tried, he tried to make it happen… I will be excited to watch, but it doesn’t have the feel that — you remember UFC 100?”

The UFC 300 lineup is as follows:

• Champion Alex Pereira vs. Jamahal Hill – for light heavyweight title
• Champion Justin Gaethje vs. Max Holloway – for BMF title
• Champion Weilli Zhang vs. Xiaonan Yan – for strawweight title
• Charles Oliveira vs. Arman Tsarukyan
• Kayla Harrison vs. Holly Holm
• Calvin Kattar vs. Aljamain Sterling
• Jiri Prochazka vs. Aleksandar Rakic
• Diego Lopes vs. Sodiq Yusuff
• Jessica Andrade vs. Marina Rodriguez
• Bobby Green vs. Jim Miller
• Cody Brundage vs. Bo Nickal
• Deiveson Figueiredo vs. Cody Garbrandt

Do you agree with Ben Askren that although UFC 300 has a lot of great fights, it’s missing the ‘big one’?

Share your thoughts in the comment section PENN Nation!