Askren: Triller’s event was ‘oversexualized,’ and weed shouldn’t be glorified

There are mixed opinions about Triller’s production value on Saturday night. While there were a lot who enjoyed the pageantry, there was also the demographic who weren’t too thrilled about the lengthy musical acts and some of the commentary.

Ben Askren, who was one-half of the night’s headliners, took a more conservative stance. He was candid about his thoughts on Twitter and during his locker room interview with Pete Davidson.

“I feel so bad about the parents that are trying to explain to their kids what’s going on on TV right now. So I feel like kind of an irresponsible mentor to a bunch of children,” Askren told Davidson.

On Monday, “Funky” spoke about it once again with ESPN’s Ariel Helwani to pinpoint which parts of the whole production bothered him exactly.

“I thought two things: I thought oversexualized performances, and this is what I told Tyron in the locker room. I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m such a f—ng dad now. Maybe I’m an old guy,’” Askren said.

“The second thing is the glorification of weed, which, listen, if you’re an adult, and you wanna go smoke weed, I think that should be legal everywhere. I don’t really care. At all.

“But just, the glorification of it, when you know kids are watching. I really didn’t love that. And that was what I said.

“So the guy behind the camera in the Pete Davidson interview was the Executive Producer. And I said to him, like, ‘Dude, I’m kind of embarrassed to be associated with this, and I don’t really like that I am right now.’”

Regardless of what he thought of Triller’s brand of live events, Askren was all smiles post-KO after walking away with a base pay of $500,000. As he told Helwani towards the end of the interview, he’s made more money that night than all of his nine Bellator fights combined.

[Note: There was an error on our original transcript, as it was originally written as “illegal” when Askren said “legal.” This was immediately corrected within 15 minutes of publication, but we apologize for the mistake.]