Ben Askren tells story of how ONE title fight against 'clown' Luis Santos fell apart on fight day

ONE welterweight champion Ben Askren is fed up with Luis Santos, and he's not staying quiet about why the pair's fight fell apart the day it was supposed to take place in Singapore at ONE: Pride of Lions.

Askren (14-0, 1 NC), a former Bellator champion, said the strange behavior from his opponent began back in the summer, after their competitive first meeting ended with an anticlimactic 'no contest' due to a first-round eyepoke.

"So ONE FC asks him, let's fight in June," Askren recounted on a video he posted Friday morning to Facebook. "I say yeah, let's fight in June. He says, ‘no, my eye.' ONE offers him a fight in July. He says, ‘no, I can't, my eye.' I say okay, fine. They say September. I say lets fight in September. He says, ‘no, I don't want to fight in September.'

"Meanwhile, I get a message from a Titan [FC rep] that he's asking for a fight in Titan. And I actually have a screenshot of him saying, ‘I don't have a contract with ONE, it's only in Asia. I can fight in America.' So he's totally lying."

Askren said terms were eventually reached for a ONE title rematch in November, however once Thursday arrived, Santos missed weight by 4.5 pounds upon his first attempt. Santos was then given as much extra time as needed to reach the 170-pound welterweight limit, but failed to do so, quitting after weighing more than two pounds over on his second attempt.

Askren said he met with ONE officials and Santos' coaches and nonetheless agreed to continue with a non-title fight as long as Santos weighed less than 185 pounds at 1:00 p.m. on Friday. That threshold was then upped to 190 pounds upon a complaint from Santos that he "could not control his weight gain," according to Askren.

"So I'm sleeping," Askren said. "I wake up, I got a couple texts from my buddy Gerald, and he's down at breakfast. He's watching ‘Sapo' eat breakfast, multiple plates of breakfast. He's got to make 190 pounds at 1:00 p.m., so we're figuring he's fine. He's stuffing his face at breakfast. So about 45 minutes later, I end up down at breakfast. He's still there. He ended up being at breakfast for 90 minutes. We were all watching him eat. He was drinking juice, the whole thing."

Askren said that later that day he ran into a member of Santos' team in the hotel lobby, who informed him that preparations were being made to take Santos to the hospital.

‘I'm like, what do you mean take him to the hospital?" Askren said. "I just saw him eating breakfast. He was hanging out having breakfast. She says, ‘yeah, he needs to go to the hospital.' I said, does ONE know about this? And she's like, ‘no, we're just taking him.' Whoa, whoa, whoa.

"So I went and found the ONE guys and I said, listen, they're trying to take ‘Sapo' to the hospital. You can't let this happen, you've got to figure something out. So ONE ends up sending a representative to the hospital with ‘Sapo,' where he's trying to repeatedly ask for an IV. And the doctor says, ‘no, you're fine.' So they do kidney tests, blood tests, liver tests, everything. Everything is normal. Everything comes back normal. The doctor says, ‘you're fine, you don't need an IV.' Sends him back."

According to Askren, upon returning back to the hotel, Santos tipped the scales at 3.5 pounds over the fight's new 190-pound limit, and despite being given another chance to cut the extra weight, Santos refused.

The fight was subsequently scrapped, with ONE CEO Victor Cui admonishing Santos for his handling of the situation and publicly wondering whether Santos was "scared" to fight the American.

"By the time they try to find him again, [Santos] was nowhere to be found," Askren said. "And allegedly -- I can't prove this, but allegedly he went back to the hospital to get an IV. That's what I was told. So wow, that was a lot of ups and downs. It's really almost so unbelievable that this guy was trying to pull so many stunts. It just freaking blows my mind, the lack of professionalism and the fact that he was pretty much trying as hard as he could not to make weight. Literally, he gained 22 pounds and he's saying he can't lose three pounds. Meanwhile we saw this scumbag stuffing his face at breakfast. He was literally sitting there eating breakfast for an hour-and-a-half.

"Un-freaking-believable. So ONE had my back, they told him, ‘hit the road, jack.' He ain't fighting. He's a bum."