A reporter posed his post-fight question to Ben Askren by noting that he’ll endure an undeserved amount of ridicule for his first-round knockout loss to Jake Paul on Saturday night.

A brutally honest Askren wholeheartedly disagreed.

“It’s probably deserved,” Askren said. “I got knocked out by Jake Paul. It’s f--king embarrassing.”

Askren admitted he disappointed plenty of people with his poor performance against Paul, the trash-talking YouTube star who knocked out the former UFC fighter with a punishing right hand in the first round.

“I didn’t let the MMA community down – I let the world down,” Askren said. “People f--king hate Jake Paul, and they wanted to see me make him miserable. And I didn’t do that, so I didn’t let the MMA community down – I let the world down.”

Paul blasted Askren with a sweeping right hand that knocked him to the canvas just 1:40 into the first round of their eight-round cruiserweight fight at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Askren reached his feet before referee Brian Stutts counted to 10, but Stutts didn’t like the way Askren reacted to his commands and stopped their fight one minute and 59 seconds into it.

“I thought I was fine, but you know, whatever,” Askren said. “That’s his job. And if that’s what he felt, that’s what he did.”

The 36-year-old Askren didn’t do the job he was paid $1 million to perform in part because he said he fell for Paul’s feints in his first boxing match at any level.

“I heard my coach, Mike, he was saying I was definitely overreacting to his feints,” Askren said, “and that was probably – yeah, I probably shouldn’t have reacted that hard to the feints. If the ref woulda let me grapple a little longer, maybe that would’ve helped out a little bit. But hey, there are no excuses. I got in a f--king boxing match and it didn’t go so well.”

The 24-year-old Paul improved to 3-0 and produced his third knockout in the main event of Triller Fight Club’s pay-per-view show. Askren still doesn’t respect his brash antagonist.

“No, I don’t, because I wanna see him get in a fight,” said Askren, a former Bellator and ONE Championship welterweight champ in MMA. “And I’m sorry I let you down. I didn’t get to get in a fight with him. He hit me early. You know, as I said, that’s when you respect someone, is when you see what they’re made of. And, you know, I was hoping that you guys would get to see that tonight. And I let a lot of people down, because they didn’t get to see that.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.