I don't blame Askren. He saw a quick and easy cash grab. I blame the audience for feeding into this. I blame them for making Jake Paul into something "relevant." I don't blame him making money off acting a clown and making more money off people willing to shell out. I blame boxing for being so shitty that it's opened the floodgates for this. Boxing is a great sport, but unfortunately it's poorly run and the promoters are only about themselves and many of the fighters are. It's the "era of the duck" now where too many talented fighters talk about fighting on social media but don't want to challenge the top guys. Ryan Garcia is the poster boy for this, but he's not alone. A quality fighter like Spence is laughing in the fans faces with his blatant ducking of Crawford, and people who are fans of his promoter (that's how bad it is - promoters have blinded fans now) just support it and say "Spence getting that money woo woo" like he'll share it with them. He won't. All these organizations creating multiple belts as though four organizations wasn't enough and 17 divisions isn't enough they create extra titles within the same division and sanction BS catch-weights for belts. That just leads to this promotional merry-go-round where they cherry pick a title, then vacate it and go for another easy one so they can stat stuff and say "I'm a 7 time champion", like Broner being a "four division champion." It was enough 10-15 years ago. It's beyond that now.
A lot of true fans have lost interest and now people who are into this Jake Paul nonsense won't bother with the true fighters and fights like Estrada-Chocolatito, lower weight Asian fighters like Inoue etc; because the sport is too watered down. They don't want competitive matches. They don't want greatness. They don't care about fans.
Sorry for the long rant, but boxing let this happen. The organizations, the promoters, and now the fighters, and the fans.