Except Jorge had never done anything besides beat the massively overranked #2 Till to make it seem like he was any better than he'd always been. That was the entire basis for the "new" Masvidal in that he'd all of the sudden beaten a ranked fighter. And not that Till was so improperly ranked (who'd still dropped this "new" Mas).
People just completely seem to forget Masvidal was never actually a title contender, but the only one willing and able to step up and fight Usman on short notice after Burns pulled out. They just then parleyed the short notice nature of it to explain away the loss into another title fight because of PPV buys, and then he got Colby again for PPV buys.
It has nothing to do with losing to #1 and #2, but rather that he never should've been fighting any of them, no more than he'd ever done so. The UFC milked all the dumb Street Jesus stuff, just like OP is talking about.