Askren reflects on ‘enigmatic’ career

Ben Askren may be the best MMA fighter outside of the UFC, and how he’s retired, unless …

‘Funky’ won the Bellator welterweight championship in 2010, and defended it successfully four times before being released in 2013. He signed with ONE Championship and won the promotion title on August 29, 2014. Askren had one fight in 2015, vs. Luis ‘Sapo’ Santos, which ended in a No Contest due to an eye poke. He had one fight in 2016, which became non-title when opponent Nikolay Aleksakhin missed weight.

Other fights fell through for various reasons. A rematch with Sapo fell through when the Brazilian missed weight, and then bizarrely refused to fight at a catchweight of 190. A superfight with ONE Middleweight champion Vitaly Bigdash was delayed with the planned Thai arena fell through due to the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and Bigdash bizarrely pulled out of the rescheduled bout.

In 2017 Askren got what he wanted – three fights. And now, following a win vs. Shinya Aoki at ONE Championship: Immortal Pursuit in Singapore on Saturday, the two-time All American has retired undefeated at age 33 with an 18-0 record. He and his brother Max have opened three Askren Wrestling Academy, and Askren will take an executive position with ONE.

“I’m calculated. This has been in my head for 20 years,” said Askren to Brett Okamoto for ESPN. “I read all these sports biographies as a kid, and the one thing that became apparent is that everybody stays too long, and everybody goes broke. So, I told myself I would never stay too long and I would never go broke.”

Askren believes ONE will try to coax him back into the cage, and he believes he won’t.

“I think they’ll actively look for it. I’m one of their biggest stars, and that would be a huge fight for them,” he said. “The MMA landscape is changing, right? ONE is doing great. The UFC, by my estimation, is a ship without a rudder right now. Bellator’s welterweight division is really good. The game is changing.”

However, there is a fight he would apparently take.

@GeorgesStPierre how’s the spring weather in Montreal? I hear it’s a nice time to test your true Martial Arts skills

— Funky 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@Benaskren) November 25, 2017

“If that opportunity were to come up, I’d immediately take it,” he said. “I’ve asked them to go after free agents in the past. But in all honesty, I think this fight will be it.”

“My career is enigmatic, for sure. There are people who just don’t like me and say I suck, but there’s no way you can say decisively I wasn’t the best in the world. I’m in a weird place for most people. They don’t really know where to put me.

“I haven’t been given the chance to prove it, and MMA is a crazy sport, but I think I’ve been the best welterweight in the world since about 2012.”

“For me, the feeling I get coaching is better than competition. I’ve been lucky enough to coach NCAA champions, and the feeling I got when they won was the same as when I won myself.

“Recently, it’s been helping kids realize their dream. I had two kids recently in big tournaments, and they won that match where you just know. You know it and they know it — where that match was their college scholarship. Like, they just won their college scholarship.

“For kids who have been dreaming of that for eight years, it’s such a ‘wow’ moment. Honestly, those feelings are better than what I get when I win.”