Why Askren is retiring and what would get him back in the cage

ONE Championship welterweight champion and former wrestling Olympian Ben Askren is retiring after his title defense vs. Shinya Aoki at ONE Championship: Immortal Pursuit in Singapore on November 24. ‘Funky’ appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour and discussed why he’s retiring (he’s just 33) and what it might take to bring him back.

The one and only way I would ever come back for another fight is if it was for the No. 1 spot in the world,” said Askren, as transcribed by Nick Baldwin for BE. “Not two, not three, not four, not five. None of those spots. Then obviously the second part of that would be his name is not Tyron Woodley, because I have no interest in fighting Tyron, a very good friend of mine. So if for some reason the No. 1 person’s name was not Tyron Woodley, and I got offered a fight against No. 1, I would come back to prove I was No. 1. But other than that, I’m retired. I don’t need to come back and prove I’m two or three or four, anywhere in there; I’ll be done.

So Askren would return for a UFC title shot, it Woodley no longer held the belt. Further, Askren feels like he’s not getting any better at 33, and wants to retire before he sustains serious injury, which in the fight game can be mental, progressive, and incurable.

If you think about who retires during their prime, the number of athletes who do that is very small, said Askren. Obviously, in a sport like golf, we see Tiger Woods fall off. There’s not really too much damage he can take from that, although when you watch him and he sucks and you’re like, ‘God, you used to be so good but you suck now,’ it’s concerning as a fan. But then you look at someone like Muhammad Ali, who was literally my favorite athlete of all time. The punishment he took from sticking around too long past his prime, we could guess it led to a lot of the problems he had later in his life.

I am definitely not, physically, at the peak I was, say, four to five years ago. It’s a slippery slope, because can I still compete with the best in the world? Yeah, of course I can, but you start getting a little worse, and a little worse, and a little worse. So when is that cut off? For me, I set something for myself — I said, ‘This is going to be it for me.’ I said it awhile back. I’m going to stick by it, because I need to be disciplined in that matter, and I think a lot of athletes don’t do that for themselves.

Further, fighting is an intensely self-involved, time-consuming effort, and Askren would like more time for his family and for coaching.

If you’re competing right, if you’re doing it right, competition should be a very selfish pursuit, said Askren. When I was younger, I always said I would be done by the time I was 30, because I wanted to be able to give back. I thought I would be coaching — and I am — and I thought I would be a parent — and I am. There’s a lot of things that I have to do. For example, I didn’t coach anyone for about the last six weeks before my fight at AWA, because this is my time, and I need to get ready. There’s things I missed out on in my kids’ lives, because I have to get ready.

Askren said he hopes to compete occasionally in grappling or wrestling, but not to the extent that it’s all on the line. And then he summed up his fighting career.

I’m perfectly content, he said. I have never turned down a fight, I’ve never pulled out of a fight, I’ve never missed weight, I’ve never failed a drug test, and I’ve never lost.

I wasn’t granted the opportunity to fight some of the best guys in the world. And that was something that was not on my end by any sense of the imagination. So yeah, I am definitely satisfied, and I don’t really think there’s anything I could’ve or would’ve done differently.