MMA star Askren preparing for final fight
HARTLAND – One of Wisconsin’s most accomplished athletes is getting ready to call it quits at 33.
No, not him. Though his broken collarbone all but eliminated the Packers from Super Bowl contention, Aaron Rodgers is on injured reserve and will be back. And no, not him. Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun has plenty left in the tank.
We’re talking about Ben Askren.
The Hartland native has excelled in a relative vacuum – he’s probably a bigger star in Shanghai and Manila than he is in his own backyard – but that doesn’t diminish what he has done in the world of mixed martial arts.
Askren is the welterweight champion of Singapore-based One Championship, the biggest MMA promotion in Asia. The two-time NCAA wrestling champion and 2008 Olympian hasn’t lost an MMA fight since … well, he’s never lost.
He’s on a seven-year winning
streak in which he’s run his record to 17-0. And he has gotten better and better every time he’s stepped into the cage.
Criticized for being one-dimensional when he made the transition from wrestling to fighting, Askren now dispatches opponents in a variety of ways, and usually quickly. Only one of his last six fights has gone the distance.
“Literally, my first seven or eight fights, I had no idea what I was doing,” Askren said. “My submission skills were sub-par, my striking was sub-par but I got it done because I knew how to wrestle. I knew how to win, too. A lot of people gave me a hard time (for what was perceived to be a boring style) but I didn’t do MMA until I was 24. You’ve got to give me some time to figure this thing out.”
Now that he’s figured it out, he’s planning to retire.
Askren has announced that his next fight, Nov. 24 against Japan’s Shinya Aoki (39-7) in Singapore, will be his last.
He’ll then turn his full attention to coaching and helping run the Askren Wrestling Academy, which he co-founded with his brother, Max – like Ben an NCAA champion at the University of Missouri – and John Mesenbrink, their former coach at Arrowhead High School. AWA has locations in Hartland, Mequon and Green Bay.
He’ll also be able to spend more time with his wife, Amy, and their two daughters. He doesn’t want the focus to be on just him anymore. He’s made plenty of sacrifices to be a champion at every level but those closest to him have sacrificed, too.
“People think training and competing is this noble pursuit,” he said. “But it’s really not. It’s selfish, is what it is. That’s OK when you’re younger and you don’t have other people who are reliant on you. But when you’re older it gets to be this really selfish thing. It’s, ‘What do I need to do to be at my best today?’ For 20 years, that’s what it’s been.
“And so I’m ready for that to be done and the focus of my life is not just me anymore.”
At Missouri, Askren compiled a 153-7 record and finished with 87 consecutive victories and a pair of NCAA titles. It was Askren, not pitcher Max Scherzer, who was named the school’s male athlete of the year. And it was Askren, not Kevin Durant, who was named Big 12 athlete of the year.
After the 2008 Olympics and a stint as a college coach, Askren turned to MMA and quickly became a Bellator champion while training and coaching at Roufusport in Milwaukee.
The obvious question is why didn’t Ultimate Fighting Championship sign him? UFC is regarded as the top mixed martial arts promotion in the world. Askren, whose teammates at Roufusport included UFC champions Anthony Pettis and Tyron Woodley, didn’t want to go into specifics.
The fact that he worked for a rival promotion had something to do with it. Perhaps a bigger reason was that Askren and UFC president Dana White never got along. And that’s putting it mildly.
“I’ll say it on the record: Dana is a scumbag,” said Askren, never one to mince words. “It’s not a secret if you pay attention. He’s a scumbag. He’s a terrible person.”
Askren has no regrets about not fighting in UFC, other than the fact that he never got a chance to prove he was the best welterweight in the world.
“I think I’m the best,” he said. “Other people think I’m the best, but I’ve never been able to prove it.”Other than that, he’s satisfied with his career. He hasn’t made so much money that he never has to work again, but he’s been careful with what he has earned. He owns a house in Wauwatosa, a house in Missouri and just upgraded from an 11-year-old Toyota Prius to a Tesla.
“I didn’t do a lot of frivolous things with the money I made,” he said. “I don’t have as much money as Aaron Rodgers, but I’m in a really good spot in my life.”
And after he gets his hand raised one more time, he’ll retire as an unbeaten champion. Not even Rodgers or Braun can make that claim.