How Ben Askren learned to embrace his role outside the UFC, and why he believes it matters

Watching Ben Askren spar is a lot like watching him fight. In many ways, it’s exactly like that, except that in the gym no one raises his hand and declares him the winner at the end.

All the rest of it, however? The insistence on barely disguised takedowns followed by big brother-esque ground-and-pound? The ceaseless assault that frustrates egos and crushes spirits? The ONE Championship welterweight titleholder inflicts that on teammates just as eagerly as he does on opponents.

Those teammates know it, too. You can see it on their faces as soon as they’re matched up with Askren (14-0, 1 NC) on a sparring day inside Milwaukee’s Roufusport gym. That look they get, that’s the look of people who know they’ll soon be on their backs, eating leather and counting down the seconds until the round ends and they get the welcome gift of a new partner.

It’s a somewhat surprising approach on Askren’s part. You might think that, at least in training, such an accomplished wrestler would want to work on anything but the stuff he’s already good at. And sure, Askren said, he does that too, on specialized skill days. It’s just that he doesn’t kid himself about how much he could possibly improve on those things in the time he has left in this sport.

“Coming into mixed martial arts, I started when I was 24 years old,” Askren told MMAjunkie. “I mean, if I fight until I’m 34, which is 10 years, I’m still only going to do all those other things half the amount of time I did wrestling. And when I was wrestling, I was doing it seven days a week.”

In other words, with so many skills to learn and relatively little time to hone them all, Askren feels he’s better off perfecting the approach that’s worked so far, rather than trying to become a jack-of-all-trades just in time to retire.

That kind of thinking – as well as the honesty to just come right out and say it, rather than regurgitating stale platitudes about trying to become a complete martial artist – is one of the things that makes Askren something of a unique figure in the world of MMA. It also probably springs from the same impulse toward practical, unflinching honesty that has made him one of the most prominent critics of the UFC, all without ever fighting for the sport’s most prominent organization.

In some ways, Askren will admit, it’s a role that he was thrust into. When the UFC declined to sign him to a contract after his release from Bellator, where he reigned as the unbeaten welterweight champ for three years, it made people wonder about the organization’s evaluation criteria.

When the UFC later signed much less experienced fighters, such as former pro wrestler Phil “CM Punk” Brooks, who now trains alongside Askren at Roufusport and looks to him as a wrestling coach, it only further solidified Askren as the fighter people turn to for an unvarnished opinion on the UFC’s latest moves.

“I don’t know that I ever wanted that role, but it’s just what I fell into,” Askren said. “I think people that don’t like (UFC President) Dana White, when they talk about all the things that he’s done wrong over the last five years, I’m the easiest one to point to. I was 12-0, Olympian, ranked top 10 in the world, and he makes all these stupid reasons why he can’t sign me, when the fact was he chose not to.”

There might have been a time, Askren said, when he was hoping that might change. Now, however, he seems to have resigned himself to spending his career outside the UFC.

That’s not all bad, he noted, since the UFC’s deal with Reebok limits fighters to fight night sponsor pay that, according to Askren, he far surpassed in Bellator, when he was making “probably five or six times what the first pay grade is in the UFC.”

The other benefit, he added, is freedom. Now that UFC executives seem to have written him off for good, he can speak his mind whenever he wants, and on any topic he wants, all without fear of repercussion from the UFC brass, which is “fantastic,” he said.

“There’s not really anything else (White) can do to me, so I can say whatever I want,” Askren said. “I have UFC fighters text me all the time with either ideas for something to say, or saying, ‘Thanks for speaking up.’”

In fact, Askren said, just recently, when he went to Dallas to corner Anthony Pettis at UFC 185, he had three different UFC fighters approach him and thank him for speaking his mind on issues they didn’t feel comfortable addressing. It might not change the MMA landscape all by itself – for that, Askren said, the elite fighters at the top of the UFC pay grade will need to band together for the good of the whole – but at least it’s something.

“It’s good to know it’s appreciated,” Askren said. “It’s, frankly, just the right thing to do.”