Ahead of UFC Debut, Ben Askren's Goal Is Simple: Be the Best in the World
Ben Askren never needed this.
He would have been perfectly fine if the UFC hadn't come calling. He could have stayed retired and been absolutely OK with his legacy if he'd never set foot in the UFC's cage.
For the better part of the last decade, Askren has perhaps carried the greatest set of unanswered questions in mixed martial arts: Sure, he was undefeated, but who did he beat? Sure, he mowed through opponents like a hot knife through butter, but how would he do against the world's best welterweights in the UFC?
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Askren was confident in his abilities and his relentless, smothering style, which often bordered on effortless. He answered the hypothetical with concrete certainty because he knew. He knew he was on par with Georges St-Pierre. He knew he was on par with his good friend, Tyron Woodley, who replaced St-Pierre as the dominant force at welterweight.
He knew he could beat anyone in the UFC just as sure as he knew the only reason he wasn't getting his shot to prove it was the company's politics—pure and simple. The UFC brass, the same people who crow about having the best talent in the world, did a curious thing when Bellator released Askren in 2013: They didn't sign him.
They didn't even make an effort—not outside the obligatory meeting with Askren and his manager. And it was a strange thing, because here was a man who could lay claim to delegitimizing the UFC's welterweight title, and they let him go elsewhere. He did, signing a contract with Asian fight promotion ONE Championship.
So Askren retired in 2017, still undefeated, still barely tested. He started focusing on his wrestling school. He became a podcaster, trying to give something back to the wrestling community that had given him so much. There would always be the questions from the uninformed-and-yet-highly-opinionated about how good he really was and how he would have fared against the UFC's best. And he was fine with it.
"I wouldn't have committed to the retirement if I wasn't OK with it," Askren told B/R.
But then a curious thing happened: The UFC inexplicably decided to send Demetrious Johnson, one of the two or three fighters who can lay claim to being the greatest in the sport's history, to ONE. It was a stunning move, but the promotion wasn't just giving Johnson away. It wanted something in return.
It wanted Askren.
And an opportunity to fight the best in the UFC was the only thing that would draw Askren out of retirement. It wasn't the mythical prestige that comes with being a UFC fighter; none of that mattered to him and still doesn't. The only thing that mattered was getting in the cage with fighters who were higher in the pecking order.
"That was the one and only thing that appealed to me. I never got to fight the sort of guy who was ranked above me for many, many years," Askren said. "So being able to fight someone who was ranked above me—that was the appeal. The only reason I said I would ever come back is if I got to fight the best in the world."
Like all wrestlers, Askren is goal-oriented. His checklist for his new UFC career, which kicks off Saturday night against Robbie Lawler at UFC 235 in Las Vegas, goes like this: Be the best in the world.
That's it. There's nothing else on the list. And his method of checking off that goal is simple, too.
"You win enough fights, people will say you're best in the world. It's pretty simple," he said.
So what happens if Askren beats Lawler and then beats another contender, and suddenly, just as he expects, finds himself in the conversation for a UFC title shot?
Askren and Woodley are longtime friends and will not, under any circumstances (or at least, any circumstances that currently exist) fight each other. If Woodley is still the champion—and Askren fully expects him to "beat up" challenger Kamaru Usman on Saturday night—where will Askren's path to the top, to finishing his goal, lead him?
It's simple, he said. He believes the UFC will have a 165-pound weight class by that point, and that's the belt he'll compete for. UFC President Dana White has repeatedly pushed back on the notion of a new weight class at 165; this would seemingly increase the likelihood of it happening, given White's penchant for being less than truthful in public. And Askren says it'll happen.
"There's almost no doubt in my mind," he said.
That's where Askren believes his future lies. It might be a fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov, who Askren says (with a touch of hopeful glee) would be a great opponent. But it might be anybody.
"MMA's crazy. You never know who it's going to be by then. We've got [Israel] Adesanya and [Kelvin] Gastelum, who are ranked No. 5 and No. 6, and they're fighting for [the] interim middleweight title," Askren said. "It's crazy, right? MMA is insane. You never know what's going to happen."
But first, there is Lawler, the hard-hitting former welterweight champion who remains a tough test for anyone at age 36 despite being on the downside of a long, legendary career. Askren, 34, is rightly a heavy favorite because Lawler represents the kind of tailor-made opponent Askren has made short work of throughout his career; if he can avoid Lawler's heavy hands long enough to grab him, it's a certainty Lawler will end up on his back while Askren suffocates him from the top.
That's right where he wants to be, and it's right where he has seen himself for a full decade: on top, breaking the will of the best fighters in the world and finally proving to the doubters that being the best doesn't always mean being in the UFC.
Odds provided by OddsShark.
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