Ben Askren is a wrestler and MMA fighter, former Bellator and ONE Championship welterweight champion, a two-time NCAA wrestling champion and four-time finalist. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
- Notion: https://notion.com/startups to get up to $1000 off team plan
- NI: https://www.ni.com/perspectives
- Onnit: https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off
- Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings
- NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour

EPISODE LINKS:
Ben's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Benaskren
Ben's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benaskren/
Ben's Website: https://www.benaskren.com/
Ben's Wrestling Academy: https://awawisconsin.com/

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:06 - Woodley vs Jake Paul boxing match
4:56 - Askren vs Jake Paul boxing match
7:30 - Jordan Burroughs and Kyle Dake
18:44 - Askren vs Burroughs charity match
23:28 - Champion mentality and handling losses
37:47 - Future interest in competition
47:17 - Askren's early career
58:05 - Robots wrestling
1:12:46 - Olympics
1:18:53 - Dagestan wrestling
1:24:58 - Askren Wrestling Academy
1:40:39 - Khabib Nurmagomedov
1:47:16 - 2020 Olympics
1:48:56 - Wrestling dominance in MMA

SOCIAL:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
- Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

The following is a conversation with Ben Askren, wrestler, MMA fighter, and a brilliant, opinionated, and fun personality in

And yes, he occasionally likes to talk a little trash.

Given his wild online antics and his boxing match with Jake Paul, some people may forget just how dominant he was in the sport of wrestling and in MMA for most of his career.

In wrestling, He is a two-time NCAA Division I National Champion and four-time finalist.

In mixed martial arts, he went undefeated for 10 years with a record of 19-0 before losing to Jorge Masvidal with a flying knee that caught everyone by surprise.

He's also into cryptocurrency, disc golf, and is the co-host of Flow Wrestling Radio Live.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, here's my conversation with Ben Askren.

Before we talk about your incredible wrestling career, your MMA career, let me ask you, I have to ask you, what did you think about the Jake Paul versus Tyron Woodley fight?

Well, I thought, I mean, I'm obviously unbiased.

And again, maybe this is my bias in the way I was seeing it.

I thought he was more effective with the striking and he was more aggressive.

No, Jake had more volume, but that was the only thing I would give him.

And I guess a lot of people just didn't see it that way.

They thought he landed more, significantly more punches.

I just didn't think he really did any damage.

Well, it was the thing, so the thing I said when I went in to fight him.

I said we don't really maybe he's good Maybe he's not we have no we really have no idea to this point.

You know and so I Knew Tyrone was a lot better boxing than I was and so I thought okay Tyron's is I think it's a good likely that Tyron beats him up But there's the chance that Jake's kind of good at this.

And I think that's kind of what played out is, he's kind of good at it, even if you saw it the way I saw it, he still was impressive in his showing and he's obviously put a lot of time into it, so he's not bad,

But isn't it surprising to you that like a elite level athlete, combat athlete, lost to somebody who just takes it really seriously but is nevertheless not elite level?

But I think boxing's a really specific rule set.

Tyron had good striking, but obviously It was his first boxing match ever.

And within mixed martial arts, you have the fear of the takedown and the fear of the kick and fear of other things to go along with the punching.

And so if you look at Tyron throughout his MMA career, a lot of times what set up his punches were like level change fakes at a takedown, they dropped, boom, and then something comes over the top, right?

So there's many more elements to worry about in mixed martial arts, whereas boxing, there's only 1.

But Like I said, I mean, it's pretty evident that Jake's, he's not bad at boxing, he's pretty solid, you know?

He gets in there and works hard at it, I guess.

Out of 10 times, how many times do you think Jake wins?

They fight again and again and again, like iteratively.

Yeah, so I mean, part of the thing is, okay, so Jake's corner said you need a knockout going into the eighth round, right?

So I think they thought, maybe they're trying to motivate him, but I don't see it that way, because if they were actually thought that he was winning, why would they encourage him to take a dumb risk when Tyron has clearly his knockout power, right?

It's a really stupid coaching philosophy if that's what you're thinking.

So you obviously are thinking, hey, this is actually in the balance, it's competitive.

And I feel like Tyron thought maybe he was winning and didn't have the urgency necessary.

And so I think there's a chance he turns it up a lot.

Man, I would wanna watch him again before I...

So I have this problem with my personality.

I have an issue with not being able to give really exact answers.

So I hate giving you an answer that like, I don't feel like is 100% calculated.

So I would like to see them go once more, because I would like to see, hey, can Tyron, because if Tyron can turn up the pace and Jake can't handle it, then I think it's an 8, 1, or 9, 2, right?

If it goes the exact same way and maybe Tyrone wins a close split decision, I'm saying, oh, it's probably gonna be close every single time.

We're probably gonna get a 5 to 5 type of thing.

So it's like, I feel like out of 1 match, it's not totally indicative of what the future is gonna look like.

I feel like time would get a knockout and then you would still be in the same place, like not knowing what to predict.

Okay, so your fight with Jake Paul, Looking back, you had a little bit of time now.

Well, I mean, the fight specifically, I got cracked with an overhand right, so I mean, it kinda sucks.

I would say, you know, and this is where I really don't care And everyone's like, why would you, it turns your reputation.

I had an enjoyable time training it in the buildup.

Obviously, I wasn't skillful enough to get the win.

But Even despite the fact that I know what happened, if someone asked me to do it again, I probably would have done it again.

And so the way I was thinking about when I was deciding whether to do it or not, because I got the offer, it's like, okay, is this money, it can change my life.

It's not gonna double my net worth, but it's gonna add significantly, make my life easier.

Number 2 is like when I was in high school, we used to do boxing matches for free just because we thought it was fun.

We didn't have something going on Friday night.

Me and my buddies would get together and we had some boxing, it was like basic, and we'd punch each other in the head.

like for something I think is enjoyable and not gonna pay me a whole bunch of money, yeah, sure, I'll do it.

think if you got the rematch, if you did the rematch, would you, what are the odds you win?

I think he's pretty good actually, and I'm not very good.

Now it's probably at a low point for me, because so when I started training for that, I was like 215 pounds, which is the heaviest I've ever been.

I literally, like when I said yes, like I'll do it, like I literally started working out like the week before for the first time in my, you know, instance of surgery, because I wasn't able to do anything.

Yeah, but now after watching him box Tyron, like if you ask me, Ben, can you beat Tyron?

So, in boxing, yeah, so my chances of beating him, you know, and watching that card, it's like, damn, like, can't it be fun to box someone who I know sucks, who I know can beat?

That's what would be fun, you know, Because like the training, the preparation was fun, but then obviously I got my butt kicked.

I was gonna drop an F-bomb, but I wasn't quite sure.

You could drop all of the F-bombs you want.

So preparation-wise, do you think you were more prepared for that fight or the Jordan Burroughs exhibition?

I mean like how did you approach it mentally?

Well the Burroughs thing, I obviously, so okay, So when I retired the first time in 2017, Burrows was the only current like, we'll say it really elite level wrestler that I never trained with.

I was really good friends with Nebraska's head of the coach still.

And I said, hey, I just want, I'm going to pay my own way.

I want to come down and train with Jordan because I want to see what it feels like.

You know, I want to get in there and mix it up.

I mix it up with David Taylor and Kyle Dake.

I mean, there's just something about wrestling that I love.

And so I flew myself down there in January of 2018 and I spent 4 days training with Jordan.

It gave me some great insight into how he thinks and what a great champion he is.

Like what the, like how hard is the live training?

Like how does his, it seems like his style is very different than yours.

So how does that match up in the room in terms of like what you learn from each other, that kind of thing?

We only went full live for 1, I think it was like a 12 or 15 minute go where we would just go wrestle.

We did a bunch of simulated live, but obviously he had, so I was a senior in college when he was a freshman in Nebraska and so we, our teams had dueled each other.

He was obviously a lot smaller at that point in time.

And so when I went in there, it was like, hey, I know you're really good at this position.

And so we would spend 30 to 40 minutes talking about that position.

It was like, 1 was a chest wrap, 1 was a headlock, 1 was, I don't remember, it's called, we call it the lightning dump, but it's a-

Yeah, my buddy's name was Lightning Luke Smith in high school and he was the first person I saw do it.

So usually when I see someone do something, then I name that move after them.

So, yeah, but so what I said with that is like, he was still trying to be the best in the world, I was just trying to go work out with Jordan Burroughs because I enjoy wrestling.

Is like someone who at that point, when he has 5 world titles, at that 4 or 5 at that point a lot, and so I used to tell my high school kids, it's like, hey, this is a guy who's the best in the world, who's bringing someone in and saying, how do I do this?

And so the level of inquisitiveness, that's a hard word, inquisitiveness he has, is really impressive.

And then it's obvious why he got to the level he did because he's figuring out all these little situations and that's honestly 1 of the biggest things I think wrestlers a lot of wrestlers fail to do as they get older even when they get to early college age they say this is my style this is what I do I'm gonna lift and work out hard and I'm not gonna add anything to my game.

Whereas you've seen many progressions in Jordan Burrow's game, he just made his 10th world team.

And if you have a really keen eye, you've been able to watch him change.

I've been watching him since he's done 7.

He's changed so much and obviously still maintained a world-class level almost the entire time.

But he doesn't have that double leg anymore.

He like hit his double leg for the first time against Alex Deirdre, he hadn't hit it in years.

Yeah, so that's like, when people think about Jordan Bros, they think about the double leg, because in his early years, fire, he had a great double leg, right?

And even in, so in those years, I would say, the biggest thing with Jordan Bros' double leg wasn't his level of explosiveness, it was his level of persistence.

He would shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot.

And it would a lot of times would be from fun, creative angles and out of scramble, boom, all the sudden he's on you, you know?

And he was just super persistent with it.

And then you saw, you know, when he came out to the 1 of the first World Championships in 2011, it was kind of that type of mentality.

And then shortly after then, obviously everyone was starting to lower their stance, getting lower, and he developed a really good like Mantis go-behind series where he would go 1 way, the other way.

Then he started developing really good low single ankle pick type thing, you know?

And then his hand fighting got really tremendous, like 15, 16, 17, his hand fighting was really good.

And now I just commented at the 21 trials, like a few of the defensive sequences he got into, it's like, holy shit, like just not from an athletic standpoint, but from a technical standpoint, the things he were doing were just tremendous.

So I've seen him as someone like who's continued to reinvent themselves over the course of the last 10, 12 years.

Especially as a junior and senior in college, you're exceptionally dominant.

If you were to face him at both of your peaks of NCAA wrestling, could you beat him?

And if you can beat him, Of course you can beat him.

How do you solve the Jordan Burroughs problem?

Well, so for a folk style wrestling standpoint.

Folk style, so, you know, he had some competitive matches as junior and senior year.

He had A21 win over, or maybe it's 3 2, over Michael Chandler, who is my teammate, who's fighting UFC now.

So I think you can glean some insight into that.

You know, he got ridden, he got so mad about this up on a podcast.

So during Corona, we had to make up all kinds of bullshit to talk about.

And we were doing like the last 10 years best 165s and I said Kyle Dake would ride him for over a minute.

He got so mad he wanted to come on the podcast the next day so hopefully he doesn't listen to this.

So, Michael Channel wrote him for 2 minutes plus, and that was his junior year, not his senior year, sure, right, but it's close.

I think the interesting thing would be if I would have stuck around, right?

So I chose to go into mixed martial arts after dozen 8, I would have been 74 and he would have been 74.

And then I think that the freestyle Jordan Burroughs puzzle is a lot more difficult to solve than the folk style Jordan Burroughs puzzle.

And I think he would acknowledge that he's much better at freestyle than he was at

This is like raw speed, explosiveness, presents a problem to you?

Well, so he was never, I mean, he didn't really excel on the mat in kind of either style in freestyle.

He has got some good lace transitions but in folks that like his whole like his entire college career I think he has like 10 pins which is almost nothing you know.

So He was getting no value off the top position.

He was good enough on most people to get off bottom without it being an issue.

But it wasn't like, oh my gosh, this is an area where we really have to be careful.

You know, it's just he wasn't gaining value there.

Whereas in freestyle, he I don't want to say never, but the amount of times he gets turned is incredibly rare, very, very rare.

And he does have like lace transitions, so he gets a lot of points there.

So, and obviously freestyle is, it can be geared way more in the neutral position, right?

Were you surprised that he lost to Dake in the trials, to Kyle Dake?

I mean, I think his performance in the Olympics was his loss then, was shocking to, I mean, we never seen that happen to Kyle Dake.

You know, he's been a guy who's competed with Jordan Burrows forever and obviously he was on the losing side for a while and now he's on the winning side.

But I think a lot of people thought it was a coin flip and I think actually Kyle Dake made it feel like it's not a coin flip.

Now to me it feels like Kyle Dake is gonna win that match significantly more times than he isn't is what it feels like.

Was it 4 years ago where Kyle Dake threw him?

You saw inklings of like, oh wow, there might be eventually a changing of the guard.

Yeah, so at 13, Kyle came out and he had the 1 throw, but then he lost 1 of the matches decisively.

And then he was hurting 14, and in 16, Kyle Dake actually went up to 86 kilograms.

So actually in 16, at the trials we had, So Jake Herbert was number 1 seed.

He was former, as Guy Russell, I was a former world silver medalist.

So you had David Taylor, who had not made a team yet, who is now a world champion, Olympic champion.

You had Kyle Dake in the bracket, who was a two-time world champion now.

And you had Jaden Cox in the bracket, who had not made any teams yet, but is now what a 4 time world medalist, 2 time world champion.

So, and then obviously, Jayden came out on top of that, won his first Olympic medal, Olympic bronze medal.

And Kyle's contention the whole time, and they argued about this.

So I actually did a little bit of backstabbing.

We talked about this fake match during Corona, right?

We had to make up something to talk about.

So we talked about this fake match and- Do you stand behind that statement, by the way?

I said, Kyle Dick wins 2-1 on a minute and 6 ride time, which I mean, we're talking as close as it gets, as close as it gets for Kyle Dake, who's a four-time NCAA champion.

Both of them at their peaks at 165 pounds.

And so Jordan called in, he was all pissed at me for picking Kyle Dake.

He wants to come on the next day and argue his point.

We need to pick a winner, we need to do something hypothetical.

So then I called Kyle Dake and I said, Kyle, Jordan's going to come on and argue his case in the morning.

If he's going to do that, why don't you come in and argue your case?

So no 1 else knew Kyle was coming on the podcast, so They both show up and they went at it.

But 1 of the contentions Kyle had for years, and there's still this rule, if you win a world level medal, the following year, you sit out until the very end of the American trials.

So every time previously that Kyle had wrestled Jordan, he had to come through a tournament on Saturday, okay, probably 3 matches, and then on Sunday, he would wrestle Jordan in a best 2 out of 3, right?

So his contention was, I'm only wrestling Jordan at a disadvantage because I have to compete on Saturday and then competing on, which it's a fair argument, it really is, but I also see USA Wrestling's point is like if someone wins a world medal, we are gonna reward them because we want that person on

It's crazy though that you're, like Kyle Dake had to wrestle, because he's not wrestling bums in that division.

I don't know how wrestlers do it, because you have to go to war like 3 matches and then face Jordan Burroughs.

Yeah, especially a few of those years with, you know, Dake had the name Andrew Howe, but those were really competitive matches.

David Taylor had really competitive matches with him, Isaiah Martinez even got in there, Deirninger.

So he had some really competitive matches before he ever got to Jordan Burroughs.

So I never answered your initial question was, how did I feel?

So the Jordan Burroughs match, I was not in wrestling shape at all, meaning wrestling's heavily dependent, especially neutral positions, heavily dependent on timing and other things.

I was wrestling very, very minimally because I started fighting again.

So like my athletic shape was great, but it was mainly for fighting, I wasn't wrestling.

So I think they were actually trying to do Burroughs-Dake at Beat the Streets.

It's the biggest fundraiser in wrestling every single year.

They usually raise like a million dollars.

They started all these programs in New York City to get, which I really wonder what they're doing with the money now because they probably can't have the kids wrestling because New York's crazy.

I think New York figures out a way what to do with the money.

Hence Michael Mal's complaining that they're corrupt and

But it goes to the Beat the Streets organization who then starts the clubs in New York.

So I don't know what to do with my, anyway, so I was called like, I don't know, 2 weeks before the event and said, hey, you know, someone wants to wrestle Jordan Burroughs.

You know, and it's like, listen, I trained with him for 4 days the year before.

I had a pretty good idea how the match was gonna go.

But it's like, okay, you're missing a main event.

I can bring, because of where I'm at right now in my life, I can bring a lot of attention to wrestling, I can help you guys raise a bunch of money for Beat the Streets.

My goal is, I think, I thought I could get 1 takedown or turn on him was kind of my goal for the match.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA | Lex Fridman Podcast #242