‘Funky’ Ben Askren was part of one of the largest trades in MMA History with the UFC trading their former pound for pound king Demetrious ‘Mighty Mouse’ Johnson for Askren. When this happened fans were very excited to see whether or not Ben could live up to the hype, the undefeated Welterweight had held gold in both One FC and Bellator prior to this historic trade. I made his debut against Robbie Lawler and won in the first round via submission from a Bulldog Choke. This wasn’t without controversy though as Lawler hadn’t actually tapped out, there was just a lot of speculation as to whether or not he was going limp.
From there it all went wrong, he lost a high profile match against Jorge Masvidal in just 5 seconds, making it the quickest fight in UFC history. From there he was matched against Demian Maia, in this fight, Ben Askren, like many before him had no answer for the back control and pressure from Maia and was forced to tap in round three to a rear-naked choke. It appears that the hype around him had been destroyed as he proved he had a lack of striking ability and although he has excellent wrestling, losing to a grappler in a grappling heavy contest almost certainly destroyed a lot of opinions on the legitimacy of his claims that he was the very best in the World.
Citing on The Ariel Helwani Show recently, Askren revealed that he has had hip injuries for a while and instead of risking the injury even further he has decided to call it a quits on his combat sports career, many will view this as a premature decision, one based off of emotion, that maybe, however as it stands, Ben Askren has retired from the sport of Mixed Martial Arts.
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