Ben Askren Back in Action on August 18?

[Drake]

 

[Katsumi Yamada]

In the post fight interview he called out Vitaly Bigdash for Aug 18, and said if Bigdash was too chicken (Askren did a chicken dance and accompanying noise to demonstrate what he meant), then he would take "the swedish guy".

Referring to zebaztian kadestam

 

[JkMMA]

In the post fight interview he called out Vitaly Bigdash for Aug 18, and said if Bigdash was too chicken (Askren did a chicken dance and accompanying noise to demonstrate what he meant), then he would take "the swedish guy".

Referring to zebaztian kadestam

Vitaly bigash is rematching aung la nsang. Bigdash will be to big for askren lol. Askren will be fked if he can't take the Russian to the ground.

 

[Meathead Jock]

Decent chance he gets another fight in November when they return to Singapore too. Three fights in 6 months, its almost as if they are trying to convince him to not retire if they come through.

Anyone think Bigdash has a chance vs Askren if he moves up a weightclass to fight him?

 

[skylolow]

Good, lets burn through this contract and hold on to a glimmer of hope he comes to the UFC to finish off his career.

 

[007]

Good, lets burn through this contract and hold on to a glimmer of hope he comes to the UFC to finish off his career.

Dana will never sign him but maybe Bellator. I think it is pretty clear Askren took the easy road signing with ONE. Who has he really went against?

 

[Meathead Jock]

Dana will never sign him but maybe Bellator. I think it is pretty clear Askren took the easy road signing with ONE. Who has he really went against?

If by easy road you mean the road that offered him the most money to di his job then yes.

If a place with tougher competition would have offered him more i'm sure he would have taken it.

 

[007]

If by easy road you mean the road that offered him the most money to di his job then yes.

If a place with tougher competition would have offered him more i'm sure he would have taken it.

Yeah I understand the money part but as a wrestler I would think he wanted to challenge himself. The money may have not been there in the beginning from (UFC, Bellator) but if he became 16-0 while under contract with them he would be making plenty of money. I don't hear the top fighters in UFC or Bellator complaining of the pay

 

[Meathead Jock]

Yeah I understand the money part but as a wrestler I would think he wanted to challenge himself. The money may have not been there in the beginning from (UFC, Bellator) but if he became 16-0 while under contract with them he would be making plenty of money. I don't hear the top fighters in UFC or Bellator complaining of the pay

What we know:

The UFC didn want him because:
1. He insulted Dana a lot
2. Had what was described as a "boring style"
3. Was at a time the UFC decided they needed to distance themselves from Bellator especially after Bjorn was talking about how "his champ could go beat GSP".
4. Ben was offered an extension from Bellator that is less than what ONE or WSOF offered. Ben indirectly insulted Bellator a lot as he was confident he would be moving on to the UFC. When that didn't happen he had basically burnt that bridge plus he had already crushed Koreshkov and Lima.

Now what I assume:

Now he is turning 34 shortly and unlike the rest of the mma athletes is in the process of declining because he isn't on PEDs allowing him to be great until he is 40 years old like the rest of fighters. So he doesn't want to go to the UFC at this point to take a paycut "for the privilege" and give Dana the satisfaction of watching him lose out of his prime. Even if Ben can keep up his level by the time he'd earn a titleshot/more money he would be too old to truly cash in. So he is bound to either retire or stay in a lesser league like ONE or KSW or Russia that wants to pay top dollar to have a big fish join their pond.

 

[The Reed]

He'll be back in August of 2018.

 

[usmctanker242]

If by easy road you mean the road that offered him the most money to di his job then yes.

If a place with tougher competition would have offered him more i'm sure he would have taken it.

Nope, he took the easy road in every possible way.
http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/11/...hting-offers-free-agent-ben-askren-a-contract

I am not saying he is a coward or that he ducked the UFC or anything such as that, but he certainly would have some really good competition in WSOF as their WW division was pretty good. He chose to go to Asia and fight a bunch of unknown fighters who were not on the same level as the guys in WSOF.

It's also likely that had he not explicitly bad mouthed the UFC for so long he would have had a contract with them. Pretty sure I recall Ben saying the UFC told him to go to WSOF and if he kept winning they would take another look at giving him a contract. Instead he went to Asia and became 100% irrelevant, all the while bad mouthing the UFC. To each their own but it feels like he made damned sure he would never have to fight serious competition.

 

[qw3rty]

Anyone think Bigdash has a chance vs Askren if he moves up a weightclass to fight him?

I didn't see last fights of both, so considering the previous ones, I'd say yes
(more than the bums he is fighting for sure)

 

[eseseses681]

Decent chance he gets another fight in November when they return to Singapore too. Three fights in 6 months, its almost as if they are trying to convince him to not retire if they come through.

I think Askren's kind of strong-arm'd them into either giving him his desired 3 fights by the end of the year or, even if he decides not to retire, he's definitely not gonna stay with ONE afterwards. And if they satisfy him and give him his three fights and he still wants to fight for at least another year or so, he's got no reason not to re-sign with 'em since they'll be on good terms by then. So ONE's got motivation to fulfill Askren's desires.
It'll probably be in December if he gets a third fight, though, in Manila or maybe at a China show in Shanghai or Beijing or somethin'.

Nope, he took the easy road in every possible way.
http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/11/...hting-offers-free-agent-ben-askren-a-contract

He actually talked about that exact thing in a later interview. In his own words:
"When I couldn't sign with the UFC, I think my goal of being Number 1 in the world went out the window. There's just no way of doing that at Welterweight without being in the UFC. I could go 50-0 and as long as it's outside the UFC, I'm not going to be Number 1. My goal can't happen without the UFC, so I'll fight whoever they give me. I'm not overly concerned with it. Even if I beat up Rousimar Palhares and Jon Fitch, I might move from Number 8 to Number 7? It's impossible at this point."

So he didn't just take the easy road like you're reducing it to. There's a lot more to the story than hyperfocusing on him choosing not to fight in the organization that has a couple of ranked fighters.
Besides, it's not like he's been fighting bad fighters like people think; they might not have the same accumulation of points that ranked fighters do, but they're not bad fighters. Thani's probably the only fighter he's faced in ONE that was overmatched, and even then he had a solid 7-0 record and a 5-0 amateur record, and the only real flaw on his overall quality was that it was too early in his career to be facing someone like Askren.

Yeah I understand the money part but as a wrestler I would think he wanted to challenge himself. The money may have not been there in the beginning from (UFC, Bellator) but if he became 16-0 while under contract with them he would be making plenty of money. I don't hear the top fighters in UFC or Bellator complaining of the pay

Not going into the specifics of the Askren-UFC 2013 situation, it's ridiculous how people act like a pseudo-back-end deal is somehow a justification for people taking a paycut for an indeterminate amount of time just for a chance to be a top guy and make a lot of money. Yeah, just winning four fights in a row and then making a lot of money; that's simple enough. Nothing can happen that could completely fuck up your career and money-making opportunities in the time it takes to compete in four matches.
It's like being an accountant and turning down a job as the vice-president of accounting at a company for an internship at a higher-level company just cuz' it means there's a chance you could become CFO in a few years.
It's like that phrase "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is replaced with "There's two birds in that bush?" Followed by letting go of the caught bird and diving headfirst into the bush.

 

[usmctanker242]

He actually talked about that exact thing in a later interview. In his own words:
"When I couldn't sign with the UFC, I think my goal of being Number 1 in the world went out the window. There's just no way of doing that at Welterweight without being in the UFC. I could go 50-0 and as long as it's outside the UFC, I'm not going to be Number 1. My goal can't happen without the UFC, so I'll fight whoever they give me. I'm not overly concerned with it. Even if I beat up Rousimar Palhares and Jon Fitch, I might move from Number 8 to Number 7? It's impossible at this point."

So he didn't just take the easy road like you're reducing it to. There's a lot more to the story than hyperfocusing on him choosing not to fight in the organization that has a couple of ranked fighters.
Besides, it's not like he's been fighting bad fighters like people think; they might not have the same accumulation of points that ranked fighters do, but they're not bad fighters. Thani's probably the only fighter he's faced in ONE that was overmatched, and even then he had a solid 7-0 record and a 5-0 amateur record, and the only real flaw on his overall quality was that it was too early in his career to be facing someone like Askren.

Yeah, why bother fighting people with name recognition and proven records when you can become 100% irrelevant by fighting unknown and unranked fighters in Asia. You can spin it any which way you please but Ben chose the easy path to what or may not have been more money. We can't say for sure but he would have been on American television MANY times if he had been fighting in WSOF rather than ZERO times by fighting in Asia. He also would have been fighting actual ranked fighters rather than a bunch of top 100 guys. Just because someone is 7-0 or 9-0 that doesn't mean much when they haven't fought anybody with any top-level talent. I'm not bad mouthing those guys of their opponents but it's just a fact that they haven't faced top 10 or top 20 competition.

Ben not only chose not to fight currently ranked fighters, but at the same time he chose to bad mouth the UFC in such an aggressive manner that he would be sure he would never have to face top competition. Those were his choices and again I am not calling the man a coward or anything in that manner. Again, as far as I can recall, even Ben acknowledged that the UFC recommended he go to WSOF and build up a better name for himself. Maybe if he went over there and fought some relevant and ranked competition he could have had his shot at "becoming #1" as he so eloquently stated. Instead he rolled to Asia and mocked the UFC in turn ensuring that would never happen. So can you really look at the quote you posted and believe it's anything but pure bullshit?

 

[eseseses681]

So can you really look at the quote you posted and believe it's anything but pure bullshit?

I can, but that's because I don't put rankings on a pedestal, think that the general opinion of people on Sherdog is the final ruling on relevancy, and feel that bending to Dana White's will in any circumstance regarding gaining a contract is necessary.

 

[Katsumi Yamada]

I don't hear the top fighters in UFC or Bellator complaining of the pay

 

[Asurah]

It's also likely that had he not explicitly bad mouthed the UFC for so long he would have had a contract with them. Pretty sure I recall Ben saying the UFC told him to go to WSOF and if he kept winning they would take another look at giving him a contract. Instead he went to Asia and became 100% irrelevant, all the while bad mouthing the UFC. To each their own but it feels like he made damned sure he would never have to fight serious competition.

While I would prefer the fights he would have gotten in WSOF, it would have been silly of him to base his career choices on the UFC maybe possibly but probably not reconsidering giving him a contract. If they weren't willing to sign a well known, multiple time NCAA D-1 champion and Olympic wrestler who was an undefeated dominant Bellator champ then I doubt a few wins in WSOF would have changed much, if anything. The UFC was hardly professional throughout the whole negotiation period either with the ever professional Dana speaking negatively of Askren to the public. The UFC just simply didn't want to pay for him, I don't think the badmouthing/trash talk/whatever had much if anything to do with Askren not being in the UFC.

 

[Falconkick]

Always wanted to see Askren fight Beslan Isaev. Maybe they will have him fight Marcin Prachnio? He is probably way too big though

 

[fermaPY]

Maybe ONE wants him to fight more often so he maybe lost the belt, cause it looks like there aren't many chances of him re-signing with them.... just what i think....

 

[Fluffernutter]

If I remember correctly, Askren's deal with ONE FC was something like:

- Gets decent money to fight
- Gets decent money to coach at a ONE FC owned gym
- Gets an apartment covered when in Singapore for him and his family
- Endorsement $$


Does Woodley get a similar deal with UFC?
- Does the UFC pay him a salary beyond his fight purses?
- Does the UFC cover the costs for his living situation while training?