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

The following is a conversation with Ben Askren, wrestler, MMA fighter, and a brilliant, opinionated, and fun personality in the world of martial arts. 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 and 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. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. 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?

Uh, well, I thought... I mean, I'm obviously biased. I thought Tyron won. Um, I had five rounds of three. A- and again, this, 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 and that Jake had more volume, um, but that was the only, like, 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 any of them really did any damage.

It was a split decision.

Split decision, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Were you surprised?

Um, well, here's the thing with this. 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 i-... We really have no idea to this point," you know? And so I knew Tyron was a lot better at boxing than I was, and so I thought, "Okay, Tyron's... There's definitely is a good likelihood that Tyron beats him up. Um, but there's a 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, he's not bad (laughs) . We'll say it that much, you know?

But isn't it surprising to you that, like, a elite level athlete, combat athlete-

Mm-hmm.

... lost to somebody who just takes it really seriously, but is nevertheless not elite level?

Um, hmm. But, but I think boxing's a really specific rule set. Uh, so I'll speak about Tyron now myself. Tyron had, had good striking, but the... obviously, it was his first boxing match ever. Um, and within mixed martial arts, you have the, the fear of the take-down 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 lots of times, what set up his punches were, like, level change fakes and a take-down. They dropped, boom, and then something comes over the top, right?