Ben Askren will be the first to admit that striking wasn’t his best weapon when competing in mixed martial arts but that’s mostly because throwing hands with opponents was never a part of his game plan.
Instead, the two-time Hodge Trophy winner and NCAA wrestling champion always relied on his superior grappling to take fights down to the ground where he was the better fighter. For Askren, striking was always designed to set up his takedowns because he knew nobody was going to out wrestle him in the cage.
“When I was doing MMA, all my stand up was based around how do I execute the intro to the striking and then get to my wrestling,” Askren said when speaking to MMA Fighting.