YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Askren

lines on the record: 204
first: 2021-11-20
most recent: 2021-11-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Not really. So, you know what when I was a senior and I had the people wrestling in my head, I was lucky enough to be doing, I was pretty much graduated, so I did an independent study with the sports psychology. I was potentially grad school for sports psychwell. I actually did nine credits and then I just decided I didn't want to do it anymore. I continue learning on my own. But I had an independent study with the guy who was head of USA Track and Field Sports Psych. So here was the class was I got to go sit down talk with them for an hour. And he was like fascinated by me. So he didn't really make me do homework. It was like the greatest three credits ever. We just talked. I learned so much. It was so awesome.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Down block go behind. So when you're just head inside or head outside matters, but there's one for both. You shoot at me essentially. I take my leg, boom. So that was kind of in existence when I was in college, right? You down block them and you stop, but usually you hit on this side of their head, right? And now immediately as you shoot an eye tech, that shoulder and then I start hitting a go behind on you, right? And so like that in its current incarnation, it absolutely wasn't when I was in college. I would say it probably became popular five to seven years ago. So yeah, there's these big things that are happening. Now I really want a robot because I want to be ahead of the game. I want to know what I'm missing.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at Down Bot Go Behind is something that has really, I would say, really in the last five ish years, has really been evolved.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You think that so you think there's that so this I mean this the wrestling so fun is there's even after 80 90 years there's this continuous evolution”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so the robots are already killing the chest people So, yeah, theoretically, they could eventually beat wrestlers. But you asked what was hard wrestling or chess. And I think wrestling is because of the time component in it and the physicality of, you know, is it this force or that force? Because if I'm going to say, say we're in a seatbelt side by side, right, a wrestling seatbelt, not a jiu-jitsu. Based on the pressure you're giving me, I might do a bunch of different things, right? And so, like to an untrained eye, They might both look like the same thing from you to a trained feel. It's like, well, in one case, it's really evident I should go this way. In another case, it's really evident I should go that way.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. But then in wrestling, you have to make these movements very instantaneously, right? Because I should have sing like, I'm not going to wait and say, what's your defense? And then also, again, based on the force and the vectors and the angles, you have to calculate that and adjust. So really, you know, if you're saying, why can't you do a single leg? It's not like moving the chest. It's not one move, right? If you want to talk about different forces and stuff, it could be hundreds or thousands of different moves based on how hard I shoot at the angle, the direction, all those things.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, because there's an infinite amount of moves, right, and possibilities. So once I shoot the single leg, now you have. Amount of choices once you make your choice. Now I have a choice, X amount of choices. Now you have X amount of choices on the defense and we can just keep going back and forth, right? And this number becomes.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's what I've been thinking about since it's like how many things even these high school athletes who are like getting medium good are subconsciously thinking about all the time or not even not even thinking about reacting to but then even like for me I'm a few or mag do better than some of these kids I play and so when I when I go like super hard it's like I can feel their weight moving the wrong direction and so for me to off balance them or trip them or whatever is kind of easy sometimes you know because they're not feeling it Right way, right? Or their timing is just a little bit off, or the way they're grabbing the hip. Maybe they should be up a little higher, right? These really small things”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was fascinating. So I've been fascinated thinking about it since you guys talked about it. It was a long time ago. I listened to it probably three to four weeks ago and I've kind of been like. Obsessing about it ever since”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But even so, if we go human max force, or Jordan Borough's double max force, right? That's the highest we get. And then we go down from there. Even within that, it's like sometimes I can shoot a single leg with a maximum force of, we'll just say we'll say 20, this is a number, right? I don't know, shoot at 20 because I feel sometimes I shoot at 15, sometimes I shoot at 12, right? You feel something in your opponent that makes you do it differently. So they would have to learn how, and then all these different things. And sometimes maybe I clamp a little harder. So the robot would have to learn all these different incoming inputs to the system and then create this reaction.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can shoot at a different angles. I can shoot with different amounts of force, right? I can shoot with my head up versus my head. I mean, right? All these things are going to matter. If we're talking about a human being defending the single leg, all of those things are going to matter. And that's where human beings are who wrestle are calculating those things subconsciously. They're obviously not consciously calculating in their head, oh, the forces coming at me at this. So I need to do that, right? They're just doing it.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's why when you and John were talking about the grappling robot, I mean, the one thing I was obsessing about in my head is that With the chess, right? If a chess piece moves, right? The horse can move like an L, right? It can only move like an L. It doesn't matter if it moves at two meters per second or seven meters per second. It can only move there, right? Whereas like a single leg. I can shoot a single leg with many different velocities”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But what about when you look at the Boston Dynamics show? Sometimes they have trouble with jumping and balancing into other stuff. So are they doing that same program or no?”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Made it to the light because you thought they're gonna be good and they failed and they sucked. And then, you know, to the point where like my senior year. I got to this point where the people, and they were just figures, figures would wrestle in my head about positions I was thinking about. I wouldn't tell them what to do. They would just go in my head. And then that's it. That just happened. That's the move. And then I'd go try to practice. And sure enough. Boom, that's the move”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's just like obsession with the sport or wrestling and positions where I actually think sometimes think I didn't have smartphones because I may have been distracted by my smartphone. Maybe I wouldn't have been so obsessed, but maybe. But, you know, some days I couldn't finish the single leg on this specific person or maybe they were finishing on me. go home and I was just fucking obsessed about that one position like okay how do what what am I missing here and and not just accepting like that whatever the coach says the answer but like what am I missing what ways can my body move that no one's told me it can move yet where can my arms go right where can I do all these things and so I would just obsess about these things and then you know sometimes you come in the next day and you say oh well maybe this you know and maybe it works maybe it doesn't maybe it works twice and it doesn't work the next time and so you kind of like have this creative process and it's like you know there's a lot of things that are on the cutting room floor that never”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And exploring something new and thinking about hey, wrestling's been happening at a relatively high level for, we'll say, 80 to 90 years in America. And there's still new things being developed. And so when you see something new, you're like, oh, damn, like that's great. Or like Jason Nolf may have to win Dixie. I'm like, how did I not think of that shit? Why did I think of that so easy? I should have thought of that, you know?”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think looking retroactively, there was no intention to start when I was in high school with those kids. But I think that's kind of like. What was happening So, what I would really say is I had one influential coach named Mike Ironman, great guy. But then the second thing was it was just out of necessity. I had this burning desire to be the best. And when I was getting my ass kicked every day in the room, because Tyran was there, we had All-American 157. We had All-American 184. So I wasn't having a ton of success. Very quickly, I realized from like a more traditional athletic perspective, strength and speed, I couldn't keep up with anyone. I was way worse. So it's like, okay, fuck. How do I do this? You know, I want to do this. How do I do this? There's got to be a way. So Mike Iran showed me a couple things, but then it was just like this creative expansion for the next, you know, say three to five years. And then even now it's like, I don't know, there's something, and maybe you feel this way about Judo or there's something that's like fun about the way the body moves and works.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All it is is seeing your failures, acknowledging them, and then figuring out what you need to work on, right? If we take all the emotion out of it, that's what it is. So I wrestled 50 matches as a redshirt freshman, which is incredibly rare. I had 10 losses. So it's not like not so great guys, you know? So my skill level still at that point was not that great. And then the next year I came out and I made the NCAF finals. I made a gigantic jump in that red shirt year to the real freshman year.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Freshman area. So, yeah, so then I still, I started having a lot of success statewise, but not nationally. It's my national success to income to like my junior year in high school. But yeah, I was like grinding and getting better the whole time. And then senior year, I started having a lot of success nationally and I got recruited. But then even in my freshman year of college, this is where I love competing, I would go every weekend because I knew if you take the emotions out of competition.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was actually a nose tackle. And I was, but at that point, so okay, so I was also the other thing I kind of left over I was really fat growing up at sixth grade. I also decided, okay, I'm really fat. And if I want to be competitive wrestling, I shouldn't be fat because weight matters. I went from 130 pounds to 100 pounds in sixth grade. So by the time I was a freshman, I was 119. So I still wasn't as heavy as I was in sixth grade. So I was pretty small too, but I was also slow, unfortunately. So they put me in nose tackle. I'd like to competitiveness, so I was decent at it.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yeah, I did that, and no one told me. So I get frustrated because now we have just in my academy, we probably have 50, 60 high school kids only that are year-round, they're year-round. Maybe they're not consistent in the summer or whatever, but they're there. So when they don't have a great partner, they start whining. It's like, you little bitches. Some days I get really mad about it. It's like, I had no partners. I had to find freaking two partners come twice a week. You guys, there's still 22 people in the room. I'm sorry there's not the perfect partner for you, but like go work out with that dude. Know, yeah.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's like I would let them get as close as they could as I thought they could do a takedown before not getting it and then try to like escape or get out so obviously if I let them get really close sometimes they get it you know so they're they're enjoying it I don't know if they ever knew I was doing this right I have no idea and that was kind of like the start because I had to figure my way out of bad positions because I had to try to make it entertaining for them where they still got something out of it and they wanted to come back the next week. And I also got something out of it.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But probably my freshman, sophomore, junior year, I found two kids who were really consistent who would come out like you would come out on it, he'd come out on Tuesday and this dude would come out on a Wednesday, right? And they would come every week and they were really consistent partners for me to have in the summer, but they weren't nearly as good as me. They were way worse. So it's like, okay, how do I make this kind of like fun and compelling for them to be coming back? If I whoop their ass, they're not going to come back.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, actually, I think you'll enjoy this. I think the start of my scrambling was kind of based around that. So I got kind of, I think it's probably my freshman software. I'm kind of the years are a little fuzzy”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you fist it. So sixth grade, I placed it like the local U state tournament, you know. So I'm like having more success. Seventh grade was the first year I won the youth state tournament. So I'm getting better. Eighth grade, I actually feel like I got pretty good. But when I went to the national tournaments, I was still having really minimal success. Freshman year, I decided to quit football, same reason. It's like, well, I need to put more time into this. My parents, my dad luckily got a mat in my basement. So, you know, there's no, so we have a year-round club, and our impetus was that we didn't have this opportunity to go to a club year-round. So we had a mat in my basement. I had to go find, hey, you want to come wrestle? Well, yeah, to find partners for myself.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I don't know what inspired me. I'm not sure. So age 11, fifth grade, I quit. So then I started having more success where I'm like, say, placing at the state tournament.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I want to try to also inspire that. I mean, honestly, I think. I think as a coach, that's probably my biggest job is to get a kid and get them to believe I can do this. Because if I can do this, I can do that I can do that too, right? And there's so many kids who, unfortunately, have shitty parents or bad teachers that tell them, you suck, you can't be anything, right? So I think my biggest goal as a coach is to get someone to believe they can do it. So actually some of the ones that believe they can do it, they're the most fun, but they're not the ones who need it the most, right? The ones who think they can are the ones that need me the most. They need someone to let's go.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so at least I don't know what it was for you, but in America at my age, you usually played like a sport every season, right? So that's what I did in the beginning. I had minimal success in wrestling. I was kind of chunky. And then in fifth grade, and I can't tell you, I want to be better. And I told my parents, and this is funny because now I look at other 11-year-olds and very few of them are this mature. And I actually think emotional maturity is kind of one of the key indicators of how long-term success someone's going to be. At age 11, I said, I don't want to play baseball. I like baseball, but I don't want to play baseball because I want to wrestle more because I want to get better at wrestling. So age 11, I quit baseball so I could wrestle in a club for March, April, and May. Because that was all that existed at that point in time. You couldn't wrestle in June, July, or any of those other months.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So even when I didn't lose in collegiate competition, I would go in the summers and try to make the world team. So I would lose some, not a lot, right? Minimally. Okay, so when I'm five, I start playing all sports. I know you moved to America at what age.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like the Gracie Challenge. Yes, yeah. And so then maybe you have like. Know for most people, you have someone edit like the 90 seconds of the most fun things that happen, and then you can watch the entire 30 minutes if you want to. I think most people, if they're not really, really elite, I'm probably going to pin them. If they're not really elite. So, yeah, but I don't know. That's something I've been thinking. And obviously, it plays in my skill sets because my cardio is good and my pinning is good also. So, yeah”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I figured I would rack up like 20 pins against bums, you know, or not as great people in the beginning. And then I would start bringing in better people because they would be enticed by, you know, $20,000, the possibility to win”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if they were working that hard, then they might exhaust themselves. And obviously, then if you're being that dynamic, then you're adding risk to yourself too because you're doing that.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is even better, right? Because the gap is growing, so we don't necessarily, if we get tired, that's fine. If they get more tired, that's better. So I think most people would know that. So they would kind of slow it down. But yeah, I think, I mean, I've wrestled 30 minute goes. I've wrestled hour long goes. You're not going to get so tired. You're going to fall over in that time period. But at some point, if it's unlimited, someone will get so tired or dehydrated that they're just going to freaking fall over.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you just can't have a gigantic amount of action for 30 minutes. So I relate it because some of my kids weren't teaching them wrestling. They're like, well, but I can't do that for seven minutes. And I'm like, well, you know, say if I had you do hang cleans at a relatively heavy weight as hard as you could, you're not going to last seven minutes. Your pace will slow down, right? So, my thing is, well, your pace doesn't have to step here because I'm wrestling, you're competing at someone. So, if you're here at 100 and you go to 80, but they go to 70, that's great. And now you go to 60, but they go to 40.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, because then it's just a cardio thing, because at some point, then someone would just have to fall dead, right? There's no more skill level involved. It's just who could stand up the longest?”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, I went to zebra, like, that's ridiculous. He should very clearly win because he almost submitted him. You know what I'm saying? And I realized the difficulty. I realized the difficulty in rewarding near submissions, but that is the most valuable thing is getting close to finishing the match. And in most competitions, they don't actually reward that.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I don't think that's very fair because if someone whoops your ass, they whip your ass, and so I think the reason why jujitsu people accept that rule set is that I don't think, I think they know this but would admit it, I don't think their point scoring system adequately rewards what people value. So like in wrestling. Value takedowns because it gets closer to the pin, and the most valuable scoring is a near fault near to the pin because that's the ultimate goal of sport. Whereas in jiu-jitsu, for example, like if I were to get a takedown, so like if I went to Gordon Ryan and he just didn't pull guard, I would probably get the takedown. Now, if somehow he didn't submit me, which he probably would, right? But say he got close to like 12 submissions. But somehow I slipped out of all of them.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They will both beat me on points very badly. Now, David Taylor, he might pin me because he's a very good pinner, also. They'll beat me very badly. They will not pin me. But now we get to overtime and we get to pick like, right? So in Ibravo, you get rear-negged choke or an armbar. Okay, give me a cradle. I'll probably pin them. Okay, a good cradle. You can say cradle or maybe give them, they're probably not going to pin me, right? Maybe there's a chance, but probably not, because that's not their special case.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we go 10 me and Joe Bros. He's gonna outscore me significantly, but he will not pin me. I promise you that. Okay. So now we go to the overtime.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, like, if Jordan Burrows whoops my ass and the score is 16 2, but he can't pin me, then I get to go to overtime and get a cradle on him. I'm probably going to pin him. So I'm better than Jordan Burroughs. Nah, that ain't right. He just whipped my ass. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, If we can go the whole, because they do submission only. So if Jordan Burrows beats me up for, what is it, eight minutes, 10 minutes? I don't know, what's the length of an Eddie Bravo match? Something like that.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think he could Jordan Burrows could beat me, but he can't pin me. He was never a pinner. Got to pay me. There's only a few people who have the skill level to do so, right? It takes a lot because that was so pinning was one of my specialties, the fourth most of all time, and I won the Pinning Award the last two years. This is actually one of the issues I have with Jiu Jitsu and the point system and the Eddie Bravo thing. I actually think Eddie Bravo thing is kind of people will get so mad at me. Sorry, Jiu Jitsu. I think it's bullshit. And you want me to tell you why it's bullshit?”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really think there's probably only a couple people that could pin me. So I would either just not choose those people or wait till I get a really large audience and people get really excited. In that case, I'm making a lot of money.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Wisconsin. I have to select you. I'll start with a thousand bucks, right? Okay, 30 minutes. You pin me or I pin you. That's it. No points, no nothing. We just wrestle. Camera, that's it, right? Camera in the room. Maybe there's a refree because we don't want there to be contention over the pen. Just one pen, 30 minutes, 30 minutes, okay? If I pin you, you don't get shit. You go home, right? Every person I pin, it goes up by $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, and so on. If you make it the distance, and I don't pin you and you don't pin me, I'll pay for your travel and give you $500. Just a constellation prize for showing up. If you pin me, you get whatever the jackpot is.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've thought about this is the one thing I've thought about doing because I told you about my buddy was the content thing. It's called Rockfin. I thought about doing, you know, the old, really famous Gracie challenge. Okay, so I thought about doing the Ascreen Challenge. You want to hear my rule set?”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so much fun. And I don't get to do that very much. So, if you said, Ben, would you love to do some matches? And the answer is, yeah, the problem, unfortunately, for me, and maybe you can talk me off a ledge here, is like, because of where I've gotten to my career, if I choose to do a wrestling match, people are going to be really excited about it. It's going to pull up. And it's like, Want to wrestle just to wrestle. I'd rather just like go in a room where no one can watch and just wrestle and just enjoy it.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so. So here's my thing with the wrestling matches is like. Just for fun, if you said, Hey, Ben, just for fun. Would you love to go wrestle someone? Yeah, I would. I would, right? I love wrestling. I get in there. You know, I love like, so one of my guys has gotten to be pretty good. He's in a key guy named Keegan O'Toul. He just wanted junior world title this year. And so when I'm doing private lessons, I have such a thing about the development of the athlete. Sometimes I can wrestle hard, but most of the time it's like I'm just going to help them with whatever they need help with. And it's still wrestling and it's fun, but it's helping them. You know, for like for Keaton Kosak this summer and he's trained for the general title. So to be able to just shake hands sometimes and say like, how much try to kick your ass? You try to kick my ass. You know, like just to go like.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He can't change history, right? So once something happens, you got to accept for what it is and move forward and obviously hope you can continue to keep accomplishing great things, which for me, obviously my athletic career is over. So now it's going to be through my wrestling academies and who knows what else I get into.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would I have fought him? I don't think so. I mean, so he was still the champion when I came into UFC, and we said, no, we were not going to fight.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tyron was the champion for a long time there. So I was on Tyron was a champion, Anthony was a champion at Lightweight. I was the same gym as him, and we had a lot of people coming through. Yeah”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They all had a lot of Yeah, I mean, there's obviously certain guys, there's a lot of guys I've trained with that I had a lot of really good results against.”
2021-11-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #242 – Ben Askren: Wrestling and MMA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source