ONE World Welterweight Champion Ben “Funky” Askren is one of the most accomplished wrestlers who have made a seamless transition to mixed martial arts.
After going 12-0 in his MMA career and winning the Bellator Welterweight crown, the former two-time NCAA Division 1 wrestling champion headed east and signed with ONE Championship. He submitted Bakhtiyar Abbasov in his ONE Championship debut and became the second ONE World Welterweight Champion three months later in knocking out former champion Nobutatsu Suzuki in just a couple of minutes in Dubai.
Making his Manila debut last April 24, 2015 in ONE Valor of Champions, Askren was set to make his first title defense against Brazilian Jiujitsu specialist Luis “Sapo” Santos. Everything was going well in the bout up until an accidental eye poke by “Funky” resulted to the stoppage of the bout two minutes and 19 seconds into the bout much to the dismay of the Filipino audience in attendance.
“I owe the Filipino fans. The last time I was in Manila obviously the bout didn’t have the outcome anyone wanted and my opponent was a lot less than courageous in faking his eye injury,” the 31 year old American admitted. “The Filipino fans were unfairly robbed of a good fight. They lost the main event that night.”
On Friday, Askren will defend his crown once more in Manila against 25 year old Russian Nikolay Aleksakhin (17-3). The ONE champion though is not a tad worried about his opponent in saying, “You can look in my eyes, I’m honestly 100% not concerned about anything Nikolay [Aleksakhin] brings to the table.”
He added that he is a level higher than his opponent in all aspects of the game. “He’s not an elite striker. I face strikers who are twice as good as him on a daily basis at practice. He is not as good of a wrestler as me. Hell, I’ll let him take me down! He can take me down all he wants because once we get on the ground he’s in my world,” he added.
However, the pressure of making-up to the Filipino fans is what makes Askren worried. “I have to do an extra dominant job on April 15th to make sure the Filipino fans get a fight made up to them that they lost out on last year. I can’t wait to get to Manila this Tuesday and kick some butts!”
“I owe it to the fans and I will make sure I give them the best fight of the night!” he closed.
