Life after fighting long was on Ben Askren’s mind well before he retired.
Askren, a highly decorated collegiate wrestler and 2008 U.S. Olympic team member, ended his mixed martial arts career with the UFC, where he made waves and rose to stardom in just three octagon appearances.
Askren (19-2-1) retired from MMA in 2019 and secured one final big payout competing when he made $500,000 to box Jake Paul in 2021.
“I was an avid reader growing up, and I realized most athletes end up poor,” Askren said in the interview series “Dad Saves America.” “And this is true as a fighter, and obviously we don’t make as much money as an NBA or an NFL player, but you realize – like so in my last MMA fight, I made $300,000, right. But like for me to do that again, I don’t have an easy way to make that much money again.
“Whereas the fighting was like one fight, I show up, boom, check, there you go. But for these fighters, they get to this point where, OK, they say, ‘All right, I’m gonna retire. I’m done with training. My body’s beat up.’ So then they retire and then they realize like, wow, making that much money in the real world’s like really hard, and I didn’t save enough.”
Making that much money leads to a certain type of lifestyle, but Askren said the hard part is maintaining it. That’s why many retired athletes get lured back into competition, and 38-year-old Askren never wanted to end up in that predicament.
“I think that was something that was really on my mind as I fought, is I want to have something I want to do when I’m done, and I want to be financially stable enough where I’m never forced to fight again if I don’t want to,” Askren said. “I think that’s a place where a lot of fighters and athletes end up.”
