Bellator welterweight champ Ben Askren says he'll retire before he's mastered MMA

Of all the current Bellator champions, welterweight Ben Askren might be the least perturbed about the long layoffs typical for the promotion's beltholders. They give him a chance to get better.

"When I won a Bellator tournament, I was only a year and four months into my fighting career, maybe," Askren last week told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "My outlook was, OK, now I get all this time to actually get good at this."

Askren (10-0 MMA, 7-0 BFC), who is expected in January to defend his title against Karl Amoussou (16-4-2 MMA, 4-1 BFC), isn't selling anybody on the notion that he's a complete fighter. And he won't even come close to being one by the time he retires from MMA.

In his earlier life as an amateur wrestler, Askren estimated he would retire from active competition at age 30. With a little less than two years until that milestone, he's been forced to revise his timetable. But his expectations on what is possible for him to achieve skill-wise in his new sport are fairly set.

"I've been with (trainer) Duke (Roufus) for one year now," he said. "I'm not under the delusion that I'm going to become a world-class striker in a year. That's crazy. If anybody thinks they can actually do that, they're an idiot.

"If you read a lot of the psychology research, they say to become a world-class competitor in something, it takes 10 years, roughly. So, I haven't got 10 years. I'll be plenty well retired from fighting by the time I hit 10 years in fighting."

The good news for Askren is that he's already a world-class competitor in one thing: wrestling. He's used his mat skills to dominate opponents with far more MMA experience, and he's won a title in a major MMA promotion. His style hasn't one him many fans, but he said he's long ago stopped caring about critics.

"I don't expect them to appreciate it," he said. "I would say the majority of MMA fans don't have a great technical knowledge base, and really, what they want to see is people snapping arms, or people knocking people out. There's no appreciation for the finer points of jiu-jitsu or wrestling. But I'm OK with that. It's not like I feel the need to change it or think I actually can."

Despite his admitted weak spot, Askren said he has come farther than many might give him credit for when it comes to the striking aspect of MMA. He pointed to his first title defense against Jay Hieron and said he outstruck the veteran fighter. He said he might have finished a title-winning fight with Lyman Good had he possessed more fight knowledge.

Luckily for him, though, none of his opponents have had his level of mastery on the mat.

"Most people aren't very good at MMA," Askren said. "I look at it from the perspective that I'm ranked, whatever, ninth to 15th in the world right now (in MMA). In wrestling, if I were to wrestle today, I probably wouldn't be in the top-50. But I'm a way better pure wrestler than an MMA fighter."

Askren, of course, would like to fight more often and said he's looking forward to fighting on Spike TV when Bellator's deal with the cable channel takes effect next year. He might not be able to promise fans will see an entirely new fighter, but maybe one a little sharper around the edges.

"It's more about making me the best mixed martial artist I can be, as opposed to trying to gameplan," he said. "I'm three years into my fighting career. Why am I going to be gameplanning for somebody? I need to be good.

"Am I going out there looking for the knockout ever? Probably not. I doubt I'll ever do that. I'm smart enough to stick with what I do well. I know I wrestle and use my offensive jiu-jitsu better than almost anyone in MMA. So I'm going to stick to my guns."

http://mmajunkie.com/news/30502/bellator-welterweight-champ-ben-askren-says-hell-retire-before-hes-mastered-mma.mma

I wished he would've figured that out 10 fights ago.