Former Bellator MMA Welterweight champion Ben Askren has been in the news recently after commenting that he’d like to fight former UFC welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre inside the Octagon when the UFC returns to Montreal in 2019.
Askren retired from MMA last year after knocking out Shinya Aoki at the ONE Championship.
Shortly after his retirement fight, “Funky” immediately went on social media to implicitly call out UFC middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre.
Askren has long called for his chance to test himself against Georges St-Pierre. Moreover, Askren is offering a prediction of how the fight will happen, where he unsurprisingly sees himself as the winner.
“Here’s what I think happens, because the one thing I have over him is I have the wrestling advantage and I don’t get tired, and that’s usually what he’s relied on in the last, say, 10 to 12 fights or so,” Askren said on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour (via MMA Fighting). “I think he’s very tough to take down early. I think he’s very tough. I think he’s probably going to win the striking battle, but one of the things, I never take a lot of damage. I just don’t get hit a lot. That’s what I’m good at.”
He anticipates the showdown to happen sometime next year, around “May or June” of 2019, and he believes he would be able to wear St-Pierre down so badly, that he would end up winning the bout via late stoppage.
“And over the course of the second and third round, I start to wear him down, my takedowns become more effective,” he continued. “By the third and fourth round, I’ve started dominating with my top game. He’s used to being on top — he can’t get me off of the top. If he does get a momentary glimpse of hope, I’m back on him, no problem.
“And in the fifth round, he mentally breaks and he says, ‘I can’t do this anymore, I’ve never been in this position in my life,’ and he lets me finish him.”
“TKO. He just says, ‘I’m done with this sh-t.’”
To be clear the odds of this fight actually happening are slim as Askren’s bad blood with the UFC preventing him from competing inside the Octagon and St-Pierre would need to be medically cleared and recently turned down many potential names. Not long ago GSP praise upon the “extremely, extremely talented” Askren, but he doesn’t want him as nobody knows him.
