On his 41st birthday, Ben Askren begged to go home from the hospital to celebrate.
That wasn’t going to happen. Askren was fortunate even to be having a birthday. He couldn’t stand or eat on his own.
The high school and college wrestling gold medalist from Hartland, a former Olympian and Bellator MMA champion, was 2 ½ weeks removed from a double lung transplant.
But now 12 months have passed and everything is different in Askren’s world. Absolutely everything.
“My perception on mortality and life has been changed significantly in the last year,” Askren said July 17. “And I’m just like, I can go wrestle.
“I know there’s some of these guys’ lives, and they’re worried about winning and losing tomorrow. I get to wrestle. … That’s it for me. I am so happy.”
What has long been a calling for Askren now is a blessing.
He gets to wrestle July 18.
That would have sounded preposterous not long ago.
But less than 15 months from grudgingly entering Froedtert Hospital with pneumonia and one year and 16 days from waking up from a weeks-long coma, Askren was contemplating one more match – his final match – essentially in his hometown, in a fledgling professional freestyle league like the ones he had hoped to bring to life. And on his 42nd birthday, no less.
Askren was set to face Belal Muhammad in the co-main event in RAF 11 at the UWM Panther Arena.
The 7,000-plus tickets for the event sold out, CEO Chad Bronstein said, making the crowd the largest for Real American Freestyle since it was launched not long before Askren fell ill.
“They sent me a list of possible dates and July 18 in Milwaukee was one of those possible dates,” Askren said. “Something spoke to me and said, hey, you should be out there and wrestle.”
Had RAF been around 20 years earlier, Askren almost certainly would not have gone into mixed martial arts, he said, but there were no options to make a living in wrestling, at least the unscripted kind.
The production of Real American Freestyle has some of the feel of other combat sports, with posturing and bluster between some of the competitors away from the ring, octagon or mat. There is considerable crossover at the moment with the athletes competing in both UFC and RAF events, such as Muhammad and RAF 11 headliners Colby Covington and Arman Tsarukyan.
Bronstein, who was among the founders along with late WWE superstar Hulk Hogan, said he believes there is room in the combat sports space for WWE, UFC and RAF to thrive and benefit one another. RAF’s goal is to provide professional opportunities for freestyle wrestlers to continue in their natural form of competition and help the sport escape the niche label.
The Milwaukee card included three other wrestlers from Wisconsin, Keegan O’Toole, a four-time WIAA champion at Arrowhead, a two-time NCAA champion at Missouri and a student of Askren’s; Mizzou rising junior and Milton native Aeoden Sinclair; and University of Wisconsin associate head coach Tony Cassioppi, who grew up in Illinois and competed for Iowa.
But seeing Askren on the mat again is in the running for the sport’s feel-good story of 2026.
After the news conference the day before the matches, Askren spoke at length about his road back.
He had no idea of how ill he was, he said, when he went to the hospital May 28, 2025, at the behest of his wife, Amy. Askren did not respond to treatment, Amy shared with fans while he was hospitalized, and she offered the update June 30, saying he’d received the transplant. Askren finally woke July 2.
“The early days were fuzzy,” he said, “but I remember at some point it was like, hey, I want to go home on my birthday. … I badgered the nurses and the doctors, hey, what do I need to go home? I was at Froedtert. So right down the road, it’s 15 miles. I’m like, we’ll come right back, I promise.
“But I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stand up myself under my own power, even with a walker. I couldn’t use the restroom myself. So it was just like, you’re going to be a burden on your friends and family.”
Askren actually did get sprung early, leaving with a chest tub and drainage bag. But infection set in and a few days later he was forced to return until mid-August. He got rid of his walker around Sept. 1.
At that point, wrestling was as far from Askren’s mind as it had ever been.
“It was like, hey, I want to be able to make my own food,” Askren said. “I don’t want to be such a burden on my wife, because we have three small kids. I was harping on them to be able to take care of themselves because I literally couldn’t get out of the couch to go make my own food or I’d have to get help off the toilet or whatever it was.”
His goals were small, but the progress came.
“We have this little metal thing around our staircase and I remember a couple days [thinking], like, OK, I’m gonna grab that, and my goal is to make it around there three times,” Askren said. “We’re probably talking 100 feet of walking or something like that.”
Askren was in the gym before the holidays but insisted he did not seriously contemplate wrestling again until Bronstein and coach and matchmaker Izzy Martinez, RAF’s chief operating officer, floated the possible Milwaukee date. At that point, it was on.
Askren is far from his peak but also looks a lot more like a professional combat sports athlete than someone who was clinging to life a year ago.
“There’s many people on a daily basis in the world who go through not taking the chance that they should take because they’re worried about their pride, they’re worried about their ego and they say, oh, if I do that and I lose, everyone’s going to say this or that about me,” Askren said.
“I think so many people would be so much happier looking at life if they just followed the path that they want to and not worry about what the comments on social media are going to be or what people in the community thought of them and just go live your life and do the things you want to do.”
Muhammad, a Chicagoan who trained with Askren at Roufusport in Milwaukee, said he was honored he could be part of Askren’s story, even if it presumably meant getting booed, win or lose.
“It’s inspiring the world, and it’s showing the world a passion you have for something, nobody can stop you from going for it,” Muhammad said. “I’m sure a million doctors, a million people are telling him not to do it, but this is what he loved. This is what he’s grown into.
“He’s built different. Wrestlers are built different. Fighters are built different.”
Askren is different from who he was before his ordeal.
What could possibly change a person’s perspective more than being given a gift like he was last year?
Organ recipients and donors or their families can be put in contact if both desire. Askren hasn’t heard if that will happen in his case, but regardless, he’ll never forget how he got his life back because a stranger lost theirs.
“I would hope that their family knows that I’m making the best out of it and that they can take some solace in that, ” Askren said, his voice quivering, “as much solace as you could take in the passing of someone who’s that close to you.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: He nearly died a year ago. Now Ben Askren gets one more chance to wrestle
Reporting by Dave Kallmann, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Dave Kallmann, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
