{"id":834147,"date":"2026-07-30T20:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T20:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834147\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T20:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T20:15:09","slug":"ben-askren-laughs-at-henry-cejudo-gassing-out-in-raf-loss-youve-got-to-get-in-there-and-train-a-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834147\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Askren laughs at Henry Cejudo gassing out in RAF loss: \u2018You\u2019ve got to get in there and train a little\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Askren and Henry Cejudo both suffered recent RAF defeats, but Askren feels like his fellow MMA champion let himself down.<\/p>\n

Askren and Cejudo are both retired from MMA, with Askren having last fought in 2019 and Cejudo in 2025, with Cejudo ending his career in an 0-4 slump after returning from a three-year hiatus. As impressive as Cejudo looked against Dvalishvili to start, Askren is disappointed he couldn\u2019t finish the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will say\u2014and I would say this to Henry, I haven\u2019t spoken to him\u2014but man, I had a lung transplant so I think I\u2019ve got an excuse for getting really tired, but my man got really tired,\u201d Askren said on The MightyCast<\/a> with Demetrious Johnson. \u201cHe needs to have a good excuse for that because he got so tired he was having a hard time standing on his feet in the third period.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final score of the Dvalishvili vs. Cejudo bout was 11-8, a disappointing finish for the Olympic gold medalist and former two-division UFC champion. That was Dvalishvili\u2019s second combat sports win over Cejudo after Dvalishvili also defeated him by decision at UFC 298 in 2024. They are set for a third meeting at RAF 12 on Aug. 22.<\/p>\n

Askren hopes that Cejudo is better prepared for a long contest after it looked like he expected to put Dvalishvili away quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you\u2019ve got to get a few sessions in,\u201d Askren said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to agree to wrestle, you\u2019ve got to get in there and train a little bit. He was as elite as it gets. I think, here\u2019s my guess, Henry says, \u2018I don\u2019t need to train. I\u2019m an Olympic champion. I\u2019m going to go put him away.\u2019 And he did, in fact, almost put him away.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe needed two more points and the match was over. I think he probably thought, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m going to get on top once,\u2019 because getting on top in freestyle, if you don\u2019t know freestyle, you\u2019re not going to turn anyway. But if you know freestyle and they don\u2019t know freestyle, you should just go boom boom boom boom boom and Henry turned him, I think, maybe three times and all he needed was one more turn and the match was over. So I think he probably thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to go get on top one time, I\u2019m going to boom boom boom, four turns, that\u2019s eight points, match is going to be over.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Askren, a two-time NCAA Division-I wrestling champion, knows firsthand how challenging RAF competition can be. He lost on points to Muhammad and afterwards admitted that fatigue was a huge factor. Though Askren has no plans to wrestle again, he wanted to clarify that his newly transplanted lungs were fine and his energy issues had more to do with an underprepared heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest thing to get back has been my cardio,\u201d Askren said. \u201cIt\u2019s funny because I actually misspoke because I was so tired. I said, \u2018My lungs hurt,\u2019 I meant to say my lungs don\u2019t hurt, it\u2019s my legs. My legs just fall off a cliff at some point. My best guess from my research on ChatGPT is that it\u2019s from something called \u2018heart deconditioning.\u2019 If you don\u2019t use your heart effectively, it gets weaker, right? It\u2019s a muscle and I couldn\u2019t use it, I couldn\u2019t make myself work hard for somewhere between six and eight months. It\u2019s getting better constantly, but it\u2019s taking a while.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Askren and Henry Cejudo both suffered recent RAF defeats, but Askren feels like his fellow MMA champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,214253,214254,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-834147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-raf-wrestling","tag-raf-wrestling-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}