#91 with Ben Askren - The UFC Star Turned Crypto Investor

**Shaan Puri** (0:01)
What's up, everyone?
This is a special episode with Ben Askren. If you don't know who Ben Askren is, he is one of the most famous MMA fighters in the world. He was an Olympic wrestler, he was in the UFC.
He's got his own podcast, his own, doing a whole bunch of stuff, stuff about launching a course, doing some cool stuff. He's one of the more interesting guys to talk to. He got famous because he was great in kind of his interviews during the UFC. And so me and Sam were big MMA and UFC nerds, and we love this stuff. So we were pumped. You can probably hear it in our voice during the interview. We were pumped for this one.
I got up early, I did some research, I showered. I was excited for this. We've had billionaires on here, but I was way more excited to talk to Ben Askren. And so hope you guys enjoy. We talk a little bit about dealing with fear. I mean, these guys, they walk out in their underwear to fight another person who they've been talking trash to for the last two months with millions of dollars on the line, millions of people watching in a stadium full of people, just watching them sort of hand-to-hand combat. So it's an incredibly intense pressure that very few people get to experience. So we asked Ben about how did he deal with fear? How did he get good at the act of competition?
What is he doing post-career? Like what does an athlete do? How do they leverage their brand to build a business afterwards?
And then he's also kind of active in the crypto space. So we talked a little bit about cryptocurrencies at the very end, but hope you guys enjoy this interview. Anytime we just get a cool guest on who is somebody who's, they're kind of world class at whatever they do, we're gonna jump on that opportunity. So this is no different. Enjoy this episode with Ben Askren.

**Sam Parr** (1:39)
Guys, we have Ben Askren today. If you're a UFC fan, which Shaan and I both are, and Abreu is as well, then you absolutely know who he is. But if you're not a fan, I'm gonna give background here. So Ben, you went to the Olympics, right?

**Ben Askren** (1:53)
Yep, 2008

**Sam Parr** (1:54)
So Ben was an Olympic wrestler.
He was famous in my home state of Missouri as a wrestler. Even when I was in high school, everyone talked about the Askren family and them being wrestlers. And he eventually went to a variety of different, I guess you could describe them to non-UFC fans, leagues in Asia, championships, I think Bellator as well.

**Ben Askren** (2:16)
Yeah, so I fought mainly, well, I fought my first three fights in small promotions. Then I fought in Bellator for four years, and then I fought in one championship for four years.
I retired at the end of my run with one championship, and then I unretired when I got traded at UFC.

**Sam Parr** (2:30)
Yeah, so we came to the UFC about two years ago, and it was a big deal. Ben was on Joe Rogan, and everyone said that this was the guy that wasn't in the UFC, and he was the best guy that wasn't in the UFC, and why the hell isn't he in the UFC? And so we came to the UFC and caused a whole bunch of ruckus, which we'll get into.
And he's also kind of like a big deal in the crypto space, and he's kind of like a big deal in like stoicism. He's just kind of like a weird, interesting person.
And I met Ben about six or something months ago on Twitter. We just became buddies on Twitter, and we started talking, and Ben is thinking about launching a course, and I've just been giving him feedback. And we've just been shooting the shit, and we just said, you know, Ben, come on the podcast. So that's kind of how we kind of got to where we are.

**Ben Askren** (3:15)
Yeah, so yeah, my life has been interesting. I've done a lot of things besides fighting. I have a lot going on right now, podcasting. My brother and I own five wrestling academies.
We own a couple of the buildings.
So I've got my hand in a wide variety of things. I'm really interested in social media, content creation, that type of thing. Really, really interests me a lot. And obviously, I got interested in business later. I took zero business classes, but obviously when I decided to start a business in 2011 with AWA, I got more interested. And now it's became like a fascination to me. And you know, actually, I tell my wife, so when I was younger, I would literally work out every single day. And if I went on vacation and I didn't have my workout, I'd start getting a little nutty. And she'd be like, bro, you need to go work out. Leave, go do something. And now, it's kind of the opposite, like this obsession over business and finance, because I feel like I've, you know, 12 years, 15 years late to the party because I didn't do any of it in college. And so I feel like now I'm just trying to rapidly absorb as much as I can to understand more and more about business, finance, and the ways the world really works.