Funky: My Defiant Path Through the Wild World of Combat Sports

by Ben Askren

before I could wrestle again in high school. I was forced to live with it one way or another, and much of that time was spent interchangeably between states of depression and resolve. I thought I had made a gigantic amount of progress, and I thought I was getting to the point where I’d make some waves nationally, yet I wasn’t even close.

nationals in Fargo that year that would change the way I approached competition forever. My coach on Team Wisconsin, Terry Steiner, gave me a talk after that poor showing

didn’t know I had it until I had it. But he seemed to identify immediately what would come to eat at me for the next few months, which was actually very simple: I hadn’t performed my optimal best, because I was overcome by the moment. He told me that I had made the big match different—that I gave it additional gravity. As I reflected on it, I knew he was right. I got there and I thought, Oh my god, this is Fargo, the national tournament; I’ve been hearing about this for years! If you win here you usually get a college scholarship.

champ, and that guy’s a state champ. You’re in brackets with a hundred people, far bigger than anything you’ve experienced before, and your eyes get big. There are all these possibilities and all these heightened thoughts, and frankly, well...what I came to realize is, when thinking it over, it’s all bullshit. Coach Steiner pounded home that point specifically, and it was a game changer for me. I had all that stuff swimming around in my head, and it was completely irrelevant. Yeah, the kids were pretty good. So what? Should I have gotten killed by them? Hell no.

vowed not to let that happen again. I got back at it in the weeks after the tournament, this time in pursuit of the even keel. I kept grinding and began consciously downplaying big moments in my head, blocking any mental obstacles as I envisioned the setups. The idea I worked on was what Coach Steiner told me—one match is no different from the next, and one tournament no different than the other. Treat everything the same. That lesson stayed with me as I entered

truth be told—as an antagonist. That winter I discovered online high school message board forums and was immediately drawn to them. There was something about the anonymous interaction that pulled me in, specifically when I was at the center of the conversation. Wrestling consisted of the regionals, the sectionals, and the state tournament. I would spend a lot of time before these reading adults literally spew vitriol about me. It was fascinating. I returned fire on there often and soon discovered that I enjoyed stirring the pot. This was a development. The idea that you can work people so easily was something I was fascinated by, and,

was drawn to the art of trolling. Part of the hate I was receiving came down to my style and how I carried myself on the mats. I’d set some personal goals before the season that I was hell-bent on realizing. In fact, I was hell-bent on smashing them. The all-time high school record for takedowns in Wisconsin was set at a fairly respectable 235. I shattered the record by scoring 371. All I did was take people down and let them up, take them down and let them up, over and over and over. I was highly skilled and found myself going against kids with a much lower skill level, and I was essentially just torturing them. When

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alerting me at the sectionals tournament that there were all these people talking shit about me on the forum. I had lost badly to a kid named Spencer Dominguez9 as a freshman, and we developed a rivalry when I won the rematch fairly decisively in a dual meet earlier in the year. There was another kid at the same time, a senior named Trevor Spencer, who attended Baraboo and was undefeated. That gave people all the ammunition they needed. All over the

these people—I’m going to kill these guys. I would tell these people with their silly pseudonyms as much online, but I understood it wouldn’t mean anything until I went out and did it. I knew I carried the ultimate trump card: it was me in there that had final say, as I was the one competing. It was an extension of my control to lead the peanut gallery—in this case, full-grown adults—to their disappointments.

match in the state quarters, 12–11. Then I faced the other Spencer—Trevor—in the state finals, and I straight-up tortured him. I won 21–8 to win the state title at 130 pounds, the exact same

couldn’t be denied. Performance anxiety? Not this time. I was already well into sports psychology, and this time I had my mindset dialed in the right way. That was me coming into my own. I’d come up big in a big event. I didn’t just compete well, I killed off any residual traces of self-sabotage, and that’s what gave me the biggest sense of accomplishment. I was crisp, clean, and ready to compete. After I beat Trevor Spencer, I did what I’d been dying to do—I went on the forums and taunted everybody. It was one of the sweetest

I somehow convinced my parents to send me to the Olympic Trials in Dallas...by myself. This was in the year 2000, and USA Wrestling was running a camp alongside the open trials, and I felt I had to be there. Within reason, my parents were generally hands-off. They kind of let me do my thing without too much meddling, but this was a big ask. I remember how thrilled I was when they gave it the green light.

on my own. I had never flown on an airplane by myself or stayed in a hotel room by myself. This was an adventure. I was saddled with a roommate in Dallas, but we weren’t all that monitored by adults, and—to my surprise—there weren’t any chaperones.

all I wanted to do was immerse myself in the wrestling scene. I went to the camp and loved every minute of it. I went to that tournament and absorbed it like I had nothing before in my life. It’s funny, but, at that point, I’d never watched an NCAA tournament or championship. I’d never watched the Big Ten, and in fact, I’d never even seen a Division I dual meet. I had never seen such a high level of wrestling in person, and catching my first big glimpse affected me tremendously.

in Dallas, Texas, at just fifteen years old and without any real supervision—that I set my goal of becoming an Olympian. It wasn’t a pipe dream to me, because I believed so much in my resolve. Even if I wasn’t as talented as other kids or gifted with perfect genes and athleticism—which I was absolutely not11—I had a counter. I could outwork anybody. I would outwork anybody. I could push myself harder than

more work. This showed up in the meets, as I could wear opponents down and break them in the end. From that moment on, the Olympics became the goal. Doing the math, I thought

Athens, so I’d aim for the 2008 Summer Games. Watching that tournament in Dallas made me realize just how badly I wanted to do it. I’d never had a goal become such an obsession so quickly. My plan went like this: make the Olympic trials in 2004 and then make the Olympic team in 2008. Easy, right? Hell no, it was the hardest thing imaginable—but

Later that summer I went back to Fargo and placed fifth in Greco and went 5–2 in freestyle. I had performed far better than the first time through, but—against the best young talent in the nation—I still came up a little

by a nagging neck issue that affected me that whole summer. At some point during competition in my sophomore year of high school I kinked my neck in a match. I didn’t think anything of it and wrestled through it, but as time went on it became more and more painful. In Fargo it was a little more debilitating than it had been, which prompted my mom to set up a doctor’s appointment and then a session with a physical therapist when I got back to Milwaukee. Not really expecting anything terrible, I was blown away

looked at me gravely and said that I had the same injury that Green Bay tight end Mark Chmura had, which was a terrifying

Chmura had a herniation between the C5 and C6 discs in his spine, and—with the increased risk of paralysis now a factor—his football career was cut short because of it. The doctor told me that if I continued to wrestle I could become paralyzed, too, and therefore I shouldn’t wrestle anymore. Those words landed with a thud. Not wrestle? Hold up...paralyzed? Me? The kid w...

tendency to trivialize things like injuries and illnesses, especially when it feels as though somebody is overreacting. I don’t see things as all that serious unless I know they are. I never do. I had my finger snapped into an odd angle wrestling in Belarus years later and just kind of looked at it as if a lie were being told to me by my hand. My daughter, Alex, had a respiratory virus at six weeks old and had to go to the hospital for two days, which I guess makes it pretty serious, but the whole time I was like, whatever. She can’t blow her nose so she needs some snot sucked out, so what? I can’t help it! It’s just not my way to overreact. As alarming as it was to hear a

was defiance or that I thought myself invincible as a teenager, but that assessment struck me as not only overcautious but truly absurd. My parents didn’t seem all that worried about it. My mom forced me to see a physical therapist, but my dad—an old-school blue-collar type—just told me to tough it out. My high school coach, John Mesenbrink, wasn’t overly concerned about it, either. He told me to “get it stronger and let’s go get another state title next year.” It hindered me late in my sophomore year, but I ignored the doctor’s cautions and kept wrestling, with my only compromise being that I’d stop doing the Greco-Roman style that involves more throwing. As I went along through my junior year