In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet as part of the Insight With Chris Van Vliet podcast, retired UFC fighter Ben Askren discussed WWE’s attempts to recruit him as a college wrestler, how interested the company are in working with him, visiting the WWE Performance Center last year and more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
Ben Askren visited the WWE Performance Center in October: “I went down there in October. It was fun, they were really cool… I left with an open door there. I’m running my Askren Wrestling Academy business so I don’t think it’s something I would do full time but I would be interested in doing a little something with them. I really like them, everyone there was really cool and they run a really professional operation down there, it was awesome.”
He says Gerald Brisco tried to recruit him for WWE when he was a college wrestler: “There was this guy named Gerald Brisco, he would always come to the NCAA tournaments and actually you know the thing he used to always tell me? He would tell me like every single year, ‘Ben if you were over 200 pounds I could make you a million dollars’. And I said, ‘Gerry, I’m not going to be that big ever. So, sorry. And I want to wrestle in the Olympics. I’m just not that interested’. So actually when I was at the Performance Center, Gerald came over and we bulls****ted and he’s a great guy.”
The interview is available in full at this link.