Askren knows he needs to improve punching

by Joe Hall – www.sherdog.com

Ben Askren delivered a dominant wrestling performance Thursday en route to winning the Bellator welterweight title. Now he wants to develop a striking game that would help him finish opponents like former champ Lyman Good, who battled him for the full 25 minutes.

“I’ve only been punching stuff for about a year. Literally,” said Askren, who wrestled in the 2008 Olympics. “I didn’t start boxing or hitting anything until September of 2009. I heard [Good’s] corner taunting me with, ‘He punches like a girl.’ Maybe I do now, but I ain’t always going to punch like a girl. There’s a lot of places that I can get better. I can punch harder. I can finish better on top.”

Askren repeatedly passed into mount, but he couldn’t put Good away. He tried an arm-triangle choke in the first that Good used to reverse position. Through the later rounds Askren chose to pepper his opponent from mount rather than risk losing position.

“It may not be the most exciting strategy, but it’s a solid strategy,” Askren said. “I was landing blows and staying busy.”

Read the entire article by Joe Hall (joeh@sherdog.com) from www.sherdog.com here…