Quotes from Ben Askren

I try to wrestle one time a week with good, solid people.

In wrestling, if you want to be the best wrestler, you show up at the U.S. Nationals. If you win that, you go to World Team Trials. You make the World Team, you go to the World Championships, and we all know who the best is at the end of the year.

I don't like all the cheating that's going in mixed martial arts. I don't know what percentage of high-level fighters do it, but I think it would be a significant amount.

There's no honor in faking an injury. There is no integrity, because you are lying about it.

I trained with Jorge Masvidal when I've been training MMA for 2-1/2 months in Coconut Creek, Fla., in, like, December 2008. I was beating him up then!

I've got more skills in my pinky finger than half the damn guys in the UFC.

If you can't play the good guy, sometimes you've got to play the villain.

Listen folks, if you want your son to grow up to be a man, don't have him run around on a field kicking a ball; get him wrestling.

If I'm coaching at my academy, and we were drilling the front headlock, we don't just say, 'OK, now go five-minute goes,' because how many tries are they gonna get at going at the front headlock position?

I have a great relationship with the whole Missouri athletic department. I made friends with everyone from the administrators to the janitors and everyone in between.

I'm not willing to compromise my goals for monetary value.

I'm not hugely monetarily motivated.

My main motivation is to prove I'm No. 1 in the world.

Squash - definitely a rich's person sport, and it's only played in a handful of countries.

I don't care about having a fancy car. I don't have a lot of the wants and needs that a lot of people have where I would need to make a $1 million a fight.

It's like, hey, I've done what I could do, I've accomplished a lot, and now this - especially with wrestling - if this next generation wants to pass me up, great job. Good for them.

While it may not have been the flashiest or the most creative, I brought a very unique skill set, and I executed in a fashion that very few have done before me and, I think, very few will do after me.

I'm just a straightforward kind of dude.

I don't think I could ever make 155. I made 163 for the Olympics, and that is a super low weight for me. I'm a fairly big person, and for me to make 163 was incredibly difficult.

It's just funny because I think a long time back I was not a fan favorite at all, and now people have followed my journey, have seen the struggle and the perseverance I've had, and they can relate to that.

People who are great at what they do, they do it the same way no matter who the opponent is.

There are conferences every year where all the major coaches get together, and they talk about the issues in wrestling, what's going to happen. There's a major governing body, U.S.A. Wrestling, which oversees a lot of the issues. The organization is there in wrestling to make a very well-balanced, organized system.

People are stubborn, and sometimes even if change is good, people will always oppose change.

Colby Covington has a very low IQ. He says a lot of stupid things, and it's almost embarrassing that he represents our country that way.