How UFC Star Ben Askren Cheated Death - #1116

What It Covers

UFC veteran and wrestling champion Ben Askren describes surviving necrotizing pneumonia caused by a staph infection that destroyed his lungs, requiring a double lung transplant after 37 days unconscious and 73 days hospitalized. He covers recovery from 138 pounds, athletic resilience, reordering life priorities, rejecting legacy-focused thinking, and targeting the 39-year post-transplant survival record.

Key Questions Answered

• •Infection escalation awareness: A minor staph infection on Askren's elbow cleared visibly within days, but bacteria had already entered his bloodstream, triggering necrotizing pneumonia four days later — a condition where lung tissue dies from the inside out. Back pain was the only symptom. Anyone experiencing back pain following a recent skin infection, even a healed one, should flag the connection explicitly to a physician rather than treating symptoms in isolation.
• •ECMO survival odds: When Askren was airlifted back to Milwaukee's cardiovascular intensive care unit, doctors placed him on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) — a machine that oxygenates blood externally. Survival odds off ECMO are roughly 40%, meaning most patients who reach that intervention do not survive. Understanding this threshold matters: ECMO represents a last-resort bridge, not a standard treatment, and family members should request CVICU-level facilities immediately when standard hospital stabilization fails.
• •Post-transplant immunosuppression trade-off: Lung transplant recipients take permanent immunosuppressants like tacrolimus and prednisone to prevent organ rejection, but these drugs suppress the entire immune system, increasing infection risk and contributing to the median post-transplant life expectancy of only 6.5 years. Askren manages this by masking in crowded environments, avoiding uncontrolled spaces, and working with his medical team to gradually reduce drug levels as his body stabilizes over the 12-month post-surgery window.
• •Athletic identity as recovery infrastructure: Askren lost roughly 60 pounds of muscle mass during 37 days of unconsciousness and paralysis, dropping from approximately 185–195 pounds to 138 pounds. He rebuilt by applying the same incremental athletic discipline used in wrestling: setting micro-goals like walking eight minutes, then ten, then twelve, then adding bodyweight squats. Decades of structured training created a mental framework — show up even on bad days, do something rather than nothing — that transferred directly into medical rehabilitation.
• •Greatness and self-assessment: Askren surveyed every Division I NCAA wrestling champion over a 50-year window and found the most consistent response to "when did you go from good to great?" was that respondents rejected the premise entirely — they never considered themselves great. This pattern suggests that elite performance correlates with process-focus rather than identity-focus. Practically: measure daily improvement targets, not career status, and treat any sense of arrival as a signal to find a harder room.
• •Life prioritization after near-death: Following his recovery, Askren exited business investments that consumed time without generating genuine passion, even accepting below-market buyout terms to reclaim schedule control. His filtering question became: is this worth the time away from family? He reduced weekend travel for wrestling tournaments and increased direct coaching time. The framework is binary — either the activity ranks among the things he most wants to do with his remaining time, or he declines it regardless of financial or reputational upside.