Wrestling Blogs - Ben Askren

Wednesday 9:22am Moscow time 12:22 am Missouri time
Well I am back in Moscow and got get on the internet for a while and posted my first part of the blog on flowrestling.com. I could do without a lot of modern amenities, it doesn’t bother me that I haven’t been able to use my phone or the tv, but the lack of internet use really make me feel disconnected to the outside world. Also my lack of the Russian language is continuing to plague me, our translator got a sauna reserved for Jared and I this morning at 8. Well when we got there she kept telling us something in Russian and wouldn’t let us go in and we had no idea what she was saying or how to convince her to let us use the sauna, so we left. Monday I woke up and my knee was feeling funny, I presume I hurt it on Sunday during my match and didn’t notice so I had to cancel my drill at 11am, but went to the gym with Steve and Jared anyways. I figured they would have the mats to themselves but when we showed up at the facility there must have been 150 adult wrestlers there and they all wanted to get a piece of us. I had to tell 15 people I was hurt and wasn’t wrestling. Steve was getting rotated in on by everyone and their brother. You really get a feel for how important wrestling is over here. From the translator I got that none of these men have jobs and all live at home with their parents in hopes of one day making the Russian national team, in which case they will be financially set for life. To them it is there way out. Also the style of coaching was different, it really looked like an open gym. I got from the translator that all of these men have been wrestling for 10-15 years so the coaches think they know what they should be doing. The coaches spend all of their time with the younger ones. After that we headed over for another sauna(if you can’t tell, they are really popular in Russia. Today our guide wasn’t the normal stas whose bickering with Paulie was comic relief for us everyday, but today we got the notorious silver tooth. I really wish I had a picture with this guy so you could understand what we were working with. Silvertooth as we called him spoke no English, had one silver tooth, crosseyes and always a cigarette in his mouth. A smile never left his face and he was by far the best entertainment I had since I left the states. He kept trying to grab my hair and say Barushka, which means sheep ( I got that from Paulie.) Anyways it was kind of creeping me out, but he was so funny looking and then Steve and Jared kept egging him on and laughing so I couldn’t stop laughing either. So I was trying to keep silver tooth off my hair for like ten minutes. Then the second van we got on was really rancid smelling and I was trying to open the window to get air, then silver tooth would close it and shake his head at me. This kept up the entire ride, because he wouldn’t stop closing it after I opened it, so once again I was laughing until my stomach hurt. Then we stopped at a store to buy some gifts. The store had all kinds of cool stuff, Joe bought a really sweet looking dagger and I bought this sweet looking gremilinish doll for my buddy Mark Bader because he lets me park at his house all the time when I go to the airport. After we got back from the sauna Nate and Zach were just rolling out of bed, because they had yet to adjust from the time change. We got some dinner and played cards the rest of the night. Nate Gallick is one hell of a talker, but the dude can’t play cards. I think Steve and Zach ended up winning the spades tournament. I fell asleep again before 10pm. So I woke up at 6:30am, it was really weird being up at this time again, I haven’t regularly been up at this time ever!!! So I played on the comp a little bit before everyone woke up. Then once everyone was up we played some cards until it was time to leave for the airport. The terminal(yes that is singular) was about the size of my bedroom and very cold. Then we had to walk out to the airplane in the snow, at which time I saw the three legged dog and tried to take a picture for my story, but I got bum rushed immediately by three security guards. Apparently they are fiercely protective of their three legged dog. Well to complicate matters it was snowing, there was snow on the runway and the plane didn’t get de-iced, so the take off conditions weren’t ideal, but needless to say we made it to Moscow. We got to the hotel and went to eat with no translator, so it was an adventure. Zach ordered a pizza, it took so long to come out and he asked where it was. Well not less than a minute later it comes out and two minutes later another one comes out. I think they were taking advantage of our lack of Russian. Well that is all for now. We leave the hotel for kiev in an hour and we get to get on the mats this afternoon and meet up with the other guys. I don’t wrestle until Sunday, so hopefully you will hear more form me soon.

Thursday 8:01pm Kiev time 12:01 Missouri time
I just got back from a great sauna and a terrible dinner, that consisted of mush, stale bread, over cooked rice, and fried fish. Seeing as I don’t like fish and mush I am still hungry, I think I will head down into town in a bit to grab a bite to eat. Kiev is an awesome town I like it by far the best so far. The sauna was also the nicest yet, speaking of saunas reading some comments from my last blog I might have failed to give a great description. A sauna or banya as they are called here is a place you rent out for an hour or so. The places with banyas might have like 8 or nine units in them. Over here they are social places and one of their uses is most likely sex parties, I’m glad I could clarify that for you. Yesterday we left Moscow and headed for Kiev, in the airport we met up with the new crew which included, the Paulson brothers, Herbert, Brands, Lewis, Ceminara and many more. Our new trip hosts were athletes in action guys Carl and Steve. After checking in Jared and I headed out on a run, we ran downtown Kiev and it was awesome. I really like the town and all the gorgeous girls it had to offer. However, we got so many weird looks because I don’t think people run for leisure here or at least I haven’t seen it. Nevertheless everyone here still looks very fit, I think this is due to the fact that they eat much smaller portions of food than we do. Being out two days here now I have yet to see more than a handful of obese people. After that we watched “One Flew Over The Cuckoo Nest,” it came highly recommended from Joe Mocco and Jared had it in his case. It was very entertaining and I couldn’t believe how young Jack Nicholson looked compared to the last movie I saw him which was “Bucket List.” This morning breakfast was pretty good, thank god there were no more crepes. After some attempting to get on the internet in my room I decided to start reading. The latest book I am reading is a biography of undefeated heavy weight champion Rocky Marciano. The book was supposed to make a case for Marciano being the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. It has been way less than convincing. Even in the positive light he is being portrayed in this book I don’t seeing him winning one round of a fifteen round fight with an Ali in his prime ( which we may have never seen due to the unfair strippage of his title.) I can also see him getting destroyed by Liston, Tyson, Foreman, Louis and Frazier in their primes so that doesn’t even put him in the top six of heavyweights of all time. In addition to making a poor case for him the book is also very boring. After that we went over for practice and I got to roll with Jared for a bit, I had a good practice and headed back to shower and grab a bite for lunch. Post lunch a whole crew of us headed out to find a wi-fi spot somewhere in Kiev. We failed to find a wi-fi spot but did find an internet club that cost $1.40 an hour. It had about 100 computers, it was underground, hot and smelly, and about 80 of the computers were taken up by adolescents gaming nerds. Even so the internet service was great and I got to send a bunch of message back home. After our hour was up Joe Mocco, Backes, Herbert, Wattenburg and yours truly decided to take a stroll around and discover the town. There is an above ground city and an underground system of malls here also. After finding the path that I ran on last night we went underground to cross the street and managed to get distracted by all the cool stuff and when we came back to street level we were lost. We did manage to make it back to the sauna in time though. I bought a Russian hat yesterday and all of the foreigners are loving it. I think I am going to go grab a bite to eat and explore Kiev a bit more.

Over the Arctic I don’t know what time zone but it is 11:23 Missouri time
I am headed home and since I doubt anything else highly eventful will happen, I will recount my last few days of adventures and Kiev. Saturday I had to make weight, so while a bunch of the guys went to wrestle I just stayed in the room and relaxed. To pass the time I watched American Beauty, which I had never seen before, it was very good. Then Travis and I headed over to the Sauna, when we got there we figured that we didn’t have a sauna reserved like we were told. We got one for 11:30 until 12:30 but seeing as it was already close to 11:40 I knew I was going to have issues losing the five pounds I needed to. Now Russians to my experience aren’t punctual people, well they were in this case and the lady demanded on kicking us out at 12:20. For a while I refused to leave because I knew I was still a pound over or so, but then she came in and opened the door to the sauna and refused to shut it. Lacking a translator there was no way to convince this burly Ukranian woman to let us have ten more minutes in the sauna. So I put on my plastics and Travis’ (he already made weight) and my winter jacket and sat in the lobby and refused to leave, much to the dismay of the burly Ukrainian woman. I figured as long as I kept my sweat going I would be fine. I was right, by the time I got back to the hotel room I was already on weight. After weigh-ins we went to the local pizza joint that Herbert scouted out for us because of its wireless connection. After a long week in Vladikavkaz and even worse food at the provided meals in Kiev I just decided I would rather be on my own to find food, rather than the junk we were getting fed. Shawn Charles, Steve Barrett and I also managed to find the TGIFridays in Kiev. It was good to have some Americanized food even though it was grossly overpriced. After some dinner we walked back over to watch Trent Paulson in the finals. Trent proceeded to win his second tournament in a row and in dramatic style by pinning his opponent in the finals. After the finals Steve B, Shawn and I went to walk around Kiev, after stopping in a few stores we managed to find the TGIFridays. Steve was a national champion at Oklahoma St and after continuing international wrestling decided to join Athletes in Action. He has been doing missionary work in Moscow and the Caucaus region for close to the last twenty years. Now religion being one of my favorite topics discuss naturally came up with Steve’s job being in AIA. Let me tell you Steve is in the right profession, I have never heard anyone give anywhere as compelling an argument for Christianity as Steve gave, he almost converted me, LOL. After dinner it was bed for me because Sunday was the day that I competed. After grabbing a little bit of breakfast I headed over to the palace of sport. My first round match was a German, after a little bit of handfighting I snapped him into a front headlock tossed him and secured the pin. My second round match was against a Belarussian. After some physical hand fighting I secured a takedown and finished the period off with a couple gut wrenches. In the second I got a takedown and gutwrench, then turned him over and pinned him. My semifinal was against a Kahzak, who had looked good in defeat a Russian the round before. He got very sneaky on me and hit and duck to a trapped arm right off the bat. He turned me a couple times, but I managed to scramble out and get two points of my own. We went back to our feet with the score being 7-2, I got a takedown and locked up an inside cradle, I really thought this was going to be the end of the match. Somehow he slipped out and got two back points of his own ending the period 9-3 in his favor. I don’t really remember what happened in the second period, but it had something to do with me wearing him down and scoring plenty of points. Going into the third period he was exhausted, I got a single and went behind, but he tripodded up. I went for a move that I have been working on but have yet to hit in competition. I went for it thought it worked beautifully, but somehow he got one for ending up on top and I got 0 even though I thought he went straight over his back. Well he proceeded to try and gut me, when I stepped over strong and secured the fall. In the semis I was paired up with another Kahzak, who I remembered from watching on the world championships. The first period started out slow, I couldn’t really get a grip on him and he was keeping really good position. A little after a minute he got an ankle pick on me for the first point, he added another point when I took a poor shot. Then at the end of the period when I was bum rushing him trying to make something happen he arm threw he onto my dome harder than I have been tossed in a while. In the second period he got a takedown and a 1pt leg lace, after the lace I managed to get him into a front headlock, when he backed straight out of bounds I got a caution and one point making the score 2-1. When he shot again and I dumped him I took my first lead at 3-2. There was only 30 seconds left in the period I knew I had this period locked up and was going to crush him in the third. He came after me strong and knowing just not to do anything dumb I gave him a 1 pt takedown. We restarted 3-3 my lead with just 9 seconds left on the clock. He was coming after me strong again, but I was denying anything he tried. Then I looked at the clock and see it still reads 1:51 and I panicked and yelled to my corner the clock hadn’t started. My opponent took advantage of me being distracted and scored a takedown with 1 second left on the clock to win the period. They didn’t start the clock on purpose I knew it they knew it, after a little protesting at the head table which did no good I sucked it up and took it like a man. If I want to win gold in Bejiing No one can be able to score on me twice in 30 or 40 seconds. I let the clock become a distraction when I just should have kept wrestling, my fault no one else to blame. I came back and won my bronze medal match 4-4, 7-0 with some slick scrambling and strong guts. Overall my performance was solid, I can see the improvements I have been making in the wrestling room paying off for myself. I know that I still have a ways to go, but I am definitely closer to being a great all around freestyle wrestler. After the tourney Shawn and I meandered downtown again. Since it was Sunday there was some kind of street festival going on, people were all over the place. We ate at Friday’s again, I nabbed some stuff from the Adidas store and headed home, because I was worn out. Now I sit on the plane very excited to be going home and helping the tigers push for a big XII title. I also know the US Open is two months away to the day, after a few days of rest I will be back on the mats getting ready to win my first US Open. Hope you enjoyed hearing about my journey as much as I did doing it.