​It’s hard to believe that Ben Askren is returning for a wrestling match in RAF just barely one year removed from a near-death experience that ended with him receiving a double-lung transplant.The one-time Olympian was hospitalized, and comatose for days, before doctors were finally able to save his life. He was barely recognizable when he first woke up and offered an update on his condition. That was June 2025 and now Askren sits just days away from facing Belal Muhammad in the RAF 11 co-main event.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“It really is [crazy],” Askren told MMA Fighting. “I’m almost to the point where it seems like a bad dream or something sometimes. I feel like I’m just me now. Obviously, I take medicine everyday, and there’s still some limitations that I can’t forget about, but I do find myself feeling more and more normal. At points it does just seem like a terrible dream.”To see Askren now, he doesn’t look much different from his days competing in the UFC but obviously his body has undergone a dramatic transformation. He spent months in rehabilitation and there were times when he could barely catch his breath as he was trying to adjust to his new reality following an organ transplant.But Askren never stopped pushing and he eventually returned to coaching at his Askren Wrestling Academy. That’s where he finally got back on the mats, but Askren says he wasn’t doing it with the intention of actually competing in a match again.“It was probably something like I was coaching a private lesson and one of my kids was probably being a little too lippy or something — let me come whoop your ass for a second,” Askren said with a laugh. “Probably something like that would be what I would guess. I remember when RAF told me they were coming to Milwaukee, something said I should wrestle in that. As it got a little further, it was maybe late March or somewhere in there I would guess timewise, I had a private lesson group and it was odd [numbers] that day, someone couldn’t be there. So I think I had five kids or seven and they were going to do a match. I’m like eff it, I’ll see if I can do a six-minute match. It was against a high school kid, about 190 [pounds], and he’s pretty scrappy, but I knew I had the wisdom to get it done.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“So I wrestled him but my thought was funny because I don’t know if I can go six minutes. I might just fall over at four minutes or five minutes. So I wrestled an uber conservative style, but I won the match. I was like fine, I’m not very good right now but within the course of training over the next three months, I can get a lot better.”Askren knows that his life is forever changed after having the double-lung transplant, but he’s made remarkable improvements over the past year. The fact that his doctors signed off on his upcoming wrestling match should prove that.“Actually last week or two weeks ago, I had my year checkup and ever