Ben Askren‘s near-fatal medical ordeal in 2025 began with something so minor that most wrestlers would not think twice about it: a small cut on his elbow.
The former UFC welterweight and wrestling coach appeared on the Mighty Cast podcast, recounting in detail how that unremarkable injury set off a chain of events that brought him to the edge of losing his life and ultimately required a double lung transplant to save it.
“I got a little cut on my elbow,” Askren explained. “It was staph, but sometimes you get a little cut, maybe it gets a little bit infected, but you wash it with soap and you put some antibacterial on there and it goes away.”
That is exactly what seemed to happen. He cleaned the wound and gave it little further thought. Then, a day or two later, his back began aching. He assumed it was a familiar problem.
“My back started hurting and I thought, hey, this is a muscle spasm. I’ve had a similar muscle spasm before,” he said.
He visited a chiropractor several times, found temporary relief, and continued on. By the fourth day, Askren was planning a trip to Las Vegas for a Bitcoin conference. His condition was worsening, but he could not recognize how serious it had become.
His wife pressed him to visit the hospital. His vitals checked out fine. Doctors prescribed medication for a back spasm and sent him home.
Things only deteriorated overnight. The following day, his wife insisted on a second hospital visit, and Askren reluctantly agreed.
“When I walked in the hospital door, I don’t remember anything. I go in the door and it’s black for roughly 40 days,” he said.
The staph bacteria had entered his bloodstream and traveled to his lungs. What Askren had interpreted as back pain was something far more severe.
“The pain I was feeling was my lungs eating themselves. Something called necrotizing pneumonia,” he said.
He fell into a coma almost immediately. After time in two Las Vegas hospitals, he was flown back to Milwaukee, where doctors presented the only remaining option.
“They said the only way to save his life is the double lung transplant,” Askren recalled.
He had entered the hospital weighing roughly 195 lbs (88.5 kg). At his lowest point, that number had dropped to 138 lbs (62.6 kg), a loss of nearly 60 lbs (27 kg).
Following the transplant, he woke up five days later in a dark hospital room with no memory of what had happened. Despite everything, Askren said he never lingered on bitterness.
“I can’t control the past. Nobody can. So it’s like it happened. Why dwell on it? What do I got to do now?” he said.
He was equally candid about how unprepared he was for what unfolded.
“I was on top of the cut. I took care of it and it healed and I just didn’t even think twice. Who’s ever heard of their lungs just eating themselves from the inside? If you would have told me that was a thing, I’d be like, ‘Nah, I think you’re making that up. That’s not a real thing.'”
