In his last fight, Corey Anderson won the then-vacant Bellator MMA light heavyweight championship. As part of PFL Cape Town, the debut of PFL Arica this Saturday, he’ll make the move to heavyweight to take on a fellow champ in Denis Goltsov.
Yet there’s been a bigger fight that Anderson (18-6, 1NC) has been paying attention to as well: the battle that Ben Askren has been fighting over the past six weeks or so. Askren, suddenly falling ill and suffering a severe case of pneumonia, received a double lung transplant recently. The former Bellator and ONE Championship welterweight star’s sudden health struggle took many by surprise, and Anderson previously opened up about how much Askren had meant to both his personal and professional life.
In an interview with MMA Fighting, Anderson revealed that Askren had encouraged him to pursue MMA, and even invited him to the gym where he met his wife. On Wednesday, during the PFL Africa media day, the former UFC light heavyweight told Cageside Press and other media outlets that seeing Askren talking and breathing under his own power again was “a blessing.”
“It’s great. It’s a blessing. You pray on it, you pray on it. Me and the wife pray on it. I talked to the wife before I came down here, I guess she talked to his wife and they’re still in hospital and they’re recovering and going through things,” Anderson stated. “It’s still a long uproad battle before he’s out and completely fine, but the aspect of seeing Ben talking and breathing again on his own, without a machine pumping him, and interacting with people- he’s sending out text messages now, he’s reposting posts, he’s actually doing posts himself, talking on the camera. That kind of brings tears to your eyes, because at one point in time you’re at the lowest point thinking the guy that kind of helped you find the life you have and helped you find a career and family almost no longer existed.”
Anderson lives four hours away from Askren when he’s not in fight camp, and while he hasn’t been home in a bit, he plans to visit Askren soon. “When this fight is over I’m going to get back and make sure I make it to his house someway, somehow and go see him and tell him exactly how much he really means to me. Show him how thankful I am before, who knows- anything can happen with his new lungs or anything can happen in life, and he’s gone and I’m not able to tell him that.”
Watch the full PFL Africa media day appearance by Corey Anderson above.
