If one were to limit their combat sports scope to the goings-on of the UFC, you might take pleasure from Dricus Du Plessis’ near-shutout performance against Kamaru Usman, Christian Leroy Duncan’s major victory over Jared Cannonier, or a star-making showing from young Tommy McMillen. Add in the PFL’s card this weekend, and there is Johnny Eblen’s TKO to become interim middleweight champion.

But the best moment in combat sports this weekend wasn’t found in a cage. It was found on a wrestling mat on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It was there that Real American Freestyle hosted RAF 11 and had a co-main event bout that was emotional and celebratory as Ben Askren made one last walk to the mat in front of a native Wisconsin audience.

For those who don’t know Askren’s story, it was just last year that this kind of event would have been considered a miracle.

In early June 2025, Askren was hospitalized after developing severe pneumonia as a result of a staph infection. He nearly lost his life, requiring a double lung transplant and, according to Askren, flatlining four times during his hospitalization.

One year ago this week, Askren was finally released from the hospital. And while such an ordeal would have spelt the complete end of one’s combat career, “Funky” gave himself one more chance to shine in a world that he’s so familiar with.

At the University of Missouri in the 2000s, Askren was a two-time NCAA champion and a multiple-time Big-12 champion. He went on to compete on the U.S. national wrestling team, winning a Pan-American Championships title and competing in the 2008 Olympics. Additionally, he won a gold medal in grappling at the 2009 World Grappling Championships.

That wrestling base would serve Askren well in his MMA career, going on to win welterweight championships in Bellator and ONE Championship. After a brief retirement in 2017 and 2018, Askren fought three times for the UFC in 2019, going 1-2, along with a boxing match with Jake Paul in 2021.

Askren’s opponent at RAF 11 was Belal Muhammad, a former UFC welterweight champion who trained with Askren as he was making his way up the ranks. Muhammad is an accomplished grappler in his own right, though he’s dropped three straight in the Octagon since losing the 170-pound championship.

As the two grappled for control during a quiet first period, Askren received a point when Muhammad could not score when put on the shot clock. Askren then defended well against Muhammad’s takedown attempts in the second period, and he added two points to his score by forcing Muhammad out of bounds twice. Askren had a 3-0 lead heading into the final period, and the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena seemed to be in a bit of a frenzy, hoping for Askren to pull off the epic victory.

Alas, as some sports stories over the years have taught us, victory is not always found at the end. Muhammad rallied in the third period, scoring a double-leg takedown and two go-behinds, scoring two points each time and totaling a 6-3 come-from-behind victory.

While Askren didn’t get his hand raised, he is still a victor. The simple walk to the mat shows how far his health has come over the last year. And he got to compete one more time on the mats that he loves, against a well-respected former training partner and UFC champion, sharing the moment with family and friends as he left his wrestling shoes on the mat.

Askren got life’s biggest victory – he defeated death. Whether he won or lost this wrestling match was irrelevant; Ben Askren is the biggest victor in life this weekend.

Jeff Kent’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame is going to provide a boost to players representing one of Cooperstown’s most underrepresented positions.

It just may be a while before a second baseman can point to Kent as the player who helped him get over the top.

Kent will become the 23rd second baseman ushered into baseball immortality next Sunday, when he joins centerfielders Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones on the Clark Sports Center stage a little more than a mile from the Hall of Fame.

Kent was elected last December, when he received 14 of the 16 votes from the contemporary baseball era committee. A month later, fellow keystone star Chase Utley positioned himself for induction far sooner than later by finishing with 59.1 percent of the vote, the third-largest share behind Beltran and Jones. A candidate must finish with 75 percent of the vote on his ballot in order to be inducted.

But Utley has already established himself as a potential Hall of Famer by accumulating 28.8 percent and 39.8 percent of the vote in his first two years on the ballot. Who’s next after Utley knocks down the door?

“Over the years, you look at guys who are great players and why they haven’t gotten in it’s probably because their offense doesn’t stack up as a whole to the greats that are in there,” Kent said during a Zoom call with reporters Friday afternoon. “Some of my numbers don’t even stack up to the greats that are in there.”

While Kent’s 351 homers as a second baseman are the most all-time, he ranks 11th among Hall of Famers at the position with 2,461 hits, 12th with a .290 average and 19th with a Baseball-Reference WAR of 55.4.

By these measures, the players who would benefit most from Kent’s induction are fellow Era members candidates Bobby Grich, Willie Randolph and Lou Whitaker, all of whom were either retired or winding down by the time Kent made his big league debut in 1992.

Kent has more hits and a higher average than Grich, Randolph and Whitaker, though the latter trio all finished with a WAR between 65.9 and 75.1.

But Era ballots are notoriously stuffed, especially for players such as Grich, Randolph and Whitaker who could land within either the Modern Baseball Era (for players who constructed all or most of their career prior to 1980) or the Contemporary Era (for players since 1980). Some of their competition for ballot spots include Dwight Evans, Keith Hernandez, Graig Nettles, Luis Tiant, Tommy John, David Cone…and maybe Pete Rose, which is a thorny mess for another time.

Grich, Randolph and Whitaker also all went one-and-done on the writer’s ballot back in the days before WAR was an accepted Hall of Fame metric. Kent had far more success remaining in the conversation on the writer’s ballot, where he peaked at 46.5 percent of the vote in his final year of eligibility in 2023.

And he made it to the contemporary era ballot in the same year as the PED-stained Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Gary Sheffield, all of whom have about as much chance of being elected as anyone reading these words.

Speaking of PED stains, Robinson Cano, who was on pace to finish with 3,000 hits and a .300 average before he got busted twice for PEDs, will go one-and-done in 2028, by which time Utley will likely be in the Hall of Fame as the first example of a second baseman elected for his peak and not his counting numbers. Utley has a 64.6 WAR but just 1,885 hits, which would be the eighth-fewest hits for any player in Cooperstown.

Amongst active second basemen, Jose Altuve has the numbers (a .303 average with 2,455 hits and 53.4 WAR) for election, though he has to hurdle any fallout from his role on the sign-stealing 2017 Houston Astros. But the election of Beltran, the only Astros player punished for his role in the scheme, is a good sign for Altuve, who is signed through 2029 and unlikely to appear on a ballot before the mid-2030s.

There may be a sizable gap before and after Altuve. New York Mets second baseman Marcus Semien has 48.8 WAR to go along with 1,675 hits, 262 homers and two Gold Gloves, but appears to be in steep decline at 35. The Arizona Diamondbacks’ Ketel Marte has 37.2 WAR at age 32 and is signed through 2030, though his peak has not yet generated much Cooperstown debate.

Dustin Pedroia, who played for the Boston Red Sox from 2006 through 2019, accumulated 51.8 WAR and batted .299 with 1,805 hits. He joined the ballot in 2025 and received 20.7 percent of the vote last year — an indication his candidacy will get a much closer look than those of Grich, Randolph and Whitaker, but also a reminder of how far Kent’s predecessors and successors at the keystone have to go between here and Cooperstown.