Colby Covington Stuns Tsarukyan as Askren Retires in Tears at RAF 11

Colby Covington beat a top ranked UFC lightweight contender on a wrestling mat Saturday night, taking Real American Freestyle’s first ever crossover championship with a 5-3 win over Arman Tsarukyan. Minutes later, on the same card, Ben Askren untied his wrestling boots for the last time.

The double header at RAF 11, staged at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, gave a not yet one year old promotion its two biggest nights rolled into one: a genuine UFC name losing a real match for a new title, and a fighter who nearly died a year ago walking away from competition on his own terms.

Covington Ends Tsarukyan’s Unbeaten Run on the RAF Mat

Tsarukyan came in having won his previous matches on RAF mats and looking to keep that run alive. Covington had other ideas, scoring early and defending just enough late to hang on.

Covington opened with a takedown off a scramble and added a point from the shot clock to lead 3-0 after the first period. Tsarukyan clawed back with a two point exposure in the second, but Covington answered right away to push the score to 5-2 heading into the third.

Tsarukyan added one more point late, but Covington sprawled on a final takedown attempt to seal it, 5-3. That result matters more than a typical wrestling exhibition because of who lost it. Tsarukyan carries a 23-3 professional MMA record and has been ranked among the UFC’s top two lightweight contenders by independent fighter rating trackers, with wins over Charles Oliveira and a November submission of Dan Hooker on his resume.

Covington, who has not won inside the UFC’s Octagon since 2022, celebrated by name checking the fight world he still wants back into.

One Last Match for a Man Who Died Four Times

A little more than a year before Saturday, Askren was hospitalized in Wisconsin with severe pneumonia brought on by a staph infection. Doctors put him on a ventilator and then ECMO, a machine that breathes and pumps blood for a body that can no longer do it alone.

His heart stopped four times during that stretch, each time for close to 20 seconds, according to an account Askren gave from his hospital bed. He underwent a double lung transplant to survive, spent weeks unconscious, and dropped to as little as 138 pounds, the lightest he had been since he was a teenager. He was discharged after 59 days in the hospital.

Saturday, he walked out to a standing ovation to wrestle his former training partner Belal Muhammad. Askren stuffed early takedown attempts and built a 3-0 lead through positional awareness alone, drawing gasps from a crowd that had watched him nearly die on video updates a year earlier. Fatigue caught up to him in the third period. Muhammad scored late to finish it, 6-3.

“He came back from death,” Muhammad said afterward. “Everybody should be on their feet.”

RAF broadcaster and former UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen handed Askren the microphone. Askren untied his boots on the mat, right there, to confirm it was over.

I get tired real fast these days. I tried as hard as I could. They couldn’t carry me any longer. For sure my last time on the mat. I love you guys. From the heart.

Askren, a two time NCAA champion at Missouri and a 2008 Olympian, had already retired from mixed martial arts in 2019 and taken one more loss in a 2021 boxing match against Jake Paul. Saturday closed the door on competition for good.

Muhammad Throws a Kick at Covington After the Bell

The night’s two biggest names have real history, and it spilled into the open after the final bell. At the RAF 11 press conference, Muhammad was seen throwing a kick toward Covington on stage as both men stood before cameras, touching off a brief scuffle before security separated them.

The two have been trading insults since Muhammad won the UFC welterweight title from Leon Edwards in December 2024, the same week Covington lost by doctor stoppage to Joaquin Buckley and slid to ninth in the rankings. Muhammad has said publicly that he does not think Covington belongs in the UFC’s top ten anymore, and once claimed the only place he would ever fight Covington was on the street.

Saturday, on a wrestling mat instead of pavement, Covington got the last word. “The champ does what the champ wants,” he said, off camera, once the chaos settled.

What Is Real American Freestyle?

Real American Freestyle is a freestyle wrestling promotion built to pay college and Olympic style wrestlers for a sport that historically has not compensated them, launched in 2025 by Hulk Hogan, Chad Bronstein and Eric Bischoff with financial backing from venture firms Left Lane Capital and Cassius. It has already pulled name UFC fighters onto its mats less than a year into existence.

Hogan, Bronstein and Bischoff announced RAF in April 2025 with roughly $3.5 million raised at launch, and the promotion has moved fast since. It signed a broadcast deal with Fox Nation, struck a sports betting partnership with ALT Sports Data, and put out a documentary special on Fox Nation earlier this year, all before Saturday’s card became its 11th event.

The venture almost did not survive its own launch year. Hogan died on July 24, 2025, just months after unveiling RAF and weeks before its first event, and his son Nick Hogan inherited his role as commissioner. RAF’s debut card in Cleveland that August opened with a video tribute to its late founder produced by WWE. Industry skeptics had already questioned whether the whole idea would work, noting that similar freestyle wrestling ventures collapsed quickly in the 1970s after failing to draw crowds.

Eleven events and one Colby Covington title match later, that skepticism looks harder to defend.

Covington Calls Out Chimaev, Muhammad and Woodley Next

Covington used his new belt to build his own sequel. Speaking after the win, he dedicated the night to Hogan and framed the victory as bigger than the mat it happened on.

“Arman will be UFC lightweight champ, I’m sure of it,” Covington said. “Tonight was for America. For Hulkster. I was super impressed with his tie-ups, faints, that’s a tough guy I took down to get this belt. Now, anybody can get it. Chimaev, Belal, Woodley.”

That is a wish list of names still active in or around the UFC’s welterweight and middleweight pictures, and RAF has already shown it can market Covington as a headliner. He appeared earlier this year in a Fox Nation documentary chronicling RAF’s rise, and Saturday’s win gives the promotion a built in reason to keep him on future cards. Whether any of the fighters he named actually step onto an RAF mat remains an open question, but the promotion now has a real champion to build around instead of just a roster of name recognition.

Full RAF 11 Results

Saturday’s card ran ten additional matches beneath the two headliners, with wrestlers from college, Olympic and MMA backgrounds all sharing the same mats.

• Frankie Edgar defeated Clay Guida by points, 9-1, in a catchweight bout.
• Keegan O’Toole defeated Christopher Minto by points, 14-9, at middleweight.
• Adeline Gray defeated Skylar Grote by points, 5-2, in women’s cruiserweight.
• Arsen Harutyunyan came from behind to defeat Ben Davino by points, 6-5, at bantamweight.
• Trent Hidlay defeated Magomedkhan Magomedov by tech fall at light heavyweight.
• Magomed Ramazanov defeated Aeoden Sinclair by points, 5-3, at cruiserweight.
• Zac Braunagel defeated Pat Downey by tech fall, 12-2, at light heavyweight.
• Anthony Cassioppi defeated Mostafa Elders by points, 6-2, at heavyweight.
• Michael Caliendo defeated Mirzo Khayitov by points, 9-2, at welterweight.
• Lucia Yepez retained her women’s strawweight championship, defeating Felicity Taylor by tech fall, 10-0.

None of those results drew the reaction Askren got. Asked what he wanted people to take from a comeback that started in a hospital bed, he did not talk about wins or losses. Through tears, he told the crowd in Milwaukee that they were more powerful than they think.