Ben Askren defends Derrick Lewis alleged reckless driving

04/11/2023 01:02

Heavyweight Derrick Lewis was arrested and charged with reckless driving for allegedly driving 136 mph in a 50 mph zone.  The incident occurred just 10 days before he headlines this weekend's UFC event in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Former UFC welterweight Ben Askren defended Lewis driving 136 mph, 'as long as it wasn't in a neighborhood.'  

"I like going fast too.  I don't know if I ever went 86 over especially with the Tesla.  He has a Lamborghini.  He just wants to press the gas and give it some juice.  Right," Askren said on Daniel Cormier's YouTube channel. 

"I don't know.  Hopefully it wasn't in a neighborhood driving 136, but if he was on some country road outside of Houston and he wants to jam that gas, let it rip.  I mean, he had no strippers in the car.  He had no cocaine.  He hadn't been drinking.  I say let him have some fun."  

Askren himself has had several speeding tickets and nearly lost his license at one point. 

"I love to go fast.  I've got a lot of speeding tickets," said Askren.  "I almost lost my license when I was like 21.  They sent me this letter, it said, 'You've got too many speeding tickets.  We're going to take your license.'  I call my boy.  I said, 'Hey, what do I do about this?'  And he said, 'Hey, let me take care of this.'  I think, it was kind of a lot of money to me at the time, I think it was like $1200.  But I had to pay him to go get all of them gone.  Then I was fine," said Askren.  "What I realized is like, as long as I'm willing to face the consequence of paying some money, I can go as fast as I want." 

Lewis faces a man on a winning streak Jailton Almeida (19-2) at Ginásio do Ibirapuera on Saturday. Lewis enters the bout coming off a win over Marcos Rogério de Lima via TKO in July. Almeida will enter the octagon riding a 14-fight winning streak.