ONE Championship 60 results: Champ Ben Askren defends again, secures another stoppage

With his third straight title defense and 17th consecutive victory, ONE Championship welterweight champion Ben Askren had another relatively easy day of work.

Askren (17-0) dominated Swedish challenger Zebaztian Kadestam (9-4) in today’s ONE Championship 60 headliner.

“ONE Championship: Shanghai” took place at Shanghai Oriental Sports Center in China, and it streamed as an online pay-per-view in North America.

Askren, a former Bellator champion who’s No. 6 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA welterweight rankings, cruised with a ground-geared attack.

Things didn’t start well for Kadestam, a 26-year-old striker who has seven knockouts in nine career wins, and they never got much better. In the opening moments of the fight, Askren, a former NCAA Division I national wrestling champion and Olympian, went to his roots and scored a big takedown (via Twitter):

Askren’s domination, which came from mount and while affixed to Kadestam’s back, continued through the first round and into the next.

Ultimately, a barrage of ground-and-pound from the mount, which came late in the second round, forced a merciful stoppage to the lopsided fight (via Twitter):

Askren picked up his 10th stoppage in 17 career wins. And the 33-year-old, who’s previously been criticized for a grinding and not-so-fan-friendly fighting style, now has stoppages in six of past seven fights.

Full ONE Championship 60 results included:

MAIN CARD (Online pay-per-view, 7 a.m. ET)

• Champ Ben Askren def. Zebaztian Kadestam via TKO (punches) – Round 2, 4:09 – to retain welterweight title
• Ma Hao Bin def. Hexigetu Hexigetu via submission (guillotine) – Round 2, 4:50
• Amir Khan def. Jaroslav Jartim via knockout (kick and punches) – Round 1, 3:46
• Chunyan Xu def. Eh Ya Nutvia unanimous decision
• Sagetdao Petpayathai def. Mahmoud Mohamed TKO (strikes) – Round 1, 1:41
• Jie Miao def. Mona Samir via submission (armbar) – Round 1, 0:49

PRELIMINARY CARD (Untelevised, 5:30 a.m. ET)

• Tetsuya Yamada def. Kyle Rozewski submission (rear-naked choke) – Round 1, 1:56
• Zehao Zhang def. Cheng Chao Li TKO (strikes) – Round 2, 2:53
• Chao Xie def. Marc Marcellinus submission (kimura) – Round 1, 1:28

For more on ONE Championship 60, check out the MMA Events section of the site.