With a Legacy Secured, What’s Next for BJ Penn?

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With a Legacy Secured, What’s Next for BJ Penn?
By Thomas Gerbasi

How would you like your life to be judged on one segment of time? Not a decade, not a year, not even a month, but 25 minutes or less. And what if these weren’t 25 minutes that saw you tossed into a spur of the moment situation like those experienced by firemen, soldiers, or doctors, but one
which you prepared weeks for and that you were forced to talk about even longer, one you were reminded of practically every waking moment?

You may break under the pressure; you may look in the mirror and wonder why years of hard work would be for naught in the eyes of many if you didn’t perform for 25 minutes or less on one night.

For BJ Penn, January 19th was the day that would see him either become only the second man in UFC history to wear championship belts in two different weight classes, or a fighter with a 12-5-1 record as a pro, numbers that those outside the mixed martial arts world would ridicule when you tell them that it belongs to one of the most gifted fighters to ever wear the gloves.

But Penn, seemingly one of those rare fighters impervious to pressure, didn’t need 25 minutes to defeat Joe Stevenson at UFC 80. In nine minutes and two seconds, he bloodied and submitted Stevenson to add the UFC lightweight championship belt to the welterweight one he won and was stripped of back in 2004.

To MMA fans, the Hawaiian’s legacy was secure. He could lose his next ten fights, and no one could ever take away his history-making feat. That’s good in a way, to know that you will forever have something next to your name that is yours and that for the moment only one other fighter - Randy Couture - can claim.

But now what?

“That’s a good question,” muses Penn, who defends his 155-pound crown for the first time against former titleholder Sean Sherk in the main event of this Saturday’s UFC 84 event at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. “I know I’m the champ but I don’t feel like the champ. I haven’t felt like the champ all through this training. I kinda just got back in the gym after the Stevenson fight and it didn’t feel like I was the champ again, like when I had the welterweight title. I guess it’s just beat Sean Sherk and see what’s going on next.”

That doesn’t mean division hopping to go after welterweight champ (and former opponent) Georges St-Pierre, it doesn’t mean an immediate fight against the winner of August’s bout between Kenny Florian and Roger Huerta, it doesn’t mean anything really, except that Penn is going to fight this Saturday and worry about Sunday and beyond when he gets there.

“It’s been talked to death, me fighting at different weights and doing other things, but right now, I guess I’m just going to be the best I can be right now,” he said. “Who knows how many fights I’ve got left in me, so right now I’m just gonna do my thing and be happy with who I am.”

Therein lies the appeal of Penn. A fighter without a script or a filter, Penn is honest to a fault, even when it may put him in some dicey situations. When you talk with him, you will never get the cliché answer – you will get what he thinks at that moment, making him not only one of the game’s best fighters, but one of its most interesting people. Not that he’s bragging about it.

“I’m not aware of all these things until people tell me about it,” he said. “I’m just a guy trying to do my best.”

He’s more than that though, at least if message board postings on various MMA sites are any indication. If you read some posts, you wouldn’t be out of line to suggest that Penn is going to sprout wings and fly into the Octagon on Saturday night, tear Sherk’s limbs from his body and toss them into the crowd before flying over the fence and back to Hilo. Penn laughs, but he does take what his fans think seriously and he has learned to deal with the high expectations.

“At first it was real tough, but now I just want to prove all those people right,” he said. “If they’re gonna go out on a limb and say I can do all these things, then I’m happy they say that stuff and I want to go out and do it for them. If they went out and told their friends I’m the best, then I want to make sure they can go back and say ‘I told you so.’”

And with all the talk he’s been doing about Sherk, much of it revolving around the positive test for Nandrolone that forced the UFC to strip the Minnesotan of the title Penn eventually won, he’s got plenty of self-imposed pressure on himself to perform on Saturday. Ask Penn what he sees when he looks at Sherk though, and you can hear the respect he does have for his challenger.

“I see a great fighter,” said Penn of Sherk. “I’ve always respected Sean Sherk’s skills. He was fighting before I was and I see a guy with a hard work ethic who goes in the gym and does all this stuff, and that’s me being a fan. But me being his opponent, as far as what he got busted for, I see an insecure person who had to go do the things that he did to get where he has. And that’s just talking as an opponent. As soon as this is done, I don’t know if Sean Sherk’s gonna want to be my friend or whatever…”

Penn trails off and laughs over the prospect of he and Sherk someday hanging out as buddies before continuing.

“But as an opponent, I see him back in the day, just a straight wrestler – hard-nosed, push you to the fence, take you down. Just like how it first started with jiu-jitsu – nobody knew jiu-jitsu so it dominated so early. And then nobody knew wrestling so then that started dominating. Now, everybody knows everything, so we’re all on a level playing field and I see a guy who I really have to judge my distance well with because he’s a shorter guy and really fast and explosive.”

He pauses again, perhaps wondering if he’s being too complimentary towards the man he has to fight this weekend.

“It’s so weird because we’re just two different people,” said Penn. “I speak what’s on my mind and I’m not gonna sit here and say he’s a liar, but he doesn’t tell the truth about certain things. I’m sure he hasn’t even told the truth about how he feels about me yet.”

That’s why Penn pokes and prods, to get a reaction that will force him into fight mode. Sherk has fired back in small volleys over the last few weeks, but apparently nothing volatile enough yet. Penn keeps trying though, because as he admits, he needs a little fire when stepping through the Octagon door.

“In some certain ways I do kinda need it,” he said. “I gotta not like the person that’s standing on the other side of the ring and that’s why I consider myself in different aspects as not just an athlete, but a fighter. When people fight in the normal, everyday world, it’s not because of being an athlete, it’s because something pissed them off. When man raises his fists, he has run out of ideas, and that’s what ends up happening. Those are the natural instincts I have, and if I want someone to fight with me, I better piss them off. So he gets pissed off, and then he pisses me off, and then we can fight. I kinda look for that sometimes.”

What may even make it worse for prospective opponents is that Penn doesn’t raise his voice or threaten to break bones while in trash talk mode. He does it in the course of regular conversation, and may even say things with a smile that will nonetheless cut pretty deep. Even his simple remark to Stevenson during a pre-fight press conference that ‘Joe Daddy’ shouldn’t get mad if he didn’t speak to him during fight
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week, was laced with a pinch of menace that definitely got the point across.

“If it was just a regular three round fight, it might have been tough,” said Penn when asked if fighting a friend like Stevenson made it tougher to get his usual dislike of his opposition fired up. “But because we were coming on up with this legacy thing – UFC’s commercial even pumped it up – that’s when I started to get pumped up, and the motivation for that fight was about become the champion in two different weight classes. And right now as I stand here, it doesn’t mean that much, but I’m sure down the road, to myself it’ll be like ‘wow man, at one time I did win two world titles in two different weight classes, that’s awesome.’”

It does mean a lot, though to Penn, he’s not thinking of history books right now. History’s for old folks on their way out, not for a 29-year old on the top of his game. That’s a point not lost on some of the best young talent in the game, like WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber and UFC lightweight contender Joe Lauzon, both of whom have made the trek to Hawaii to train with Penn. And they’re not the only ones who have talked of working with ‘The Prodigy’ at his home base.

“I guess it’s just because I’m doing real good right now,” said Penn humbly. “Like Fedor (Emelianenko), I want to go train with him. As a fighter, you just want to know what does he know, what makes him fight like he does or do these different things? And I think that’s a lot of it. People say all the time, ‘I want to fight BJ, I want to fight BJ,’ and then when I run into them, they say ‘hey man, when are you gonna come out and train with us?’ So which one is it, do you want to fight me or train with me?”

Penn has been dealing with such matters since his 2001 debut (which amazingly, came in the UFC), and you can’t think of too many fighters – if any – who have had that type of impact on their peers. Even when you ask Penn who were his biggest influences, after naming Ralph Gracie and Frank Shamrock, he hesitates, and then laughs.

“Honestly, I was just watching a fight today, and I think it’s everybody,” he said, perhaps revealing the secret to his style. “I pick up certain things and maybe they see me doing it and they’re like ‘oh, he’s the first guy to ever do that,’ but they never noticed the other guy doing it. It’s just charisma or something – I don’t know how it works. Maybe because I’m not on the mainland and not cross training with everybody all the time, my style is kinda different. It’s not like I’m going to a gym with 50 other mixed martial arts fighters who are all trading techniques and sharing stuff. I have a few people come down here and there and I work with people, but in a gym you kinda all become the same in certain ways because you’re training with each other every day. I’m out in Hawaii, and even better than that, I’m not even on the main island, where there are a bunch of other fighters, so I’m not mixing with anybody. So maybe when I do something it comes out looking a bit different.”

In mixed martial arts, if you’re different, that could be a good or bad thing. Either you’re doing something that couldn’t possibly work in a real fight, or you’re doing something that makes other people stop, stare, and take notes. BJ Penn’s the latter type of different, and whether you are for him or against him, you can’t ignore him.

And that may just be the point.

Good read I like BJ but am rooting for Sherk. I really want to see Penn vs. St. Pierre again