Requiem for a lightwight

"This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away...to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was."

-Yoda

I have actually opened up an MMA blog with a Yoda quote, I think I deserve some credit for that.

It's my opinion that there is NO WAY BJ Penn stays retired for a significant amount of time, but for the purposes of this blog let's assume his career is finished and can be looked back upon in it's entirety. If that is the case I firmly believe that his end as a mixed martial artist can be traced back to a single date: January 31st, 2004.That was the day he choked out the previously unstoppable Matt Hughes and won the welterweight crown. Thus began his love-affair with the welterweight division, a division in which he would never be physically competitive.

Its difficult to imagine in the modern era of MMA how a fighter, even with BJ Penn's extraordinary Jiu-Jitsu credentials (he was the first non-Brazilian to win a black belt world title), could make their MMA debut in the UFC, but thats exactly what he did against Joey Gilbert on May 4th, 2001. After finishing Gilbert in the 1st round, his level of competition picked up considerably. He would finish both Din Thomas and Caol Uno in devastating fashion before getting a much-hyped title fight against lightweight kingpin Jens Pulver. Penn didn't fight with his usual "bombs away" style and lost a 5 round majority decision. It was the kind of loss that inexperienced fighters need early on, and from there big things were still expected of the young prodigy.

After his first loss, he tore though Paul Creighton before entering a mini-tournament for Pulver's vacated belt. He beat Matt Serra and got a controversial draw with Caol Uno in their rematch for the belt. Unfortunately the UFC basically began ignoring the lightweight division and left the title vacant from 2001-2006. BJ left the UFC to DOMINATE Takanori Gomi at Rumble on the Rock, then returned for his fateful fight against Matt Hughes at 170.

I understand why he did it at the time. The UFC had no title for him to fight for, and Matt Hughes was on an historic run in the division. He had little to lose and a lot to gain, and BOY did he deliver. He took the champ to the mat early and ROCKED him with a vicious right hand before finishing him off with his signature rear-naked. That was the beginning of a BIZARRE trend in BJ Penn's spectacular-yet-inconsistent career.

BJ has a total of 8 losses, only 3 of those are in the lightweight division, and 2 are to the same fighter (Frankie Edgar). BJ had a total of 7 fights in the UFC's welterweight division and went 2-4-1 with BOTH of his wins coming against Matt Hughes.

BJ's unreal talent seemed to come with an almost pathological obsession with testing his competitive limits. The other loss of his career came at the hands of LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT Lyoto Machida. BJ's ambition had almost a freak-show quality to it, it was as if he wanted to prove that his phenomenal talent could overcome every physical limitation but, as his record shows, it couldn't.

One must also remember that he insisted on taking on the cream of the welterweight crop. He had no softballs, no tune-ups, and asked for no mercy. He took on Matt Hughes, GSP, Jon Fitch, and Nick Diaz. Thats a murderer's row of talent and he took it on despite his well-known distain for the rigors of training (in fact, I would say he gave away one fight apiece to GSP and Matt Hughes due to his shallow gas tank).

Changing weight classes has always been the way to attract big paydays in combat sports. Most of the great fights in boxing history outside of the heavyweight division happened because one of the combatants was willing to get out of their comfort zone. The reason that is so difficult in MMA is 2-fold:

#1. There are fewer weight classes and therefore more of a weight difference between them.

#2. The grappling inherent in MMA makes the size difference MUCH more of an issue

Between the limits of 154-175 there are 4 distinct weight-classes in boxing. Between roughly that same span in MMA (155-170)there are 2. Given the wrestling background of many MMA fighters and the weight-cuting techniques they have mastered, there is an ASTRONOMICAL size difference between those 2 weight classes in MMA, a size difference BJ Penn was never able to overcome.

Roy Jones Jr. went from 160 pounds, all the way to heavyweight and defeated John Ruiz. How was he able to accomplish this this? Because in boxing, speed kills and no one was faster in his prime than Roy Jones Jr. The difference in MMA is that nothing negates speed like being picked up and slammed into the mat, and that happened to BJ throughout his welterweight fights.

The frustrating thing is that against the best lightweights in the world he was simply magnificent. Matt Serra was the only lightweight he couldn't finish and his list of victims is a who's who of the division. He didn't just defeat guys like Sean Sherk, Din Thomas, Diego Sanchez, and Kenny Florian, he DESTROYED them. For comparison's sake: current lightweight king Frankie Edgar out-boxed Sean Sherk and earned a clear unanimous decision, BJ Penn OBLITERATED Sherk with a flying knee and waved off the fight. He wasn't just fun to watch at 155, he was awe-inspiring, but he just wasn't content to stay there.

Despite his hall-of-fame credentials, he never defeated more than 3 lightweights in a row. He was always looking to stretch his horizons, despite never quite clearing out an increasingly talented lightweight division. It would be nice to see how he would do against the new, hungry breed at 155, guys like Gray Maynard, Ben Henderson, and Donald Cerrone. But if Penn's last performance was truly the end there is a certain fitting poetry to it: it was against a gigantic welterweight against whom he fought hard, but was physically outmatched. If we see him again, I hope he takes a lesson from that fight and keeps his sights firmly on the lightweight division...