interesting editorial by UG member and Honolulu StarAdvertiser sportswriter Billy Hull...
The real B.J. Penn
Leading up to the fight, B.J. Penn said that we'd see the real B.J. Penn on Saturday night.
Sad to say, he may be right.
The B.J. Penn we saw against Frankie Edgar was unmotivated and uninterested, and that seems to be where he is in his career now.
Training with the Marinovich crew in California is what got Penn to the level he was at in fights against Diego Sanchez and Kenny Florian. Since then, he decided he didn't need to train with them. He's gone back to training in Hilo, hanging around his same guys and the same camp.
If this really meant anything to him, he would have taken from his last loss that what he was doing wasn't enough to stay the champion. Instead, we saw more of the same on Saturday, except that the results got a lot worse. Even on the ground, where he is leaps and bounds ahead of Edgar, Penn couldn't do a thing.
He looked average, he looked old, he looked not to be in the same shape he was for the Florian and Sanchez fights. But the worst part about it all is he looked like he didn't even care.
We're used to seeing that raving mad lunatic, licking his lips like a predator on the prowl when he walked to the ring. Last night looked like a stroll down Death Row. The real B.J. Penn I saw is the one who has mentally checked out of fighting. If that's the case, then forget any talk of comebacks or working your way back up. Instead, ponder the idea that maybe this is it for B.J. Penn, and we never see him fight again.
http://blogs.starbulletin.com/fightingwords/the-real-b-j-penn/