BJ Penn: ‘I do miss being the baddest man on the planet’

BJ Penn may miss the glory of being champion and the status it elevated him to, but he has no interest in putting his…

By: Karim Zidan | 8 years ago
BJ Penn: ‘I do miss being the baddest man on the planet’
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

BJ Penn may miss the glory of being champion and the status it elevated him to, but he has no interest in putting his body through grueling training camps to achieve that longing anymore.

The former two-division champion did not appear interested in a return to professional fightin, mainly because of the pre-fight responsibility of preparing one’s body for the actual showdown. While he was happy to reap the rewards of the fight, he had no interested in sowing the seeds ahead of time.

“You know what I don’t miss?” Penn told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I don’t miss a three-month training camp. I don’t miss fight week. But I do miss being the baddest man on the planet.”

Penn, who is scheduled to be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame next week, marvels at fighters his age and older who still go out and perform remarkably in the Octagon.

“It does blow me away, though, when I see Werdum just got the belt at 37 and then you see Mark Hunt still fighting at 40,” Penn said. “All these different things. It is amazing. I don’t know. They’re out there, they’re doing it. It ain’t the technique, it ain’t the speed, it ain’t the power. It’s who wants it the most. Over time, maybe as you start getting into it, the people start coming along that love it more than you do.”

In the end, the ‘Prodigy’ is proud that he was able to step aside and remain at peace with himself, even though he relishes the feeling of being the baddest man on the planet. In the end, he simply knows that his body no longer want to work for it.

“I’ve got no desire to jump into training camp and try to go out there.”

Transcription taken from MMAFIghting.com.

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About the author
Karim Zidan
Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.

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