Issue 008

October 2005

BJ Penn’s exemplary career in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) didn’t start in the ring, the cage or the gym. It actually started in the backyard, where he and his buddies would throw on the boxing gloves and spar; no weight classes, no pretensions, just a bunch of kids throwing down to see who stood tall at the end of the day.

Fact file: BJ Penn

• Weight: 180lbs (82kg)
• Height: 5’9 (175cm)
• MMA record: 10 - 2 - 1 (win-loss-draw)
• Date of birth: 12/13/78 
• Nick Name: The Prodigy
• City: Hilo
• State: Hawaii
• Country: USA
• Style: Jiu-Jitsu
• Association: BJ Penn’s MMA

His initial foray into organized fighting came when a local Tae Kwon Do instructor (Tom Callos) in his neighborhood saw the boys boxing and continually invited Penn to come to his school to.train. When he finally took up Callos on his offer, he didn’t learn any Tae Kwon Do at all. Instead, Callos used jiu-jitsu to choke out the teenage Penn. He was hooked.

Penn took to jiu-jitsu like a fish to water. Through Callos he met and furthered his training with Ralph Gracie before turning to Andre Pederneiras. He earned his black belt in just four years, which is nearly unheard of. Unlike other martial arts, most Brazilian Jiu-jitsu students that make it that far take nearly ten years to earn the black belt designation. In 2000 he was the first American ever to go to the Mundial Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championships, the most prestigious jiu-jitsu tournament in the world, and win.

In short, he was a grappling phenomenon, quickly dubbed ‘The Prodigy’ due to his unreal natural ability. Of course, the fact that he trained twice a day, five to six days a week, didn’t hurt his progress either.

In fact, he was such a tremendous grappler that he became one of the only modern-era fighters to make his MMA debut in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the premier mixed martial arts fighting organization in the United States. Though he was such a prodigious grappler, Penn stayed true to his Hawaiian fighting roots and came to the Octagon with more than submissions on his mind. 

In May of 2001, the year following his win at the Mundials, Penn debuted at UFC 31 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Surprising nearly everyone that knew anything about the fascinating young grappler, he manhandled Joey Gilbert, finishing him off with a flurry of devastating strikes, not a flashy whirlwind of submissions as expected, to christen his new career in MMA. 

Not one to rest on his laurels, Penn returned to the Octagon at UFC 32 only to do the same thing to veteran fighter Din Thomas. Only it wasn’t the same, he actually took care of Thomas in just two and a half minutes, little more than half the time it took him to finish off Gilbert in his debut.

Stepping into the cage at UFC 34, just three months later, most onlookers felt that Penn would be facing the toughest test of his young career in Cãol Uno. At that time, Uno was 13-4-2. He had faced Jens Pulver in the first ever UFC Bantamweight Championship (later designated the Lightweight Championship), only to come up short losing to a majority decision.

With a record of 2-0, most fighters would be intimidated by such a list of accomplishments, but if he was intimidated, Penn didn’t show it at all. In a career-defining moment, as Uno and Penn met in the center of the ring, Penn drove Uno back into the cage with one of the most brutal barrages of punches ever seen in the Octagon. He knocked Uno out in just 11 seconds, leaving him slumped against the fence.

Much like his meteoric rise in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Penn’s three wins, all three by knockout, propelled him into title contention in record time. Two months after crushing Uno, Penn stepped up to face Jens Pulver. Toward the end of the second round, he slapped an armbar on the UFC champion and locked it out. With victory just moments away, the bell sounding the end of the round came a split second sooner. 

Pulver has since mentioned that he thought he was done after that round, if not for one of Penn’s corner men. Evidently, one of the guys in Penn’s corner made a throat-cutting motion that lit a fire under Pulver. Through the remainder of the fight, it was Pulver that was able to take control long enough to walk away with a majority decision, his belt still intact.

Following that fight Pulver entered into contract negotiations with the UFC. Unfortunately, the chasm between them was wide enough that neither would budge. In a bold move that has been highly debated ever since, Pulver left the UFC. He has spent years in a struggle to regain the stature that he once had as UFC champion, but the fact is, he left the UFC Lightweight Championship vacant. 

With his blazing rise to the top, it was almost a foregone conclusion that Penn would eventually become the next lightweight king. He seemed to bounce back admirably from the loss to Pulver with a dominating TKO victory over Paul Creighton at UFC 37. 

At UFC 39 Penn defeated Matt Serra by a lackluster decision in the first round of a four-man lightweight tournament. The other side of the bracket featured two fighters that Penn had already beaten in his short career, Din Thomas and Cãol Uno, with Uno emerging as his opponent in the final.

Five months later, at UFC 41, Penn and Uno finally met to decide the new lightweight champ. The battle went back and forth for over five rounds, but it seemed that Penn had been the controlling factor through the majority of the fight. Unfortunately for Penn, the UFC, and the fans, the judges didn’t see it quite that way. In an ironic turn of events, the fight was ruled a draw. No lightweight champion was crowned on that night and the UFC has seen fit to leave that title slot unfilled ever since. 

Just prior to Penn’s second bout with Uno, he and his family had started their own fight promotion in Hawaii entitled ‘Rumble on the Rock’. After two near misses at the much-coveted title belt, Penn took nearly eight months off before resurfacing in October of 2003. But after amassing a 5-1-1 record in the UFC, Penn decided to branch out and took a fight in his own Rumble on the Rock show. 

Always wanting to be crowned the best fighter in the world, Penn knew the only way to be seen as such was to fight the best. He never avoided fighting tough competition and his return to the ring was no exception. Penn faced Takanori Gomi — almost unanimously regarded as the number one lightweight fighter in the world at the time — in Hawaii. 

Much like his fight with Pulver, this turned out to be a very tough fight for Penn. Although he seemed in control for most of the fight, it was halfway through the third round before he could find his opening. At 2:38 of the third Penn sunk the rear naked choke that he had been looking for and submitted Gomi. With the victory over Gomi, Penn laid claim to being the World Lightweight Champion.

Stepping outside of the UFC to face Gomi seemed to spark a newly ignited competitive fire in Penn, which he seemed to have been lacking after the loss to Pulver. He returned once more to the UFC, this time to do something that is rarely done in modern MMA. He went up a weight class to challenge champion Matt Hughes for his UFC Welterweight belt. 

While most questioned whether he would have the strength to hold his own against Hughes, it never came down to a question of strength. With less than a minute left in the first round, Penn once again locked on a rear naked choke and with it took Hughes’ title.

In little more than three months Penn had made his return to fighting and taken out the number one lightweight and welterweight fighters in the world. In retrospect, that was only the beginning of a new era for Penn.

Following his victories over Gomi and Hughes, Penn started to see the bigger picture for what he felt was in store for his career. Still wanting to be recognized as the greatest fighter in the world, he felt that he needed to graze in other pastures to attain that designation. No longer content to confine himself to the UFC, or even the US for that matter, Penn decided that he wanted to take a fight in Japan for K-1, the number one martial arts promotion in the world. 

The UFC felt otherwise. UFC president Dana White gave Penn an ultimatum: stay with the UFC and the UFC alone, or relinquish the title he had just won from Hughes. Not one to bow down, Penn did what he felt was best for himself and walked away from the UFC, hoping that they would change their minds and keep him on the roster as champion. Of course, they didn’t. The UFC ended up stripping Penn of his title.

He went ahead with his plans to fight in K-1 and after having some difficulty finding an opponent; he stepped into the ring in Japan against Duane Ludwig on May 22, 2004. Ludwig is a powerful striker who was riding pretty high at the time, fighting mainly in K-1’s kickboxing division. Although Ludwig posed a serious threat on the feet, Penn was smart enough not to match stand-up skills with him and immediately took Ludwig down and submitted him with a side choke in less than two minutes. 

Following his victory over Ludwig he returned to Rumble on the Rock six months later to challenge himself once again. If people thought him insane for stepping up to fight Hughes, you can only imagine what everyone was saying when he decided to step up to the 185lb middleweight division to face Rodrigo Gracie. He wasn’t able to finish off the 5-0 Gracie, but even at the heavier weight, Penn dominated throughout and walked away with a unanimous decision.

Seemingly unstoppable, Penn then took his quest to become the best fighter in the world to the far extremes of reality. Four months after defeating Rodrigo Gracie, Penn would face his biggest challenge to date. Returning to Japan to fight on the inaugural K-1 Heroes show, he chose to square off with undefeated heavyweight fighter Ryoto ‘Lyoto’ Machida. The fight again went the distance and Penn could not seem to find an answer for the strength of the larger Lyoto. Facing his only loss since Pulver, a unanimous decision, Penn nevertheless made it through the fight and was never really hurt by Lyoto, he just couldn’t get out from under him. Having learned from the experience, he has since said that he believes the now knows how to win such a fight.

Continuing to toss the dice and land in whatever weight division caught his fancy, Penn returned to Hawaii to fight in the main event of K-1’s first-ever Hawaiian Grand Prix, a show co-promoted with Rumble on the Rock’s parent company, Rumble World Entertainment. Once again in the 185lb middleweight division, Penn took on the challenge of another Gracie. This time, though, it would be the legendary Renzo Gracie. 

Following the pattern of his fights above welterweight, the fight with Renzo was, once again, somewhat lackluster and went to another decision. But it was Penn that returned to the winner’s circle having maintained the offensive advantage throughout the fight and earning another unanimous victory.

Whether you think him crazy or not, it’s difficult not to admire Penn’s attempts to step outside of the weight classes of the sport and look to establish a legacy for himself as the best fighter in the world. Could he rule if he maintained a specific weight class, especially one close to his natural weight? More than likely he would. Yet, there is just that animal appeal of his quest that attracts many fans.

t’s that brash attitude to buck the trends that may take Penn to new heights even beyond his career as a fighter. With his aforementioned involvement with Rumble on the Rock, Penn has the tools in place to take the rejection of the UFC to see and do things his way. 

Since leaving the UFC to fight in K-1, Penn has forged an alliance with the Japanese giant that has helped Rumble on the Rock quickly become the number two promotion in the United States, second only to the UFC. And with the roster of talent and the money from such an allegiance, Rumble on the Rock could parlay their partnership into the first real challenge that the UFC has seen since Zuffa took over as its owner. Only time will tell.

So, where does Penn’s fight career go from here if the UFC is nowhere in the near future? That’s difficult to say. There is never a shortage of Gracies to fight and there are other great fights to be lined up, like fellow UFC castoffs Frank Trigg at welterweight or Matt Lindland at middleweight. With Penn fighting at whatever weight he pleases, the options are limitless.

At just 26 years of age, the unpredictability of The Prodigy will probably keep us guessing for some time to come. One thing is for certain: BJ Penn won’t rest until he is the one that stands tall at the end of the day.