The “Greatest Fighting Mind” Prepares for the “Greatest Athlete”

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By Thomas Gerbasi

November 15th, 2008. It’s 77 days away from his challenge for Georges St-Pierre’s welterweight title, but BJ Penn already has his game face on. As far as Hilo’s finest is concerned, the fight has already begun.

“I’ve already started doing the mental preparation,” said Penn at the MGM Grand press conference to officially announce January 31st’s highly-anticipated UFC 94 main event. “I feel like I’m already one week out from the fight. I’m not peaking too soon, but my coaches and everybody, we’re having the ‘one week out’ talk three months out, and we’re just pumped for this. But we’ve been at this for a long time though, so it’s not like we’re gonna go over the edge and fall off.”

Penn, the current UFC lightweight champion, knows what he’s doing. He knows when to push and when to pull, and he also knows that he’s at his best when he’s pushing the envelope. Safe fights? He doesn’t want them. If there’s not high risk involved, then there will be no high reward. And the rematch with St-Pierre brings both, especially since each fighter has progressed significantly since their first meeting at UFC 58 in March of 2006, won by St-Pierre via split decision.

At that time, Penn was returning to the UFC for the first time since his stunning upset of Matt Hughes two years earlier. To the fans who first started following the UFC after the premiere of The Ultimate Fighter, Penn was almost like an urban legend. St-Pierre, on the other hand, was the young gun who rebounded from a loss to Hughes with dominant wins over Dave Strasser, Jason Miller, Frank Trigg, and Sean Sherk. A win over Penn would cement a rematch with then-champion Hughes, but after a first round dominated by ‘The Prodigy’ it looked like St-Pierre would be heading back home to Montreal that night with a loss, not a title shot.

Penn wasn’t overconfident when the round ended; he was still very wary of his talented foe. But what was really going to be a problem was Penn’s gas tank.

“I never disrespect my opponent halfway through the fight because all it takes is one punch or one kick and the fight’s done,” he said. “I went back to my corner (after the first round) and I thought, ‘I’m a little tired, but it’s not so bad.’ We started fighting some more and I come back to the corner after the second round and I’m thinking ‘I don’t feel too strong right now. My body doesn’t feel too good, I’m gonna take Georges down, throw a couple punches,’ but he defended it well, and the rest is history – the fight ended up the way it did.”

St-Pierre roared back to take the next two rounds on two of the three scorecards, which was all he needed for the split decision victory. St-Pierre would go on to win the welterweight title, lose it, and regain it, while Penn dropped to lightweight after a second straight loss at 170 (to Hughes) and won the lightweight crown. All the while, he kept an eye on St-Pierre.

“I pretty much always had it (a rematch) on my radar,” said Penn. “It’s not like I was thinking about it every night, but I knew that after I lost a split decision to Georges, I got the rematch with Matt Hughes, and of course in a fighter’s head, I’m thinking ‘I’m gonna get the belt back and rematch Georges.’ It didn’t work out that way, I ended up in the lightweight division, and as soon as I got the lightweight title, I was like ‘right here, I can already start talking to (UFC President) Dana (White). Let’s go, me and Georges.’”

With St-Pierre having defeated Jon Fitch in the first title defense of his second reign and Penn having dispatched Sean Sherk in his first defense, White has granted Penn’s wish. So does the Hawaii native come into this fight with added confidence knowing that even with his gas tank empty in rounds two and three of the first bout that he still was in a fight that could have gone either way?

“The confidence doesn’t come from there,” explains Penn. “Honestly, the confidence comes from the fact and the focus that I want to do this thing. Georges is so much better than the last time we fought. I’m not just gonna go in there and start unloading my hands and he’s gonna start getting confused and getting beat up. He’s got about ten other answers when I start doing this to him and they’re going to go back and watch the tape and formulate another 20 ideas about what to do when BJ starts doing all these things. He’s gonna be ready.”

Penn pauses and points to his left bicep – “But it ain't here.”

He then points to his temple – “It’s here.”

Then his chest – “And it’s here.”

He’s not kidding, especially on the last note. It takes more than the average person’s supply of heart to even step into the Octagon and fight. To do so against someone who outweighs you by 15 pounds is even more impressive. Penn hasn’t even stopped there, fighting larger opponents like current UFC light heavyweight contender Lyoto Machida and Renzo and Rodrigo Gracie in the past. For him, fighting anyone, regardless of size, is not only a tribute to his early heroes – the Gracie family – but something at the heart of jiu-jitsu.

“Jiu-jitsu was created where the small man can beat the big man, and I’ve been doing jiu-jitsu since I was 17 years old, and that has always stuck in my head throughout all the time and all the way until now,” said Penn. “It’s ingrained in me that I believe I have a chance. I know that something’s gonna happen, the guy’s gonna make a mistake and I’m gonna get that armlock or get that choke.”

It’s a philosophy that has given UFC President Dana White headaches, but it’s also made Penn a hero to a legion of MMA fans, who have taken not only to the 29-year old’s warrior’s instincts, but to his mystique, something which is aided by his decision to keep training camp far from the mainland. And that’s precisely the point, said Penn.

“(I do it) because you’re always wondering what I’m doing and what I’m up to,” he said. “You got all the greatest fighters in the world training at Xtreme Couture; I love Randy (Couture), but you don’t see me walking in there. And besides Randy, who knows what I do, all the others are saying ‘What the hell is BJ doing out there in the middle of the island?’ But we’re polished; we know what we’re doing.”

That means despite his eagerness to get to January 31st, he’s not risking getting burned out too soon.

“Whenever you get tired, take a week off,” he said. “Everybody’s got these ideas about peaking and all this other stuff, but when you’re tired and say, ‘man, I’m burnt, I don’t want to do this, take a week off – stop, go have fun, go to the beach, you’ll feel great when you get back.”

It’s taken a long time for Penn to get to this point – over seven years and 19 fights – but as he approaches the age of 30, he knows what he’s doing, what he’s capable of, and what’s at stake when he fights St-Pierre. And on Super Bowl weekend, he’s got two extra rounds to get it right against the welterweight champion in what he promises will be a fight to remember.

“The shape I’m gonna be in, it’s gonna be a thing of who wants it more,” said Penn. “He’s this good, I’m this good (holds both hands up to the same level). I feel I’m better technically, but when you’re such a great athlete, you have no choice but to always use your athleticism when you cannot do the technique right. You can make things work just because you’re a great athlete. I’m an athlete, but I wouldn’t say I’m a gifted athlete. He is. I’m gifted up here (points to his temple). I’m not gifted throughout my body. I’m flexible and a strong guy. But this is the greatest athlete in the world against the greatest fighting mind in the world. That’s what you’ve got right here.”

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