Is B.J. Penn’s MMA career finally over?
Last September, B.J. Penn was released from his UFC contract after being in the promotion for nearly two decades. A former UFC Lightweight Champion, Penn will always go down as one of the best fighters to ever grace the octagon. The Hawaii native has had classic bouts against names such as Matt Hughes, Diego Sanchez, and Georges St-Pierre.
Unfortunately, the latter half of the UFC Hall of Famer's career saw the 41-year-old set an unprecedented record, with B.J. Penn being the only man to score seven consecutive losses in the UFC. Still, Penn’s problems outside of the octagon are what ultimately got him released, with the former UFC fighter taking part in several incidents outside of a bar in Hawaii.
Since his release, Penn has mostly remained silent on his departure from the UFC, but recently, the former Lightweight Champion hopped on Instagram Live and revealed if he plans on fighting elsewhere, and it does sound like we’ve seen the last of B.J. Penn for the time being (Transcript courtesy of MMA Junkie):
“It takes a lot of work,” Penn said on a recent Instagram Live chat with longtime coach Jason Parillo. “It takes too much. Too much (expletive) work. At this age, it just takes too much (expletive) work. You never know what’s going to happen, but it takes so much work.”
However, Penn hasn’t completely ruled out fighting inside the octagon again as he hasn’t really settled on life outside of mixed martial arts:
“If I can get anything else going it would be nice,” Penn said. “If I could get anything else going in life than just a fist fight, it would be nice. But it’s so fun and I love the process and all those things about it. Then you get in the gym and start doing good with active fighters and next thing you know you’re trying to fight and biting off more than you can chew. You might be, you might not be. But the process itself it’s a lot to just do a camp or whatever.”
The fighter goes on to say that he doesn’t feel like he has anything left to prove; however, he loves to fight, which is why he continues lacing up the gloves. Of course, Penn understands that it doesn’t make sense to keep getting hurt.