Opinion: The Complicated Decline of B.J. Penn

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The Ultimate Fighting Championship announced on Wednesday night’s edition of “UFC Tonight” that B.J. Penn, apparently undaunted by his second round technical knockout loss to Yair Rodriguez in January, will return on the promotion’s June 25 card in Oklahoma City. The fight, originally booked for UFC 199 last June, was derailed by an injury to Siver, and an alleged unauthorized use of intravenous infusions by Penn killed his replacement fight against Cole Miller. Meanwhile, the UFC was sold, and when Penn was finally ready again, the surprisingly appropriate Siver and Miller fights went to the wayside to make room for Rodriguez.

We don’t know what would have happened if Penn stayed on UFC 199, but we can be pretty sure that he would have done better than he did two months ago. What’s changed since then is that we finally got a definitive answer to something that’s been puzzling the mixed martial arts world for a while: Is Penn shot? Until the Rodriguez fight, there were always excuses you could give as to how he’s looked since his last win in 2010. Now? Not so much.

The weird part, though, is that those excuses were at least somewhat valid. Valid enough, at least, that we don’t actually know when “Baby Jay” actually started his decline. Think about it: When would you actually say it happened?

Was it when he lost the lightweight title to Frankie Edgar and also dropped the immediate rematch? It certainly didn’t seem like it at the time, and looking back now, there’s not much evidence to use in such an argument. Penn arguably should have won the first fight, and while the rematch was much more decisive, Edgar is a legitimate great fighter and a tricky stylistic matchup.

Penn then moved up to welterweight, starching Matt Hughes in 21 seconds. Not bad, eh? In his next fight, he battled Jon Fitch to a draw when Fitch was still a top ten welterweight, albeit one who, with hindsight, was clearly on the downslide. He lost a brutal decision to Nick Diaz the next time out, but you can argue that the particularities of the matchup don’t reflect badly on Penn at all. Over 13 months later, he took an even worse beating against Rory MacDonald, and that’s where things get really murky.

Penn clearly should not have been fighting at welterweight by that point. This wasn’t Donald Cerrone moving up from 155 to 170, someone with the right frame for the larger weight class who was depleting himself with weight cuts to make the lighter division’s limit. He wasn’t Robert Whitaker, who will be undersized against the top middleweights, but has been successful since moving up from 170 to 185 because his style helps make up for the size gap. This was a small lightweight who moved up after losing his title to another undersized fighter in the same division.

Instead of doing what he did when he lost to Georges St. Pierre for the second time and rededicating himself to being the best lightweight in the world, Penn...retired...but not really? There was a huge question mark surrounding his place in the sport, because there was no indication as of yet that he couldn’t just go back down to lightweight and go on a title run. Hell, Edgar had lost the title 10 months earlier, and the new champion, Benson Henderson, was already defending the title for the second time on the same card as the MacDonald fight. The losses to Edgar suddenly meant very little.

Clearly, that’s not what Penn was thinking, because he basically begged Dana White for another Edgar fight, this time at 145 pounds. Outward appearances suggested Penn was doing the right things, having already gotten his weight down. With hindsight, there was probably something up with “The Prodigy,” because the fight was announced a whopping 10 months in advance thanks to them coaching “The Ultimate Fighter 19.” Maybe the extra long wait had more to do with their season’s airing being delayed (so Fox Sports 1 could carry “TUF Nations,” which actually started taping days after TUF 19 did) than anything else, but it stands as a bizarre footnote looking back.

When the fight finally happened, it should have answered any questions about Penn being shot. He put in one of the most embarrassing major fight performances in modern UFC history en route to a stoppage loss and subsequently retired...but then Edgar promptly put a similar beating on a top ranked featherweight on a massive winning streak in Cub Swanson. Oh, and B.J. was also noticeable dehydrated in that fight.

Questions still lingered, even if just a little bit: What if Penn recovered from the weight cut properly? What if he picked an unfavorable matchup and didn’t fight like someone who had never seen MMA before? The Rodriguez fight answered most of those questions by showing just how much athleticism he has lost, but we still don’t really know when that happened.

Siver is the only opponent for Penn in the UFC that makes any sense, another aging veteran, and one who has looked noticeably deflated since returning from a PED suspension. If Penn is still fighting, this should be the matchup to see where he stands. Even if he wins here, which isn’t a ridiculous thought to entertain, it could embolden him to keep going.