Would never doubt Daniel's ability to call a fight but I kind of prefer Brian Stann or Dominick Cruz.

Daniel Cormier's pretty much a 'company man' so he's stubbornly refusing to admit that fighters apologizing for bad performances tonight didn't mean they were bad fights...Daniel, those were some bad fights but of course, nobody wants to upset their paymasters or their fellow fighters so whatever.

Lauzon didn't win that fight, bad decision.

Yair/BJ about to start

Yair's headkicks are brutal

Loving this Rodriguez dude

No clue why BJ is in there vs that caliber of fighter. His family is rich so he doesn't need the $.

Must think having a functioning brain is overrated.

BJ would never sign to a fight vs some run of the mill dude, he has unreal heart - fought Machida for Christ's sake

and yeah he never needed $$ to begin with, just loved to fight

They can all **** off with Sunday fight nights.

Not happy I didn't see BJ Penn in his last ever fight.

Well if it makes you feel better all he did was get kicked in the head for 6 minutes by the future GOAT

Penn seems like one of those who's going to fight until he can't remember his own name. Kind of like Ken Shamrock.

This was clearly an instance of

* Penn calls the UFC and requests a fight
* UFC knows he's washed up but is happy to oblige him and give a nice bump to an up-and-coming star
* UFC picks the up-and-coming star most likely to benefit because he has an exciting style and is likely to annihilate Penn.

UFC played it perfectly. Get a decent Fight Night main event, pump up a future star, worked exactly as planned. Only mystery is why Penn thought he could hang, but that's just a standard 'fighters never realize they're washed up until 2-3 years too late'.

Also of interest was that Joe Lauzon posted on /r/MMA and said he disagreed with the decision. Joe's always seemed like a cool dude.

Yeah, he said so immediately in the post-fight interview with Jon Anik as well so going on Reddit to confirm his thoughts is surprising but a good PR move even if that wasn't his intention.

He's got a lot of goodwill from fans with an 'honest' answer rather than just the standard "Don't blame me! Judges gonna judge!" schtick.

BJ Penn has heart but his head and body certainly doesn't match it these days. No disgrace if he finally calls it a day. He paid $20k for Mike Dolce to help cut weight and get in shape for his third fight against Frankie Edgar in which BJ was paid $150k. No idea what BJ got paid for Sunday's beatdown though.

Or in BJ's case 5-6 years too late!

How does a guy like BJ end up washed up and a guy like Bisping get a belt? My mind boggles sometimes.

BJ was never that good.

I can buy this.

Lightweight is arguably the most stacked division in the UFC now but when he was running it who did he really beat? Sherk? Florian? Diego?

GSP steamrolled him in their superfight.

He has a ton of heart and you gotta love his commitment to the sport but he is just from a previous era where guys weren't as good.

BJ was amazing and immensely naturally talented, he just never adapted to modern MMA past 2007 or so.

In the early MMA days, he was an absolute ****ing terror. You have to remember that his heydey was more than a decade ago. He was at his best 2002-2007. He was the UFC LW champ from 07-09, but that wasn't his vintage self. In the early years he demolished some incredible fighters. Like

* Takanori Gomi. Gomi was 14-1 before fighting Penn, and after losing to Penn was 15-1 in his next 16 results. Penn beat him in the middle of Gomi's heyday
* Caol Uno in 11 seconds
* Bang Ludwig
* Din Thomas
* Matt Hughes at his peak

Penn had some startlingly amazing performances, and also some weirdly bad ones. The bad ones were usually excused as him being lazy or out of shape... because that was often true. But when he was on, he was remarkable. Those wins over Hughes and Gomi were essentially back-to-back wins over the #1 guys in the world in two different weight classes, and he demolished both of them when they were at their career peaks. People were willing to overlook his bad performances because he was crazy and would fight anyone (like Machida at heavyweight where he lost a close-ish decision. Or prime GSP where he lost a split decision), and because the excuses were mostly true.

He WAS lazy. He didn't do much/any conditioning. He didn't like to cut weight, never really had rigorous camps. He was just an ultra-talented guy who loved to fight and would scrap with anyone.

The whole Pulver/Sherk/Florian version of Penn was already in decline, and that was still good enough to win four LW title fights. The division was definitely weak in those days, but that wasn't peak Penn. Peak Penn was the wild man who did this

It's hard to overstate how naturally gifted Penn was. His nickname 'The Prodigy' comes from the fact that he got his BJJ Blackbelt in ~3.5 years and became the first non-Brazilian ever to travel to Brazil and win the Mundials black belt division. At age 21. As far as I can see, Penn may still hold the record for fastest legitimate time to blackbelt status in BJJ.

And despite all that, he was much more of a stand-and-bang fighter who wanted to knock you dead than a takedown artist. He really didn't go for his own takedowns all that often. He'd just destroy you standing instead.

The Penn trained by Marinovich for 2 fights in 2009 was a freakin' badass, the beating he put on Diego was one of the worse ever. But Penn split with Marinovich because he didn't want to train that hard and then went 1-6-1 from that point on. Up until Yair, all his losses were to super elite opponents.

Nate Diaz applying for a boxing license in Nevada. Hmm.

Also, surprised Chael/Tito didn't go harder with the antics to hype their fight on Saturday. I figured those two would be going straight WWE style. Still the weigh-in I guess.

So he's super talented and lazy?

i love all these MMA zomg GOAT HOF legends who have a career record of like 16-14

yeah but they had to in 3 feet of snow, uphill both ways, etc

It's not like Penn's losses came early. He was 9-1-1 at his peak, before he decided to go fight Machida at HW and GSP twice. And that actually matters because he was fighting elite fighters from the very beginning. It's not like boxing where you work your way up with 15-20 fights against cupcakes. Penn's second fight ever was against a top ten opponent. By his 9th fight he had already beaten the best LW in history up to that point and the best WW in history up to that point.

I'm sure he could have squashed a dozen cans in regional promotions if he wanted to, but what would have been the point? And he went 8 years unbeaten at LW, with losses during those eight years only to fighters much larger than him. If you want to mock his record, you're either mocking a fighter for hanging on or mocking him for daring to fight outside his weight class. Either is silly.

yeah this can't be more off in regards with BJ Penn

once he destroyed his weight class he literally only fought top 3 competition at least one or multiple weight classes above his

have Conor fight people like Weidman, Anderson Silva in his prime or Wonderboy exclusively and get back to me with his record in 5 years

My answer to Raz's ? about Penn and Bisping was going to be work ethic.