BJ Penn’s longtime striking coach Jason Parillo appeared recently on Submission Radio and discussed The Prodigy’s disastrous main event fight vs. Yair Rodriguez, and the future.
The coach was asked if the BJ Penn/Yair Rodriguez match up was wrong and if Penn should have been fighting another legend instead.
Of course, of course,” he said.” I mean, from the get-goo. Not too long ago he was matched up with the Dennis Siver. That fell through. His match up with Cole Miller, that fell through. Those are the fights that I want to see right now. That’s where we can really see if BJ has a chance to come back.
“You can’t… he got in there with a 24-year-old kid that’s all cylinders are firing and he’s just got confidence and he knows the promotion’s promoting him and he knows they want to invest some years into this kid because we know he’s got a lot of talent. And all these conversations of course have been said and had. I mean, it’s not like I was like, oh duh.
“I’ve been doing this game, doing what I do, paying my bills for-f***ing-ever here. And no, [it ’s not like] we just went in blind, like no, we’re going to f***ing kill Yair Rodriguez. We know the situation and I know it’s a tough fight, it’s a really tough fight. It’s not a fight, like I’ve told you guys before on the show, BJ’s gonna go in that cage with me or without me. With Greg Jackson, without Greg Jackson or Winkeljohn or whoever the coach that he’s worked with in the past. If he decides he wants to fight, whoever says, ‘No he shouldn’t,’ he doesn’t give a f*** about. He’s going to go in there.
“So you know me, I’ve always supported BJ. And you know what’s so good about BJ, is that we had Bruce Leeroy, Alex Caceres who had a split decision loss with Yair and a very similar style, very similar flash and all that athletic ability, and BJ must have sparred three or four weeks with this kid and he was doing really well with him. You know, really well and winning most rounds and even getting him in submissions and you know what BJ does, taking backs and choking you. And if you ask, he was looking good. He was really looking good. He was in there with some good sparring, good training, good conditioning. It’s just that at the end of the day, the closest you can simulate a fight is sparring, but next to that is the fighting. And having that long of a layoff with a kid with reflexes like a cat, I mean it was a tough deal and BJ felt that out there.
Wouldn’t it be nice for a matchmaker to call up BJ Penn when he says he wants to come back after a two-and-a-half-year layoff, hasn’t won since 2010 and say, ‘Hey man, we want you to come back. Yeah, we’d love to give you a fight. And let’s give you whoever – Joe Bloggs.’ It doesn’t matter, give us a 35-year-old guy. The guy won two world titles, he’s done everything for the company, he’s never said no to any fights, he’s made himself and the company plenty of money. It’d be nice to kind of get the opportunity to shake off a little rust and put BJ in there with a guy that, you know, he’s got a better chance than a four and a half to one. Four and a half to one is a pretty big spread.
“It’s so tough. That’s my friend in there. Like you said, we are very close and it’s difficult to watch when he falls short. This fight – I’ve seen him in tougher spots. Let me make sense. Has he been put on his back before and has he been stopped before? He’s been stopped before, yeah. Was he stopped that night? Yes. But I’ve seen him go through a little bit more damage. I mean the fight with GSP, when you got a 190-pound guy that weighed 170, sitting on top of him and dropping elbows on his head for five minutes, for ten minutes – that’s a whole different animal. This kid put it on him. And you know, BJ’s fine, fortunately, and that’s obviously a concern of mine. And one of the most important things is that he comes out safe and there’s no damages and he’s not taking damage for the future.
The coach described what it was like backstage post-fight.
“It’s a scene that we’ve been through before,” he said. “He was disappointed, obviously. Of course he’s disappointed. At the same time, what we even talked about leading up to this point, it’s different. Once you get under those lights and you’ve got those thousands of people in the audience, it’s just a whole different pressure. You know, it’s something that there’s an endurance to that in itself. That’s why when you’re off for two-and-a-half years, there’s an endurance to actually dealing with that. I mean, the pressure, the adrenaline’s gonna come, and some guy’s going to be trying to kill you, you’re trying to kill him. I mean again, there’s no way to stimulate that [other] than the fight, and he felt rusty. He said in there he felt like, you know, he felt good, he felt great. I’ve never seen him feel that good.
“I’ll be honest, before he walked into the fight, he goes, ‘Jason I feel good. Like, normally I’m worried about the way I feel. I feel amazing.’ And again, you can’t simulate time and you can’t simulate distance. You can’t simulate a quick, young 24-year-old kid. You can do as much as you can in sparring. I’m gonna say it over and over again and reiterate it, but rust is real. And I’ve heard fighters in the past say, ‘There’s no such as thing as ring rust.’ Well bulls***. Maybe not for you, tough guy, but it’s there – especially when you haven’t had success leading up to that ring rust.
“BJ Penn’s the only guy I know that hasn’t won a fight since 2010 and they’ll give him a main event fight against the number four guy in the division, or whatever. Do you see a lot of guys getting that opportunity? No, you don’t. But they know he’ll do it. They know he won’t say no and they know he will take on everybody. He prefers to fight the top ten guys. I mean, I would’ve loved to be the guy to be able to pick the fight, but that’s not my job and that’s not my position. But I would’ve loved to have been that guy, I’ll tell you that much.
So will Penn fight again?
“This is BJ Penn. If you say the name BJ Penn, there’s only one thing you’re going to be thinking about, is the fighter BJ Penn, and that’s what he is,” said Parillo. “And I said it and they put a camera on me and interviewed me at the fight, and they were asking me, ‘Do you think he’ll fight again?’ And like I said, I’m gonna encourage him to think about doing something else.
“But I do not see, you know… the promotion has to say no to him before he says he doesn’t want to fight again. It would be my guess. I’m just guessing. I’m just saying that. Does his family want him to fight again? I don’t know, I haven’t talked to anybody. Do I want him to fight again? I never wanna see him fight again against these. … If he fights again, I want it to be [against] a 38-year-old man, lost his last couple of fights. You know what I mean? And let’s see if there’s a fight there. But in all reality, it’s BJ Penn. Most of his fans don’t want to see him fight anymore, because again, they’re looking at it from the fan aspect. They don’t realize the wolves he’s getting thrown to, they don’t realize the business aspect of the fight game, I guess some of them, some of the ignorant ones.
“But who knows what BJ’s gonna do. Whatever he does I’m gonna support him, and if everybody around him and if I see him in the gym and it looks like he wants to fight again and it looks like he shouldn’t, of course I’ll be recommending that he doesn’t. But if I say, ‘No, don’t fight anymore,’ BJ’s just gonna go off and go somewhere else.
Parillo also offered a prediction for Saturday’s Tito Ortiz vs. Chael Sonnen main event at Bellator 170.
I see the original Huntington Beach Bad Boy style going off on our boy Chael Sonnen,” he said. “I know they’re both wrestlers, I know Chael was a better wrestler, obviously beat him in college, but I see Tito setting Chael up with some nice punches, maybe even putting him on the floor with the shot and getting the old elbows on top of his head.
