Interview with BJ Penn’s coach Rudy Valentino
Fresh off the plane, Penn’s coach Rudy Valentino spoke with Cage Potato about what went wrong in the fight and…
Fresh off the plane, Penn’s coach Rudy Valentino spoke with Cage Potato about what went wrong in the fight and what is next for Penn.
EC: All three judges scored the fight for Frankie Edgar – for what it’s worth I scored the fight for Edgar as well – but every single round was close and was difficult to score. How did you view the outcome?
RV: One judge scored every round for Edgar but what I saw in the fight when I was watching it, and I haven’t watched it again on tape, but watching it as it happened, I felt that BJ won the first three rounds. The fourth round was even and I think he lost the last round. So I feel BJ won the fight. He was also battling a sinus infection and was on antibiotics, so he was not one hundred percent. I’m not making any excuses, that is just what happened. I didn’t see him lose that fight but I did see him lose the last round. As for effectiveness of punches, I thought BJ had it. Frankie got two takedowns but BJ got up real fast and nothing happened on the ground there, so I don’t know if they could score the fight based on those two takedowns.
What went wrong in the fight to make it closer than you all had wanted it to be?
RV: One of the mistakes, well, I wouldn’t say mistakes, but one thing that BJ couldn’t do this fight was get his combinations off. He would throw one punch at a time. It was one punch and then come back with one punch. When he came back in the corner in between rounds I told him to try and get more punches in and to go from punches to takedowns – to work something on the ground. From the second round on I was telling him to take it to the ground. I even told him that if Edgar took him down to keep it on the ground that way as well. Once I saw that Edgar was doing pretty good with his standup, I thought it was a good idea to take it to the ground.
EC: if you had your way as a coach, you’d want an automatic rematch for BJ against Frankie?
RV: Straight to the rematch. I was talking to BJ and we are looking for a straight automatic rematch. We don’t know when but we’d like it in Hawaii.