Is BJ Penn a bad guy?
Is B.J. Penn misunderstood? B.J. Penn’s not a bad guy, though he plays one on TV. The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s…
Is B.J. Penn misunderstood?
B.J. Penn’s not a bad guy, though he plays one on TV.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s fabulously talented lightweight titleholder is also its biggest enigma. Some see him as a spoiled rich kid who speaks before he thinks and pouts if he doesn’t get his way, but Penn insists that’s a description of him spoken by a person who doesn’t know him.
He wasn’t happy with the way he was portrayed on the UFC Primetime series on Spike TV that was broadcast prior to his January welterweight title fight at UFC 94 in Las Vegas against Georges St. Pierre.
He’s also begun to voice his displeasure with several mixed martial arts websites and blogs that he believes haven’t been fair to him over the years.
J.D. Penn, B.J.’s brother and manager, said the show wouldn’t work unless there was a good guy and a bad guy.
You had St. Pierre, so they took B.J. and made him look like the bad guy, he said. It was like in boxing what they did with (Oscar) De La Hoya and (Floyd) Mayweather Jr. They needed that. B.J. is more vocal, he’s around town, he talks to kids, he does a lot of stuff.
They made it look like he wasn’t training and isn’t dedicated to the sport. And they didn’t show the good things that B.J. does. They didn’t show him going to schools, talking to kids, signing autographs and doing whatever he can to promote the sport. They just grabbed onto the fact he wasn’t training, in their perception, as hard as he should be. And they decided to focus on that and not show all the other things good he does. That was a way to get the good guy against the bad guy thing they needed.
The spoiled rich kid theme is one that arose again after Penn filed a complaint with the Nevada Athletic Commission following his one-sided loss to St. Pierre, alleging that St. Pierre was greasing.