Penn: I want to leave everything in the octagon
During an interview with FUEL TV’s “UFC Tonight,” Penn talked about his desire to walk away from the sport of…
During an interview with FUEL TV’s “UFC Tonight,” Penn talked about his desire to walk away from the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), leaving the fans with a fond memory of who he was as a fighter:
“The reason why I came back to fight Rory, after he put that challenge out, is, you know, Rory is a guy with a lot of hype around him. It’s a lot of good hype, ya know? It’s justified. He’s been doing very well. I wanted to go up against him, Firas, the whole Tri-Star team. The have a real good thing going on up there, and I wanna take a crack at it. I had the fight with them, I think it’s a few years ago now, and I really feel that I could have put on a better performance. I wanna give it another shot, and I wanna walk away, after that, knowing that everything was left in the Octagon.”
“This is exactly what I needed. It’s got everything that interests me, you know? The Canadian fans, I have a lot of Canadian fans that always come down and tell me “hi” when I’m in Hawaii — stop by my gym and stuff. But there were also a lot of Canadian fans that were really hard on me because of some of the stuff I said in the ‘Prime Time’ leading up. Ya know, I said some things about Firas. I said some things about ‘GSP.’ I know that’s the past, but I wanna go up there and show them that, hey, I’m someone to be reckoned with. When I’m standing across in the Octagon, this is gonna be a tough fight. This isn’t gonna be a walkthrough. This isn’t gonna be, ‘Let’s go push B.J. Penn up against the fence. Hold him on the fence for a little bit and now we got him.’ You know, I got some ideas going into this camp, and I think it’s gonna be great. The fans are the ones who are gonna win in the end.”
