Penn uninterested in Strikeforce, still uncertain about return
“I guess being a competitor, you always have that itch. But what it is is…it’s tough,” Penn said with a…
“I guess being a competitor, you always have that itch. But what it is is…it’s tough,” Penn said with a laugh. “The training camps are tough, going through that. I’ve been with the UFC for ten years going through different things. All the different personalities you gotta deal with. I still look at some of the guys up there and of course being a competitor ‘You know, I could beat that guy or I could do well with that guy.’ It’s just a tough question.”
Interestingly, though, Penn confirmed reports that Strikeforce lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez was offered to him and that he ultimately turned the fight down. “It was right after the Nick Diaz fight,” Penn acknowledged.
“[White] offered a fight against Gilbert Melendez in Strikeforce. We sat down and we thought about it for a little while. We talked back and forth. It was kind of one of those things where I guess at the end of the day we thought about it a thousand different ways and we were like ‘Is that downgrading yourself fighting in Strikeforce? If you win the Strikeforce title are people going to say you did it because you couldn’t win the UFC title?'”
“At the end of the day, it just didn’t make sense to us,” Penn said.