It was hard watching B.J. Penn take the horrendous beating he
did against Rory MacDonald on Saturday night at UFC on FOX 5.
Over the course of 15 minutes, MacDonald battered and bruised
the former two-division champion, nearly becoming the first man to stop Penn
cold when the legend started stumbling backwards earlier in the fight.
The
fight was so one-sided that I scored it 30-25 in favour of the young Canadian,
who was never threatened by Penn at any time.
If this fight doesn’t convince Penn that he needs to drop to
155 pounds in order to remain competitive at a high level, nothing will. For
Penn, it’s 155 pounds or retire at this point in his career.
Although I was convinced Penn was motivated to fight MacDonald,
he clearly couldn’t hang with the young prospect. In fact, with only one win in
his last six fights, and only a 1-2-1 record as a welterweight over that time,
it’s clear that Penn shouldn’t be fighting at 170 pounds.
But 155 pounds? Sign me up.
Even though he lost to Frankie Edgar twice, Edgar is himself
going to be a legend one day when we look back, and there’s no doubt the first
Penn/Edgar bout was a close one. And other than Edgar, Penn has pretty much
steamrolled anyone in his way at lightweight.
But Penn says he doesn’t want to “eat a chicken
salad” and train for six hours, and that at 33 years of age (he turns 34
this week), it’s just not feasible at where he is in life right now.
However, if he wants to continue his fighting career, he has to
make the drop the 155, because I don’t think UFC president Dana White – who
said Penn may retire – wants him fighting at 170 pounds any longer.
Let’s face it, Penn is a proud fighter, and that means he’s
stubborn. It might literally take someone killing him in the Octagon before he
forces his ghost to drop to 170. But honestly, I don’t even think we were that
far off from seeing that happen to him against MacDonald the other night.
If Penn plans to keep on fighting – and as a fan, I hope he
does – then it has to be at 155 pounds. But not at 170. And who knows? Maybe he
still has something left in the tank, and he just ran into a young killer the
other night in Seattle. The only way we’ll know is if he goes back to
lightweight. Then we’ll know.
