BJ Penn has revealed he hates being labelled the greatest lightweight of all time, insisting the tag is 'fake' and pure 'bull****'.
Penn enters the UFC 118 main event in the unusual position of challenger, as he attempts to reclaim the UFC lightweight championship from Frankie Edgar. However, despite the fact that Edgar beat Penn just four months ago, the Prodigy remains the favourite. He has only lost one lightweight clash in eight years since defeat to Jens Pulver, and he is still regarded as the best lightweight of all time.
Such labels mean nothing to Penn though, who insists it all means nothing until the fight is over.
"When I first started fighting I thought I was God's gift to fighting. I thought I would go 100 in a row with 100 knockouts. I sit back and I look at my record and I can't believe that I have six losses. It just blows me away.
"When you hear people say you're the greatest lightweight of all time, it's bull****. It's not real. It's fake. Being the champ is fake, all of that is all fake. You just go out there, you've got to keep training, keep training as hard as you can and keep winning fights. The only thing that's real is the fight. Everything else is fake."
Penn admits he got sloppy ahead of his loss to Edgar at UFC 112, which saw the new champion outwork and outthink him. And the Prodigy even admits he learned some new moves off Edgar in the fight.
"Every time that you get a loss you take a different path and you get back on the right journey of why you started this thing in the first place. Of course, if I had won that fight I would have changed nothing in my game and set myself up to fall even harder in the future.
"Frankie actually did some things that impressed me and that I started adding to my game. I liked how he didn't hold on to the takedowns too much and just kind of broke away. And I like how he did some different things and no matter who you are in the ring with they're always teaching you and you're always constantly learning."
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