Yesterday’s UFC 101: “Declaration” media conference call gave UFC lightweight champion BJ Penn and current number one contender Kenny Florian a chance to square off before their Aug. 8 fight. The build-up was all part of the game for Penn, who frequently finds himself in a personal grudge match with his opponents heading into a bout.
“I don’t know how I get caught up in this stuff,” Penn explained, admitting that he’s had personal feuds with past opponents, including former lightweight champion Sean Sherk. “The Prodigy” famously accused Sherk of “cheating” after the “Muscle Shark” tested positive for banned substances following his title defense against Hermes Franca.
And then there’s reigning welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre.
“The whole GSP thing got started into hyping up the fight,” Penn says, “and then Prime Time wanted to portray me as an asshole instead of some guy passionate about winning his dream fight. And then Dana goes and calls and starts speaking about stuff he doesn’t even know about, saying I’m surrounded by yes-men. And then back and forth, and that just blew out of proportion.”
But beyond Penn’s criticism of Sherk and the media — even beyond his past feuds with former champions Matt Hughes and Jens Pulver — sits the grand-daddy of them all: “Greasegate,” or the infamous greasing scandal that rocked UFC 94: “St. Pierre vs. Penn 2.”
And this, albeit complicated enough, brings us to the current challenger to BJ Penn’s belt, Kenny Florian, who inadvertently found himself tied to the middle of the controversy because of a certain text message he may or may not have sent prior to the January 31st bout.
But thanks to the conference call, we now have both sides of the story … sort of.
In a nutshell: Florian claims he had a conversation with Dave Weintraub — a writer following Penn at the time — that referred to Florian’s previous opponent, Roger Huerta, as a greasy fighter and also told Weintraub to wish Penn “good luck” in his upcoming fight against Georges St. Pierre.
Penn claims the message received was that GSP greases, which, as Penn puts it, “actually led to us making the pre-bout warning in the fight at the arena when we got there” — the pre-fight warning being that the Penn camp warned ringside officials to keep an eye out for illegal greasing tactics used by GSP’s camp … which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that there were illegal greasing tactics used by GSP’s camp.
Thus followed the media frenzy that was “Greasegate.”
During yesterday’s conference call, Florian corrected stories from Penn’s camp that he ever accused GSP of greasing, saying he was only referring to Huerta, “Those are the only accusations that I’ve ever made about a fighter.”
And as the champion finally summed up, either Florian’s lying, Penn’s lying or Dave Weintraub got his texts confused.
“As far as that whole text message thing with Kenny. That’s small stuff. We gotta go in there and fight for the championship of the world. That’s small stuff, that text message stuff. (Laughs) I don’t know how I get caught up in all this stuff. (Laughs) I gotta laugh it off myself.”
Not sweating the small stuff may, in fact, be Penn’s best strategy, given his opponent’s considerable evolution in the sport since his UFC debut at The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) Finale back in April 2005. The TUF Season One Finale saw an out-sized and out-gunned Florian lose in the first round to Diego Sanchez in a middleweight contest.
Since then, Florian has dropped down two weight classes, earned a title shot for the then-vacant lightweight strap against Sean Sherk (which Florian lost in October 2006) and then continued to demonstrate improved stand-up and ground games en route to wracking up six more wins (nine UFC wins total) over such lightweight fighters as Joe Stevenson, Roger Huerta, Joe Lauzon and Din Thomas.
In fact, it’s his two lone Octagon losses that Florian cites as being key to revamping his game, both mentally and physically.
“Did I have to revamp what I did?” Florian said, “Yeah, of course. One of the most important things is to be honest with yourself, and say, ‘Listen, look at all these mistakes that I made.’ Sometimes it was mental, sometimes it was physical, technical, sometimes all together. So those fights have really helped me a lot.”
Whatever doesn’t kill you, as they say …
Florian continued, “Those (losses) are what motivate me. I don’t want that to ever happen again. It’s made me a much, much different fighter. I use that as fuel and I use that as lessons. Not only my losses, but my wins. I’m never satisfied with any performance that I’ve had. I’ll go back and watch it two weeks later and be like, ‘Man, that was terrible.’ So it’s a work in progress.”
Has the revamped Florian evolved enough to outwork the champion BJ Penn?
Regardless, Penn says, he “can’t sit here and dwell on that fact, I gotta dwell on the fact that Kenny Florian — this is his second title shot and quite possibly his last — and I gotta get out there and I gotta keep the belt.”
The two get a change to fight about it on August 8 at UFC 101.
http://mmamania.com/2009/07/29/bj-penn- ... itle-shot/
