(He’s going to make your car smell delightful.  And he is not joking about this.)

Now this is awesomely ridiculous.  Thanks to reader Erik for the find.  Apparently B.J. Penn sponsor RVCA sees no limit to the amount of Penn-themed crap they can sell to his loyal fans.  In addition to a signature B.J. Penn UFC 94 t-shirt and official B.J. Penn trunks (complete with the painted on black belt, and for only $61!!!), you can also get this cute little air freshener shaped like everyone’s favorite blood-licking Hawaiian for only six dollars.  And yeah, it’s coconut-scented.  What else?

For a guy from a wealthy family (as “UFC Primetime” continually reminds us), Penn sure is willing to put his name on anything for a buck.  Not that we blame him.  If we thought anyone would buy air fresheners of us, you can bet we’d be pushing them every day.  Only ours would smell like whiskey and nachos, which only appeals to the small segment of the population who want their cars to smell like the father who never loved them.

(Plotting his next move…)

Someone please explain to me what has happened to B.J. Penn.  Did he suffer some sort of brain trauma in his fight with Georges St. Pierre?  Is he playing an elaborate practical joke on all of us, or does he just crave attention?

First Penn came out this week claiming that Kenny Florian, the man who will likely face Penn in the Octagon next (coincidence?), sent him an email before UFC 94 to tip him off about GSP’s greasing.  When Florian denied it, asking Penn to produce the email as proof, Penn changed his story completely.  In a video post to BJPenn.com yesterday, he claimed it was a text, not an email, and it was sent to a member of Penn’s camp, not Penn himself, and that it included charges of steroid use.  

I’m going to have to call shenanigans, as they say, and for several reasons.

(“The Prodigy” prepares himself to reenter civilized society)

Sometimes B.J. Penn says things that make me a little uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable in the bad way, more like uncomfortable in the way that I think what he just said was pretty awesome even if I still think maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to say it. His recent interview with Ariel Helwani at MMA Rated offered just such an occasion.

Ariel (who always manages to get the best out of fighters in his interviews) asked Penn about an infamous moment following his victory over Joe Stevenson:

Ariel Helwani: Let me ask you about your UFC 80 fight against Joe Stevenson. After defeating him you licked the blood of your gloves. What’s the symbolism behind licking the blood off the gloves because I find it fascinating?

BJ Penn: [laughs] I don’t know man. You know sometimes like you cross over and it’s just hard to come back. You cross over and then you’re on that side where you could kill somebody and it’s just hard to get back to the other side, so I was stuck over on that side when that happened.

Ariel Helwani: Afterwards we’re you like, ‘what the hell did I just do?’ Or do you mind licking another man’s blood?

BJ Penn: No, I think as a fighter you’re always just two different people. So when that side of me comes out I just accept it because I got my one side who’s just humble, cruisin’, hanging out, help out my friends, or this and that. Then I got my other side where I snap and I’m just on the other side and it takes a while for me to come back.

See? Uncomfortable, but also pretty cool. If you describe yourself that way to a high school guidance counselor, they’re calling the cops and making notes in the margins of your permanent record. If you’re a pro fighter and you say it in an internet radio interview, it just makes people more excited to watch you in action. Also, something to think about if you’re considering approaching Penn right after a fight. He may not have crossed back over yet, so watch yourself.

After moving up to 185 pounds to defeat Rodrigo Gracie at Rumble on the Rock 6, B.J. Penn had a revelation — why don’t I just keep eating? Four months later, he competed in his first and only 205-pound match, facing off against Lyoto Machida at K-1 HERO’s 1 (3/26/05). Machida was only 5-0 at the time, but he had already disposed of Stephan Bonnar and Rich Franklin in his second and third fights, respectively. Though Penn threatened from the top in the first round, he had no answer for Lyoto’s size advantage and defensive skills, and lost the decision. Boring? Sure, maybe a little. But it was a significant moment in the careers of both fighters; Penn would drop back down to welterweight immediately after.

(Fight starts at the 5:10 mark.)

(‘You’re getting to be such a big boy. Pretty soon I won’t be able to do this anymore.’)

I realize the headline has some of you worked up into a frenzy, but just give me a chance to explain. B.J. Penn is a wonderfully gifted fighter. Let’s start there. In fact, let’s go further. B.J. Penn is a truly great fighter, easily one of the best lightweights in the world. Most of the other guys in the lightweight top ten would stand little chance against him, and the same goes for a few of the guys in the welterweight top ten.

I don’t think Sean Sherk is objectively a better fighter than B.J. Penn. I do, however, think that Sean Sherk can beat B.J. Penn on Saturday night, and I’d like to explain why.

Styles make fights. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. So much in MMA is dependent on how one man’s style matches up against another’s, and Sherk is a bad match for Penn.

If there’s any type of fighter Penn has struggled against, it’s wrestlers. Matt Hughes and Georges St. Pierre were both bigger and stronger than Penn, but they are also both excellent wrestlers, and they both beat Penn by outworking and outlasting him. You can give him a pass for having a broken rib or bad cardio in those fights, but the blame for both of those problems rests with Penn.

Everybody wants to video blog these days.  From Dana White to the hipster grifter, people all over the world have awakened to the power of pointing a camera at their own face while they do/say things.  But dammit, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.  What you see B.J. Penn doing up there is the wrong way.  Why?  Because he’s just standing in front of the camera with the ocean as his background, talking for a minute and a half.  Again we hear about Marv Marinovich’s revolutionary training methods, and again we see none of it. 

Here’s the question you have to ask yourself when you video blog: am I doing anything here that could not be done in a really long voicemail message?  If the answer is no, it’s time to rethink your approach.  If the answer is yes, but only because you go on for way too long, then you are Mark Pavelich.  You’ll see what I mean after the jump.

(A country boy can survive)

Old rivals Matt Hughes and B.J. Penn both find themselves preparing for fights these days, only their paths have diverged significantly. While Penn is getting ready to defend his lightweight title against Sean Sherk, who he has vowed to kill, Hughes is getting ready to play gatekeeper against Thiago Alves at UFC 85 in London.

Hughes isn’t crazy about going “across the pond” for this fight, according to a recent blog entry on Matt-Hughes.com. He’d rather fight in Vegas or the Midwest, but hey, the Limeys deserve to see somebody get slammed every now and then, don’t they? Hughes assures us that he’s hitting the gym hard, but he took some time out to post a “Firearms Refresher Course”. I won’t reprint the whole list, which is long, but here’s a taste:

1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.

You get the idea. Matt Hughes loves guns. The part about the swords had me confused, though. Is he implying that we can’t use swords now? Because if that’s the case, I just wasted the $2,500 I spent on that “Conan the Barbarian” authentic replica sword, and after I paid extra for the overnight shipping, too.

Meanwhile in his island paradise, B.J. Penn is so tired of hearing that he doesn’t have the cardio to last five rounds that he’s actually decided to do a little jogging with some friends. Best quote from this video: “I don’t know, man, looks like I’m going to be ready, Sherk.”

Looks like it? As in, you know, probably going to be ready? That’s not what you want to hear.

Find more videos like this on BJPENN.COM

Props: Bloody Elbow

(BF)

(Scene from a jiu-jitsu tournament, or an extremely amicable episode of Maury Povich’s paternity test show?)

If you love your title fights with a side of acrimony (and who doesn’t) then the B.J. Penn-Sean Sherk bout at UFC 84 is definitely for you. It’s no secret that these guys don’t like each other. Sherk thinks Penn’s a quitter. Penn thinks Sherk’s a cheater. It’s a fun little back and forth.

But in a recent interview with Sirius Radio’s “Sports Rage“, Penn kicked it up a notch with his anti-Sherk rhetoric. Here are some excerpts from the full broadcast:

” … I know there are a lot of people out there doing steroids, cheating and every time I run into one of them, I’m going to call them on it and then I’m going to beat the shit out of them …

… It’s going to be a historic night because all the kids out there will realize that you can do it with just hard work alone …He wants to say he has heart and all this different shit, but you can’t confuse steroids with heart.

… What would happen in the old days when you get caught with a couple of aces up your sleeve, they kill the guy right there and that’s why I say Sean Sherk is dead…”

Tell me, who’s still not excited for this fight? Anyone?

Nothing makes for an intense fight quite like death threats. I was willing to ascribe the first one to Penn being a little pumped up following his victory over Joe Stevenson, but after he repeated it with a calm rationale to explain why he wants to murder Sherk, well that’s just plain mean. Also pretty awesome.

(Diego Sanchez experiences a moment of Zen.)

Diego Sanchez swears making lightweight to fight Joe Stevenson at UFC 95 won’t be a problem for him, although it sounds like it won’t be terribly easy either.  Sanchez was late to today’s media conference call and explained it by saying he was trying to cut a few extra pounds in the sauna.  The former welterweight said he weighed 193 pounds on Christmas Eve, and is now struggling to get those lost few pounds off in order to make 155 next Saturday.

“I don’t see myself staying at lightweight forever,” Sanchez explained, saying he wanted to challenge himself and thought he’d better hurry up and do it while he was still in his twenties and could lose weight fairly easily.

“I never really cut much weight for 170.  Fighting guys like Jon Fitch, who put on seventeen, eighteen pounds after the weigh-in, I was a little outsized.”

At lightweight, Sanchez said he hopes to eventually face B.J. Penn.  Then he proceeded to bash “The Prodigy” for showing up to face Georges St. Pierre without getting himself in good enough shape.

(‘Okay…this is…way worse…than I…expected.’)

After deciding not to lodge a formal complaint against Georges St. Pierre and his cornermen over UFC 94’s greasing incident, B.J. Penn’s camp has sent a letter to the Nevada State Athletic Commission formally requesting an investigation, according to NBC Sports:

The letter was sent by Penn’s lawyer Raffi Nahabedian to Nevada state athletic commission executive director Keith Kizer. In the correspondence, which was given by the commission to NBCSports.com, Nahabedian states that the letter is not a formal complaint, but asks the commission to ensure that St. Pierre and his cornermen are "properly dealt with."

Consider this the Penn camp’s way of saying, ‘We don’t want to look like whiners complaining about this, but we don’t want to let GSP off the hook, either.’  And just when you were hoping this thing would die down and we could all move on to other topics.  Sorry.  This is only getting started.

On a related note, Dana White spoke with our friend MDS over at MMA Fanhouse about the incident, and summed it up thusly:

UFC president Dana White participated in a media conference call along with B.J. Penn and Sean Sherk this afternoon, and we learned a little something about everyone before it was all said and done. For instance, is it awkward for Sherk and Penn to be on a call together after everything they’ve said about one another in the past few weeks? Kind of, yeah.

For instance, B.J. Penn is legitimately angry about Sean Sherk’s (alleged) steroid use. And no, there doesn’t seem to be any doubt in his mind about Sherk’s guilt:

“As a guy who’s never taken performance-enhancing drugs, I’m used to waking up everyday and being sore and being in pain, and to think that someone out there is using performance-enhancing drugs, it bothers me. I’m a purist. I live to fight. I really think I’m a better fighter than I am an athlete. To think that someone would take this pure thing that I love and pervert that, I can’t deal with it.”

Sherk responded, sounding more tired of steroid questions than anything else:

“I know what I did and I know what I didn’t do. I went above and beyond what I needed to do to prove my innocence. I think anyone who looks at the evidence knows that. I think the commission knows I didn’t do it. They shorted my suspension, but they didn’t want to overturn it because then they have to worry about a lawsuit.”

And here’s where it got a little uncomfortable.

In his recent fights UFC lightweight champ B.J. Penn has fallen into a pattern of making it personal with his opponents before the bout, then embracing them like old friends once he’s beaten them up.  In this video he says he wanted to feed Kenny Florian some extra elbow strikes for making him look like a fool and a liar in the media, because "that’s what I felt he deserved."  This assertion casts Penn as not only the dominant lightweight champ, but also as a sort of avenging angel of justice in his fights.  He’s not just thinking about winning in there; that’s a foregone conclusion.  He’s taking into account your past deeds and considering how much punishment you deserve, which is kind of disturbing and also kind of awesome.

As for Diego Sanchez, Penn may let him off with just a loss.  He can’t think of anything bad to say about the guy, except that he’s a little strange, which Diego will tell you himself.  The real question here is whether Penn will be in the kind of shape to go five rounds with a human perpetual motion machine like "The Nightmare."  He says it won’t be a problem.  He also says his work ethic has never been an issue.  There’s reason to doubt at least one of those claims.

(He will litigate to the death, and he is not joking about this.)

Well, he finally went and did it.  After weeks of less structured, though more entertaining gripes and accusations, UFC lightweight champ B.J. Penn and his camp have filed a formal complaint with the Nevada State Athletic Commission against welterweight champ Georges St Pierre.

The Penn camp filed a twenty-page document (so take that Jackson camp, with your puny seventeen pages) detailing the complaint and outlining the consequences they’d like to see.  And what are those consequences?  You know the usual.  They just want to see GSP, his trainers, and other as of yet unnamed parties fined $250,000, have the bout result changed to a no contest, suspend the licenses of GSP, Phil Nurse, and Greg Jackson, and force GSP to undergo pre-fight showers.  Basically just the regular old stuff.

The complaint also accuses St. Pierre of “ingesting a substance” to make his body especially slippery before the fight.  It makes us wish the formal hearing really does happen so we can hear Penn’s lawyer accuse GSP of drinking baby oil, and then hear GSP’s lawyer counter that baby oil is considered a delicacy in certain French-Canadian circles.

It’s in your hands now, NSAC.  Please do something and put an end to this epic paperwork war. 

B.J. Penn’s camp has filed a formal complaint with the Nevada State Athletic Commission over Vaseline that was allegedly rubbed on Georges St. Pierre’s back between rounds one and two.  UFC president Dana White said at the post-fight press conference that he was aware of the complaint, and said he personally witnessed members of the commission take the Vaseline away from GSP’s camp and rebuke them in the Octagon between rounds.

"I saw the commission jump up there and flip out," said Dana White.  "They said one of the guys was rubbing Vaseline on Georges’ back in between rounds.  It was one and two, I think."

"The guys from the athletic commission went up there and started screaming at them, knocked the Vaseline and kicked the Vaseline out of the Octagon."

White added that "some Vaseline on a guy’s back didn’t change the outcome of that fight, but you don’t do it," and said the blame should fall on the cornerman responsible and not GSP.

"If a guy was intentionally putting Vaseline on a guy’s back, he should never corner a mixed martial arts fight again."

As for what becomes of the complaint now, White said it’s out of his hands.

"Who knows.  That’s up to the commission."

Update: A member of Penn’s entourage tells Fighters Only that GSP came out for round two "covered in Vaseline," adding that the "“whole [of Penn’s] team is pissed off."

For this week’s SI.com column I spoke with Kenny Florian about his upcoming title fight against B.J. Penn at UFC 101, and of course we also had to discuss exactly what role he played in the whole Greasegate saga.  As always, Florian proves to be one of MMA’s most articulate and self-aware fighters, and he also knows he’s got one hell of a challenge in front of him on August 8.  Check out what Florian had to say about Penn’s strengths and weaknesses, what it means to fight for a UFC title, and more below.

I think every fighter I’ve talked to before a fight with B.J. Penn always mentions something about wearing him down and making him quit.  Is that in your gameplan?  Do you think you have to make B.J. quit before you can beat him?

I’m not sure.  I’m not sure I really believe that you have to break B.J. mentally or make him quit.  I think the key is challenging every aspect of his game and making him make those little mistakes, those little errors.  People tend to look at B.J. like he’s this god and he doesn’t make mistakes, like you just can’t beat him on the technical level.  I feel you can beat him at the technical level.  

(Photo courtesy of UFC.com)

by Cage Potato contributor Elias Cepeda

After losing the lightweight title to Frankie Edgar Saturday night at UFC 112, it has been a long couple of connecting flights from the United Arab Emirates back home to Hawaii for Team BJ Penn. Fresh off the plane, Penn’s coach Rudy Valentino spoke with Cage Potato about what went wrong in the fight and what is next for Penn.

All three judges scored the fight for Frankie Edgar – for what it’s worth I scored the fight for Edgar as well – but every single round was close and was difficult to score. How did you view the outcome?

One judge scored every round for Edgar but what I saw in the fight when I was watching it, and I haven’t watched it again on tape, but watching it as it happened, I felt that BJ won the first three rounds. The fourth round was even and I think he lost the last round. So I feel BJ won the fight. He was also battling a sinus infection and was on antibiotics, so he was not one hundred percent. I’m not making any excuses, that is just what happened. I didn’t see him lose that fight but I did see him lose the last round. As for effectiveness of punches, I thought BJ had it. Frankie got two takedowns but BJ got up real fast and nothing happened on the ground there, so I don’t know if they could score the fight based on those two takedowns.

(Great fighter, but he’s absolutely terrible at rock-paper-scissors.)

During a Q & A session in Fayetteville, N.C. to hype up tonight’s “Fight for the Troops” card, Dana White revealed that Thiago Alves is going to get the next crack at the welterweight strap after the Georges St. Pierre-B.J. Penn bout at UFC 94, and it doesn’t matter who’s got it around their waist at the time:

"He’s next in line for a title shot. If GSP beats B.J. Penn, then (Alves) fights GSP. If B.J. Penn wins, then he fights B.J. And then he’d have to defend that title for a while before I let him move up and try to fight Anderson."

Sounds like we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves.  The first thing Alves would have to do before any of this can happen is make weight for a 170-pound title fight.  That means no one-pound allowance, so he might as well start weaning himself off the Creamsicles right now (but OMG they’re so good!!!!).

This also means that a potential GSP-Anderson Silva bout is but a very distant dream, as St. Pierre would have to beat Penn, then beat Alves a few months later before we could even talk about that superfight.  If Penn wins, it will continue to screw up the lightweight division, as he’ll be expected to fight Alves and poor, patient Kenny Florian – that is, if the UFC allows him to try and defend both titles, which they shouldn’t.

I’m just saying, a lightweight tournament for a vacant 155-pound title sure sounds fun, doesn’t it?

UFC 137 is just a week away, featuring what some believe to be a welterweight number one contender match between B.J. Penn and Nick Diaz. If you weren’t convinced by our betting advice for the main event, then perhaps the words of Stephan Bonnar, Manny Gamburyan, Tyson Griffin, and Phil Baroni will do your thinking for you. And from the looks of it, you’re thinking B.J. Penn is going to come out on top, because that’s what the consensus seems to be for these pros.

Hey everybody, look who has a sense of humor!  Responding to renewed Lubrigate allegations, Georges St. Pierre admits that he did cheat, only not by greasing up his body.  Instead, he hired some long-hair to kiss B.J. Penn on his way down to the Octagon and sap all his strength before the fight even started.  That devious French-Canadian.

GSP also insists that his best revenge against B.J. Penn now would be to "’elp Kenny Florian to kick ‘ees ass.”  Or maybe he can just keep Penn tied up in hearings and out of the gym all the way to fight time.  Although judging from how he talks about the outcome of this week’s hearings, it seems as if GSP is under the impression that he won.  I guess that’s kind of true, in the sense that he didn’t lose.  Maybe his legal representatives are giving GSP a simplified account of what happened at the NSAC.  That’s probably for the best.  The guy doesn’t want to hear all the back and forth.  Just tell him ‘we won!’ and he’ll sleep better.

Yahoo! Sports has an article claiming that Josh Koscheck “wouldn’t mind” dropping to lightweight to take on B.J. Penn at some point in the future. This, apparently, because there is a perceived lack of credible challengers in the UFC’s lightweight division, which is already a questionable thesis to begin with.

But assuming you go along with it, then you’re expected to make the leap to believing that Josh Koscheck is the savior the division needs. Koscheck himself sounds only lukewarm about the idea:

“You never know,” he said, beaming, when confronted about his ability to make the lightweight limit of 155 pounds. “If people would want to see me fight B.J. Penn at 155 for the title, because there is really nobody there for him to fight, I’d do it.”

[...]

“I know B.J. very well, but business is business,” Koscheck said. “We’re friends, but at the end of the day, it’s about making money together. If the fans would want to see it, I’d suck it up and I’d live that life to where I’d do whatever I have to do to make 155.”

These statements make Koscheck seem far from eager to go down in weight and face Penn, but what’s interesting is the assertion that there is “really nobody there for him to fight.”

On the surface this seems kind of true, but only because Penn is so dominant right now that we assume whoever claims the number one contender spot will inevitably be destroyed by him. The reality is that the 155-pound division is one of the deepest weight classes in the UFC and the sport as a whole. Maybe Penn will beat every credible challenger in the division, but shouldn’t he do that before we just assume that he will?

What are the high points of this video from NBC Sports? It isn’t the footage of BJ Penn and Sean Sherk delivering various beatdowns, though that’s pretty awesome. Instead it’s lines like this from Joe Rogan: “Sean Sherk does not like being belittled, he does not like being insulted.”

Which makes him different from every other human being I’ve ever met? I guess there are those people with some weird fetish who like to be told how worthless they are, but even they must get sick of it from time to time.

Don’t worry, though. Dana White has a gem of his own in here: “B.J. Penn will fight you for free in your backyard if you think you’re better than him. And if by some crazy chance you beat B.J. Penn, he’ll show up and knock on your door every day to fight you again to prove that he’s better than you.”

Man, that must get annoying for Matt Hughes.

Oh, and the “fight for free” part? Yeah, Dana. Maybe if you repeat it often enough it will come true.

We told you Diego Sanchez was a little bit weird, but you just wouldn’t believe us.  Maybe you’ll change your mind once you see his pre-UFC 107 video blog, in which he plays with an iguana to help his reflexes.  Not that we don’t respect his positive attitude.  I mean, the guy’s car breaks down on the side of the road and he breaks into song.  Although it’s still unclear how he turned that particular negative into a positive.  From what we can tell, it was pretty much all negative.  Sure, he got a ride in someone else’s Toyota Yaris, but those of us who have driven a Yaris know damn well that it’s basically one step up from those Flintstones cars, if that.  At least those things looked heavy enough that you didn’t have to worry about a strong wind sweeping you off the road.

After the jump, we give equal time to some of B.J. Penn‘s annoying thirty second videos.   Because editing stuff together is for haoles, bra.

(Props: MMA Scraps)

We didn’t pick up on Shinya Aoki‘s post-fight speech at Dynamite!! 2008 because we don’t speak Japanese and we didn’t actually watch the event, but apparently the Tobikan Judan had some strong words for Dana White, the UFC, and our country as a whole. You can check it out above, helpfully translated into broken English.

Later, in a chat with Sherdog, Aoki was a bit more humble:

“I think there’s no doubt that B.J. Penn is still the best at 155 pounds. He’s most likely the best fighter in the world. I don’t ignore the UFC. I respect the UFC because it’s a very high level organization — a high summit in the sport.”

“Personally, the most decisive fight in the world, the culmination, the pinnacle for me is B.J. Penn. Please do not misunderstand — I really need this to be clearly expressed in the media: Shinya Aoki will not go to the UFC. [Ed. note: :'-( ] I just want to fight B.J. Penn. This is my selfish wish. I know that everyone says they want Penn, but I think I’m the number one Japanese fighter to be saying this.”

Yes, Shinya. Out of all the fighters who publicly call out BJ Penn but have no intention of signing with the organization that would make a fight with him a legitimate possibility, you are definitely the top Japanese one.

UFC 137 is just over two weeks away, so to get your blood pumping, check out the recently released extended trailer, which features not only a look into the upcoming welterweight title fight between Georges St. Pierre and Carlos Condit, but a welterweight clash between B.J. Penn and Nick Diaz and the heavyweight slug fest between Cheick Kongo and Matt Mitrione. Featuring 12 fights including Mirko Cro Cop vs. Roy Nelson, Donald Cerrone vs. Dennis Siver, and Scott Jorgensen vs. Jeff Curran, UFC 137 is looking like on hell of a card, barring any last minute injuries.

A few notes:

Dana White’s first video blogging effort for UFC 94 seems intent on answering the question: who do pro fighters favor in this weekend’s B.J. Penn-Georges St. Pierre clash?  Fairly consistently, it seems like they think Penn has it wrapped up.  Some of that might be because Penn has kicked their ass or GSP has kicked the ass of their teammate, depending on who you’re asking.  

The other highlight near the end of the video is the appearance of Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto, who is asked by Dana, “You ready to come fight here?”  By here, he means the WEC, where this bad boy is being filmed.  Yamamoto is hindered slightly by a language barrier, but he replies clearly, “Yeah, I want.”  Hey, sounds like a binding verbal contract to us.

(My qualifications? HERE’S my stinking qualifications!)

It looks like we’ll have to start drafting up new t-shirts to falsely promise you guys, because according to a recent interview with MMAFighting, UFC President Dana White was rather frank about his desire for both former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and former lightweight and welterweight champion B.J. Penn to be placed in the UFC Hall of Fame in the near future. Though the jury is still out on whether or not Penn will return to the octagon following his hasty retirement in the aftermath of UFC 137, DW had nothing but positives to say about “The Prodigy” when asked on the possibility of his placement in the HOF:

Definitely. The thing about B.J. Penn is that what he brought to the lightweight division, there was a point in time when we first bought this company when people thought guys in the lighter weight divisions couldn’t be stars and couldn’t see pay-per-views and couldn’t cross over. B.J. Penn was definitely that first crossover guy for us. He’ll be back. It’s tough, when there are 16,000 people in the arena chanting your name, it’s tough to walk away from that. B.J. Penn is a fighter. You hear some of these guys, and Tito was one of these guys, he said he wanted to be famous. B.J. Penn is a fighter.

So there you have it, Penn will join long-time rival Matt Hughes, as well as Randy Couture, Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Mark Coleman, Royce Gracie, Chuck Liddell, and Tapout co-founder Charles “Mask” Lewis in that deluxe octagon in the sky. After a pair of unsuccessful title bids at 155, Penn won the welterweight title in his welterweight debut by defeating the then untouchable Hughes by first round rear-naked choke at UFC 46. Penn would vacate the UFC shortly thereafter, citing a lack of challenging fights, and would not taste UFC gold again until beating the ever-loving shit out of Joe Stevenson at UFC 80 to claim the vacant lightweight strap. He would defend the belt three times until being upended by Frankie Edgar at UFC 112.

When addressing the possibility of Tito Ortiz joining those illustrious ranks, White did not shy away from the pair’s well-documented rocky history, and in fact stated that, in retrospect, it helped make the UFC what it is today.

Hear more from The Baldfather after the jump. 

(Your attempts at psychological warfare amuse KenFlo.)

Sounds like Kenny Florian isn’t buying B.J. Penn’s revised story about the alleged GSP greasing and ‘roiding tip off any more than we are.  Talking with Fighters Only, KenFlo dismissed Penn’s claims outright, saying:

"Yeah it went from an email, to a text to a friend of the camp. I think next it will be a fax, and then it’ll probably be a bird that delivered a telegram to him from a roommate’s brother’s dog’s owner’s sister,” Florian laughed. 

"It’s kind of ridiculous. BJ is known as a trash talker and he plays a lot of mind games. He does a lot of psychological warfare. …People have tried that on me in the past, but what they don’t know is that they’re playing checkers and I’m playing chess," he said.

There you have it, B.J.  Kenny Florian is not impressed with your attempts at mind games.  Try again.  Or just get in the gym and prepare yourself to kick his ass over the course of five rounds.  Either one, though I hear the second option generally pays better.

Honorable Mention: Pat Militech

10. Frank Trigg

9. Matt Hughes 

The MMA world was all a-flutter with the news that Georges St. Pierre had been nominated for an ESPY in the “Fighter of the Year” category. There were even brief efforts to get us all to band together and vote him in.

But in this recent interview with MMA Rated, “Rush” says he has no plans to attend the awards. Why? Because GSP ain’t in this to win awards, dammit.

He also talks about preparing for Jon Fitch, a possible fight with B.J. Penn, and what’s going on (or not) between him and Mandy Moore.

Gina Carano Workout – Watch more free videos

Does Gina Carano do anything that isn’t filmed? All signs point to no, she doesn’t, but then who can blame her? If you were that attractive and could kick like that, you’d probably want cameras around to document it as well. Too bad you’re not, though. Your life would be so much better. Think more money and a bunch of free American Gladiators stuff and less crippling loneliness and TV dinners. Better yet, don’t think about it. It will only get you down.

UFC 84 press conference videos after the jump.