UFC legend B.J. Penn has finally opened up regarding his street fight videos that have circulated around the internet over the last few months. Penn maintains that the videos, one from late June and the more recent one from August, do not show the full context of what happened and that he doesn’t seek out trouble.
“There was another video on TMZ of me holding somebody on the ground,” Penn told TSN news. “I’m in the middle of a custody case right now and from that last one I already got a lot of flak from the custody evaluator, from their lawyer of course, from my lawyer. So the last thing that I’m looking to do, yeah, because everybody was saying that I held down a bouncer, but it wasn’t a bouncer or anything like that. It’s just something happened and I had to protect myself and hold a guy on the ground. So the last thing I want to do is get into any type of trouble.” Penn didn’t go into specific details as to how the fight started.
As for the more recent fight, Penn said that it was a personal mater between him and a friend that started it. This is also the incident where Penn was infamously knocked down by the man in question.
“I’m at a concert going to meet a friend of mine that I knew since we were real young kids and I’m over there, and then an acquaintance of mine he gets mad about something,” Penn said. “You know, something was said or what or if it was an old past thing and then he wants to fight about it. I’m like, ‘Naw naw,’ we’ve got a lot of witnesses, everybody can corroborate my story. I’m like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to fight. We’re friends, everything’s cool,’ this and that. He even walks outside and I’m thinking, ‘Aw, this is silly.’ I’m going to go get him, calm him down, come back inside, we’ll come enjoy the concert, we’ve got some other friends there. I walk outside to go give the guy a hug and then he hits me twice. I’m like, ‘No, no, calm down.’ I try to give him another hug and he hits me a couple more times and then he hits me again—I wish they didn’t cut the video in half so whoever put that video up cut it in half, I wish they had the whole thing that showed me trying to hug the guy—finally, my adrenaline kicked up because he was hitting me so much, I’m like, ‘Go ahead, hit me again.’ But really, I thought the guy would eventually just be like, ‘You know what? Forget it, B.J.,’ give me a hug or whatever, walk away. He hit me and he hit me good. Knocked me down. And then when I got back up he tried it again and then I just had to defend myself. So that’s what you see in the second video.”
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Penn stated that he’d been drinking at the concert ahead of the fight, but was not inebriated. “We were at a concert inside a bar and grill place,” Penn said. “Definitely, I had two drinks when I got over there. But all those old past grudges, that’s what happened with that last situation. I don’t know, I heard so much things from so much different people of why that happened. All I know is what exactly happened,” Penn said.
In addition to Penn’s legal concerns, he is still set to face Nik Lenzt this year for his final UFC fight.
“I just have so much things going on, my last fight I’m supposed to be taking care of, I’m jumping into training camp right now, and just a lot of things. A lot of things going on, a lot of things in the mind right now.”
Still no word on if these incidents will affect his final bout this year.
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