BJ Penn has been known as a guy who can market and build up massive interest for a fight. He knows how to hype up a fight and ham it up for the cameras when he needs to. The attention gained in high profile fights with Sean Sherk and Georges St. Pierre was largely in part of BJ talking the talk and building up on the "bad blood" between them.
His next fight will be against Kenny Florian at UFC 101, and I have the feeling that this time it will be different. There is no first fight with a controversial decision, there is no steroid use or "cheating" that he could build up on, and no one has said anything bad about each other. I think that this fight will be one without animosity, and I think that it will be great fight between the two best fighters in the division who have mutual respect for each other.
That has been my opinion for some time now, but I still wanted to find out for sure.
BJ Penn is known to respond to his fans online, so I contacted him to see if I could gauge if there was any animosity between him and Kenny:
Anton Tabuena: How's training for Kenny going? What do you think about him training with GSP and Firas?
BJ Penn: Training is going great. I wish Kenny the best. I don't mind at all.
Anton Tabuena: I think it's nice that there's not much badblood between you guys. Two top guys in the division will sell itself right?
BJ Penn: Yup. It's going to be a great fight.
I tried to push some buttons on his past issues by bringing up St. Pierre and Firas, but he didn't bite. And even if he probably still has beef with GSP, it seems like he won't hate Kenny for it. BJ Penn will surely find a way to hype things up, but i definitely don't think it will be because of bad blood between him and kenny.
*the conversation happened via direct messages from twitter.
