Over the last couple of years I've sat through endless articles and countless F words by Dana White describing B.J. Penn's conditioning and work ethic, Even on this site I've listened to all the criticism with Jonathan Snowden summing up a period of Penn's fighting career memorably (stereotypically) by saying B.J. was fighting between buffets and spam.  This is pretty much the consensus in the MMA community regarding the former champ.  Myself I've never been satisfied with this, here's a guy who has not only competed at the highest levels of two sports but has reigned as a champion in both.  How could anyone accomplish any one of those feats by being lazy and out of shape?  The short answer is he couldn't.  Now I know what some of you are thinking, hasn't B.J. come out before and been critical of his conditioning.  The truth is yes, however when you look at it in context we usually hear it when he's promoting a fight.  Looking back over the last couple of years it's pretty much how his fights have been promoted for the better part of his career and it's helped him make quite a bit of money.  When you look at the fights they tell a different story, in 23 bouts Penn's gone to decision 9 times 4 of which were five round title fights and 3 of them were in between "spam and buffets."  Now I've been fortunate enough to attend a fair share of smaller promotions and have seen first hand what bad conditioning looks like and I will say this much, it definitely did not last 15 minutes let alone 25.  So I wasn't surprised when I read this out of B.J. Penn's "Why I fight" book where B.J. himself said "I have always been labeled a guy who does not train hard, someone who sits back on the island taking it easy, thinking my natural abilities can carry me through.  This belief could not be further from the truth.  I worked hard from the first day i started doing this."  This pretty much sold me on it.  The truth is that for most of B.J.'s career he didn't know how to train properly nobody really did in the sports infancy.  Even the argument that his attitude towards dieting was what led him to fight at heavyweight is flawed to an extent, while Penn does admit he wasn't dieting as he should have the fact is when he fought Lyoto Machida at heavyweight he was around 180 pounds and it was 2 years after he had already made the move to welterweight.  I truly don't believe that it's his conditioning that's held him back in this sport if you look at some of his most defining losses it's been against some pretty incredible athletes (GSP, Hughes, and Edgar).  Penn himself isn't that impressive athletically in even his long time coach Jason Parillo says so in the January 2010 issue of Fighters Only Magazine crediting most of his success on, how about that, his work ethic.  Personally I think the tag of having bad condition has stuck with him long enough and it's too bad that his career will probably be defined by it.

Great night of fights!!! I'm glad I didn't sleep on this event.  Coming out of it though I had a few thoughts.

1. Junior Dos Santos has some incredible standup would love to see him fight Cheick Kongo a battle between two strikers and it would be a moderate test of Dos Santos' ground game 

2. Some great lightweight fights tonight and saw some great prospects surface would love to see Efrain Escudero vs. Rafael Dos Anjos

3. Paul Daley's standup is ridiculous the UFC should really set up Daley vs. Thiago Alves

4. The UFC needs to figure out what they are going to do with Rich Franklin, Joe Rogan even made the suggestion that 195 is the best weight for him.  What the hell is that all about put him in an actual division.

5.  Finally Vitor Belfort is as fast as ever but he's definitely gonna need some head movement if he's going to fight Anderson Silva.

Again a great night of fights let me know what the BE community thinks  

Several reports  have stated that the California State Athletic Commission is banning all events hosting Pankration fights in California.  The CSAC is looking to regulate the sport of Pankration because promoters are using the term Pankration and illegally hosting amateur smoker events.  This is all apart of the Commission's initiative to setup more precautionary measures and oversight in amateur MMA matches in California.  In addition the Commission is now requiring all debuting professionals to undergo a physical evaluation supervised by Commission officials.  During the evaluation fighters are required to prove proficiency in their standup and grappling as well as enough cardio to finish the evaluation without gassing.  I don't know what this will mean for the smaller promotions in California but hopefully it will result in higher purses for professionals and a reduction in incompetent fighters in smaller MMA shows.

So I realized tonight that I'm the last person to find out that the WWE has a hall of fame.  The whole thing got me thinking why is the UFC the only one out there to recognize those who made an impact on this sport.  As I've seen over and over again the UFC only rewards those who are on good terms with the organization which will eventually force some of the founders of this sport into anonymity.  Guys like Pat Militech, Tito Ortiz, Rickson Gracie, Don Frye, Josh Barnett, Bas Rutten, Vitor Belfort, Fedor Emelianenko, and many more fighters.  Even guys like Big John, Gene LeBell, and Frank Gotch who have all had an influence on this sport and what about the people who have coached fighters into champions they deserve some kind of recognition.  If only there was an impartial body, a mixed martial arts association of some kind that had a goal to recognize fighters regardless of promotional affiliation.  

These are in no particular order let me know if you guys can think of any great fights that just never came together.

Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic vs. Andrei Arlovski
Cro Cop made his UFC debut in early 2007 while Arlovski was fresh off of a
victory over Marcio Cruz would have been great to see these two go at it at UFC 67 or UFC 70.

Brett Rogers vs. Kimbo Slice
After the first primetime Elite XC event these two actually had a confrontation and the two were supposed to fight each other in October of 2008, Kimbo fought Seth Petruzelli instead.

Frank Shamrock vs. Ken Shamrock
The two adoptive brothers have traded insults with each other for years and have said they have no problem fighting each other however the fight has never materialized.

Wanderlie Silva vs. Gilbert Yvel
Okay so this one actually happened at Pride 11 but ended in less then a minute with a no contest, Silva hit Yvel in the nuts with a shot that almost made me cry.

Tito Ortiz vs. Lee Murray
If you don't know the story about this one apparently Murray knocked out Ortiz in a street fight after UFC 38 outside of a London night club, Ortiz has since denied the incident. Murray was arrested in Morrocco in 2006 because of his alleged involvement in the Securitas depot robbery making this rematch pretty much impossible.

Mousasi vs. Akiyama
Should have seen this one for Mousasi's first middleweight title defense however Mousasi is making a move to Light Heavyweight and Akiyama is heading to the UFC.

Bas Rutten vs Tito Ortiz.
The way I've heard this story, Frank was about to retire and Tito and Bas were
gonna fight for the vacant middleweight title but instead Frank fought Tito and Bas retired shortly after due to injuries.

Cris "Cyborg" Santos vs. Gina Carrano
Seemed like Elite XC was building this fight through both of their primetime shows on CBS however the company folded before the fight could be set.

Kevin Randleman vs. Tito Ortiz
These two have talked trash about each other in the past and supposedly there is some bad blood there but the UFC should have signed this fight between these two talented wrestlers back in 2000.

Matt Serra vs. Matt Hughes
These two traded insults as coaches on the Ultimate Fighter and were set to meet in December of 2007 however Serra pulled out last minute due to injury. The fight hasn't been scheduled yet but the bad blood still exists with these two.

Dan Henderson vs. Frank Shamrock
Frank Shamrock beat Dan Henderson in a submission wrestling event over a decade ago since then Dan Henderson has had some great accomplishments fight could have been set before Hendo came to the UFC and Shamrock was the newly crowned Strikeforce middleweight champ.

Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Randy Cuture
Could have been a great fight in 2000 Randy was fighting in Japan for the Rings promotion while Sakuraba was fighting in PRIDE.

Anderson Silva vs. Matt Hughes
Was suppose to happen at UFC 36 however Silva had Visa problems.

Frank Shamrock vs. Vitor Belfort
Would have loved to see this one in the mid 90's while both were fighting in the UFC but it was never meant to be however the two have recently expressed a desire to fight each other at middleweight.

Dana White vs. Tito Ortiz
This one was scheduled for March 24, 2007 I won't bore you with why it didn't happen but in my opinion Tito comes out looking bad in just about everything he does.

Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman in 2000
In 2000 Mark Coleman was one of the most accomplished wrestler in mixed martial arts, and widely regarded as the man who invented the "ground and pound." Couture would have been a tough match for anyone each of them went undefeated in 2000 with Couture taking the UFC's heavyweight title and Coleman winning the PRIDE heavy weight grand prix. Couture left the UFC at the end of 2000 and the two could have met in Japan in 2001

Bas Rutten vs. Randy Couture
Maybe we all could have been treated to this fight back in 99 if Randy didn't
decide to leave the UFC and fight for RINGS in Japan.

Mark Kerr vs. Mark Coleman
In 2000 Kerr and Coleman were both contenders in PRIDE's open weight grand prix despite being close friends the two were willing to fight each other unfortunately Kazuyuki Fujita ruined Kerr's plans in the quarter finals while Coleman took home the gold.

Josh Barnett vs. Ricco Rodriguez
This fight was never set to happen but after Barnett's win over Couture it would have been nice to see these two go at it for Barnett's first title defense, but Barnett popped for anabolic steroids and never fought in the UFC again.

Bas Rutten vs Rickson Gracie
Could never figure out why this never happened at PRIDE 3 Bas annouced that he and Rickson would fight in PRIDE after his fight with Kevin Randelman.

Rickson Gracie vs. Kazushi Sakuraba
It should be a crime that this fight never happened in the '90s the Gracies were royal family of MMA in fact in 1999 it had been almost a 50 years since a Gracie had lost an MMA or Vale Tudo match, then Kazushi Sakuraba stopped Royler, Renzo and Royce then won a unanimous decisions over Ryan. He earned nickname "The Gracie Hunter" soon after. Rickson has always been known as the family champion and retired in 2000 undefeated. This fight would have been legendary.

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I saw a fanpost today criticizing the American Kickboxing Academy and it got me thinking who had the best overall MMA camp. Also what makes an MMA camp truly exceptional.  I would say it's the ability to turn an athlete with no real martial arts training and making them world class however not many fighters start fighting professionally without having prior martial arts experience.  I've attached a poll with some of the more popular camps let me know if I missed someone in the comments section.

After watching Bj Penn vs. St. Pierre II again I got to thinking, why are Jiu Jitsu guys so eager to pull guard? When GSP was grabbing those doubles Bj would scramble for guard instead of trying to get to his feet. When I started to think about it this happens all the time, Mir vs. Lesnar, Gsp vs. Serra II, etc. Is a strong guard really an offensive position in MMA? Are Jiu Jitsu guys setting themselves up for failure? Before I get a bunch of comments on how stupid I am. I am the first to acknowledge that being in guard is as good as it gets when on your back and many fights are won off of submissions from guard but the percentage of wins from guard can't be anywhere near the percentage for wins from any other position. Why then scramble for guard instead of to get back up? 

I heard that Ryan Hall was kicked out of the Lloyd Irvin academy I know that some of the editors of this site are students of Lloyd Irvin and was wondering if anyone knew why he wasn't training there anymore. I know Lloyd Irvin had spent a lot of time promoting him and his line of triangle choke videos and was even featured on Mike Fowler's no gi made easy video so why the sudden departure from Lloyd Irvin's academy.