BJ Penn’s Really Weird Stance Explained

If you were like the rest of us watching The Ultimate Fighter 19 Finale, you probably saw BJ Penn’s awful upright stance that he was using against Frankie Edgar and swearing, possibly throwing things at your television. Why? Because there was no way that a “muay thai” stance like that was going to work against a guy like Frankie Edgar, especially for BJ Penn. Well, apparently we weren’t alone in thinking that, as BJ Penn’s longtime friend and boxing coach Jason Parillo was brought in to corner him and was thinking the same damned thing. [source]

“I got called a week before the fight to work his corner for the fight, so I, myself, hadn’t spent time in camp at all with B.J. … I answered yes automatically because he’s my friend. So I didn’t know. They explained to me kind of the gameplan the week of the fight, and I was actually rooming with his boxing coach the whole week, so I was listening to him, talking to him about what they were doing. At that point, it’s not my position to make any adjustments, like, ‘no, no, no, let’s do this, let’s do that,’ because it’s too late for that. It’s too late. He’s been doing this s–t for two years. What, am I going to come in the week of the fight and change a whole gameplan? Change a whole style around? That’s not going to happen, nor does B.J. want me to make that happen. He doesn’t want that to happen, he wants to go in there with what they have planned.”