Joe Rogan: B.J. Penn in prime could beat any lightweight
Joe Rogan: B.J. Penn in prime could beat any lightweight – including Khabib Nurmagomedov
Joe Rogan thinks B.J. Penn in his prime could take out any UFC lightweight past or present.
Penn may have parted ways with the UFC on a seven-fight losing skid, but the former two-division champion had a reputation for being one of the most naturally talented fighters on the roster during his heyday.
Rogan raved about Penn's lightweight title run which saw him run through Joe Stevenson, Sean Sherk, Kenny Florian, and Diego Sanchez, defending his belt a UFC-record three times. That record was later tied by numerous fighters, including Khabib Nurmagomedov, who many consider the greatest lightweight in history.
But what does Rogan think?
"People talk about Khabib being the greatest lightweight of all time, and maybe he is. It's very possible he is," Rogan said on his "Joe Rogan Experience" podcast. "But I would put the B.J. Penn that fought Joe 'Daddy' Stevenson, the B.J. Penn that fought Sean Sherk, the B.J. Penn that was in that peak when he was training ... I would put him against anybody – against anybody.
"When he fought Diego Sanchez, he couldn't be stopped. And if you got him to the ground, his f*cking submission game was insane. He was insane off of his back. He would take your back, you were dead. He would knock you out standing up. His kickboxing was elite."
The popular podcast host was asked how Nurmagomedov would approach Penn in a fight.
"Take him down for sure," Rogan said. "He'd probably fight him the same way Georges St-Pierre did, but the difference in size between B.J. Penn and Georges St-Pierre is pretty significant. B.J. Penn was really a 155-pound guy who actually later in his career fought 145, when he was kind of at the end of his career. But, Georges is way bigger. Georges was a big 170, big muscular 170 with great wrestling, nasty ground-and-pound, and a black belt in jiu-jitsu himself, and also a really good striker."
Current UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev recently broke the record for most title defenses when he submitted Renato Moicano for his fourth defense at UFC 311 in January.
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