I’ve always been a huge fan of BJ Penn. I’ve always respected him even though I had questions about him. There were always reports that Dana White was calling him up or asking about him to make sure he was training for an upcoming fight; that he wasn’t drinking or just surfing all the time.

I remember the old fights with all the biggest names: Matt Hughes, George St. Pierre, Takanori Gomi, Frankie Edgar. He’s fought them all. He always looked like the smaller fighter. And I most often root for the smaller guy. I always loved his fighting spirit.

But like I always say, play with fire or you’re gonna get burned.

I think a recent YouTube with Chael Sonnen put it best. If you fight for a dollar, then you are worth a dollar. That’s it. Its all so cheap.

So he has litigation against him for domestic abuse. That one is hard for me to ever overlook. A man who beats on a woman is worthless. So maybe he’s worth less than a dollar in my eyes.

Then he get caught beating up a bouncer at a strip club. OK, so he’s what, 40 years old? I think if you’re older than being a man-child, like mid-20’s, and you’re still going to strip clubs, then something’s wrong with you. Yeah I said it. Come at me bro! Haha! Worthless.

When I was in the Army, I would stay up at the club until the doors closed. Well, sometimes. I got really sleepy. I was in Germany and would party to all hours. Then again, I was like 19 years old. Definitely not a real man yet. I was still working my way into being a man. Those times were probably my last for burning the midnight oil. I never had a reason to stay up later until I started working as a loader for United Parcel Service. I worked from Midnight until 5am while I was in college. It was super hard work and I never liked being up all night. But that was the price I paid. I never wanted to do anything like that again. A year before that, I was a security guard for these big companies and I’d stay up all night then too. That was definitely not fun. Before that, I had this old Tandy computer, one of the first personal computers to come out. I was on this fantasy game that you loaded in DOS or I was flying somewhere in the flight navigator. I wouldn’t even realize but I’d end up staying up most of the night playing it.

When I look back, it was all so stupid. If you stay up to those hours, you are definitely going to get burned sooner or later. You are going to get attacked, beaten up, robbed, and just plain violated. I’m not saying anyone asks for it or deserves it. But when you are welding and wearing flammable clothes, sometimes that spark is going to ignite and its definitely not going to be good.

All I can say is Grow Up BJ. Actually, grow up everybody. Maybe you’re someone who’s getting high and needs a fix, then you probably aren’t reading this blog anyway. But Grow Up! Tell your kids to Grow Up. That fire is going to catch up with you sooner or later. I always say "never blame the victim". But if I hear you are a victim at 2am out in the city streets, I’m not going to be surprised. And if you turn out OK and you can learn from it, I may just slap you and ask you why you were so stupid. I mean, Grow Up!