Yup. B.J. Penn will continue fighting.
If you exited this article in disgust after reading the headline, I don’t blame you.
But for those of you who are still here, it looks as if legendary former UFC lightweight and welterweight champion B.J. Penn intends to continue searching for his first win since 2010. MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz reported that “The Prodigy” is set to face lightweight veteran Clay Guida at UFC 237 in Brazil. ESPN’s Brett Okamoto later confirmed the matchup.
Penn (16-13-2) has lost his last six, including a heel hook loss to Ryan Hall at UFC 232, marking the first submission defeat of Penn’s MMA career. You have to go back to 2010 for Penn’s most recent win, a quick KO of Matt Hughes at UFC 123. During that span, we’ve seen Penn get systematically beaten down by the likes of Rory MacDonald, Frankie Edgar, and Yair Rodriguez. He almost stopped Dennis Siver in 2017, but proceeded to get dominated in the final round.
Guida (34-18) hasn’t fought since being choked out by Charles Oliveira at UFC 225 in Chicago. That loss snapped a two-fight winning streak, which included a dominant decision over Erik Koch and a TKO of Joe Lauzon. For context, when B.J. Penn last won a fight, Guida was a couple of months removed from beating Rafael dos Anjos and would soon submit Takanori Gomi two months after Penn beat Hughes.
UFC 237 is expected to be headlined by a strawweight title fight between champion Rose Namajunas and Jessica Andrade.