RIO DE JANEIRO — B.J. Penn hasn’t fought in a year, and he will train with some of the best fighters in the world for his featherweight debut next year against Frankie Edgar.
Penn and Edgar will be the coaches of the next season of The Ultimate Fighter, and will meet next summer in the U.S. Before that showdown, “The Prodigy” will travel to train alongside UFC champions Jose Aldo and Renan Barao, and Bellator champion Eduardo Dantas, at Nova Uniao in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, early next year.
“B.J. is coming in January to know the gym and help us,” Aldo told MMAFighting.com. “He is going to the U.S. again, and then he’ll come back to train with us all for the rest of our camps.”
Penn, a jiu-jitsu black belt under Nova Uniao’s Andre Pederneiras, hasn’t trained with Aldo before.
“I never trained with him,” he said. “He was already a black belt when I was on the team, so I never had the chance to train with him. But I’ll have this honor now.”
Aldo returns to the Octagon on Feb. 1 to face off against Ricardo Lamas at UFC 169. Still considering a move to the lightweight division, Aldo believes that training with the former champion will help him.
“He has fought and became champion in the lightweight division, and at 170, so he has a lot to teach me,” he said. “He has a lot of experience in the UFC, he’s been fighting there for years, so his experience and technique will teach me a lot. He has excellent boxing and jiu-jitsu as well.”