BJ Penn: The MMA Fighter Who Cried Wolf

Grandmothers all over the world enjoy telling their grandchildren stories.

Their are tales from the Brothers Grimm, Aesop's fables, Biblical stories and regional fairy tales.

For every grandmother that you would ask, there could be a different answer to the tale they enjoy telling the best.

For this grandmother any tale that has wildlife in it would be a winner.

We have land which has a variety of wildlife cohabiting with our six horses and six grandchildren, so I like telling stories that teach lessons.

For some reason, wolves are involved in many of our stories.

There are many coyotes on our property, so stories about wolves are not really all that far fetched.

Many nights I can hear coyotes howling and the grandchildren are convinced that they are wolves howling at the moon or communicating with their pack.

Because grandma feels strongly about children "telling tall tales" to get attention from adults, "The Boy who Cried Wolf" has become a favorite tale to impart an important lesson.

It happened to occur to me that there are probably no wolves indigenous to the Hawaiian islands.

Perhaps there are no coyotes running wild there either.

So I would not be surprised to hear that BJ Penn has never been told the story of the boy who cried wolf.

For some reason, as an MMA fighter with ten years of experience, BJ has not learned to accept losses well.

He finds one excuse or another easily at hand and latches on to it, tells it over and over again until the excuse becomes his reality.

With his first loss to Georges St-Pierre, he convinced many intelligent people that "because he went to a bar after the fight and Georges went to the hospital" the judges had gotten it all wrong and he had in fact won the fight.

It didn't matter to him that the damage he did to Georges happened very early in the first round and left Georges injured and facing the truth that he had to man up and intensify his efforts or lose the fight.

Man up he did and although he was plagued with double vision, blood gushing from his nose and down his throat, he had trained to go the distance and that is exactly what he did.

People who do not know either fighter, when shown the film of the fight, agree with the judges' decision and give the win to the fighter who like Rocky, overcame the odds, pushed through the pain and enforced his will on his opponent.

These unbiased few do not care where either combatant went after the fight, because they don't know either one of them, and not being fans, have no invested interest in either of them.

After the second GSP v BJP fight, a new excuse was found and I will not belabor that point further than this mention of it: Vaseline.

Now, suppose BJ is scheduled to meet a very well informed, intelligent fighter in the future, who has a great work ethic, good cardio and a better than usual nutritional program.

What if this opponent listens to his advisers and develops a "tailored-to-fit-BJ" game plan, conditions his behind off and is fully prepared to beat BJ at his own game--and does.

WWBJD? (For the uninformed that is: what would BJ do?)

He can claim the guy learned to grease himself from one of his mentors, bathes in baby oil, or eats an unusual amount of flax-seed oil, but will anyone listen?

It would be too much to hope for, I suppose, that Baby Jay might come across the book and read it to his daughter, and find sudden understanding that he has worn out the excuses, gotten too much attention crying wolf and will have to win the fight on his own merit without excuses.

After all she is still very young and I am not sure of her father's reading ability and his own comprehension.

Without someone asking questions about the meaning of the story, would BJ even find it applicable to his own situation?

Well, I suppose not: there are no wolves on his island.

And besides; there are no wolves on Hilo.