BJ Penn Should Prove He's Hungry Before Taking UFC's Latest Handout

Motivated BJ Penn is becoming MMA's Flying Dutchman. We're all sure it exists, or did once. But actual sightings now are just bird calls on the breeze.

In January, Penn unveiled his desire to bring the ship into port one more time, and on Tuesday, UFC officials obliged him, announcing their former lightweight and welterweight champ would face Dennis Siver this July at UFC 199.

Penn is 37 years old—fairly advanced but not outside the spectrum of MMA success. That prodigious combat knowledge is still inside his brain, and his 28 pro fights are, relatively speaking, not an oppressive number. He has it within him to change the perception he's shot or chronically underprepared, but it's up to him—not his fans or the UFC—to effect that change.

That's why this great hasn't yet earned the fight with Siver or any other in the UFC, and will not have until further notice. It's just not the right starting place for Penn's latest comeback.

Penn's record speaks for itself, but that cuts both ways. On one hand, Penn is probably the best lightweight ever. Brilliant and utterly fearless, Penn always sought out the tallest mountain on the horizon or toughest kid (besides himself) in the room. He was a no-brainer for the UFC Hall of Fame, which he entered last year. 

On the other hand, Penn hasn't won a pro MMA fight in more than five years. Even then, it was a novelty fight with fading ex-champ Matt Hughes, who was then 37 years old and hung up his own gloves the following year. Penn is 0-3-1 since that fight, grinding to a draw with Jon Fitch before losing in succession to Nick Diaz, Rory MacDonald and Frankie Edgar.

But wait, you say. Deserve's got nothing to do with it, you assert. It's more about selling a fight than matching up the objective best. But Penn doesn't exactly bring the boom at the box office, either.

According to MMAPayout.com, the 19th season of The Ultimate Fighter, during which Penn coached against Edgar, was an up-and-down ratings performer, at best. In 2011, UFC 137, headlined by Penn's bout with Diaz, drew a meager 280,000 pay-per-view buys, according to Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer. He just doesn't command the kind of interest among casual MMA fans he does among the hardcore set.

Commanding or not, here comes another comeback, buoyed by a plum spot on one of the UFC's tentpole events. Without going line by line through the Penn chronology, we've seen this movie before. He came out of retirement No. 1 in 2012 when MacDonald challenged him to do so. Penn, like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, couldn't walk away from a dare, even when he knew doing so was probably in his best interest. Predictably, MacDonald handled Penn fairly thoroughly.

Penn (16-10-2) kinda sorta semi-retired after that but ostensibly made it official in 2014 after a one-sided TKO loss to Edgar. It was Penn's only professional bout to date in the 145-pound featherweight division and, well, it didn't go well. Yet another bad sign for his current quest, which happens along the featherweight fault line.

Now, 18 months after his Edgar loss, enter the same soundbites and gestures as before. Giving credit where it's due, though, joining up with the vaunted JacksonWink camp in New Mexico is a sign Penn means business.

"I always dream of being the champion," Penn told broadcaster Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour after he announced his initial return in January. "Once you're the champ, you can't get that thought out of your head. ... [Coach] Greg [Jackson] is bringing me in and teaching me and showing me a lot of things, and I am feeling really good about everything. ... The motivation, I want to go get that 145-pound belt. That is a huge motivation for me.

There's that word again. Despite its redundancy, it's a good word to hear and another good sign. Still, that's all these things are: Just tea leaves in a bucket of tea leaves.

Why so jaded? Take this snippet from Penn, offered in 2012 as he prepared for MacDonald:

"

I'm expecting the best B.J. Penn that I've ever seen, so we'll just see how this all plays out. I don't want to just be known as "Oh, he was good back in the day." I want to be known as one of the best. With that said, I don't want to sit here and sound like I want more admiration. ... I still think I have something left to accomplish."

"

Siver's not great, but he is good. He's a converted kickboxer and tough as nails, and he's a bona fide UFC-level fighter. Sadly, that's more than we can say for today's version of Penn. Penn, who cashed plenty of headliner's paychecks in his career and hails from a wealthy family to boot, doesn't need the money.

So if he wants to come back again to hear the cheers or get his hand raised or wear gold again, he can do all of that in a smaller show, where the risk of long-term damage and further humiliation is lower. If he wants to earn his way back to a title shot, see previous sentence. There are a ton of shows regularly airing on cable television (or UFC Fight Pass) that would give their left nostril to have him.

Penn's not the first top athlete—certainly not the first fighter—to come out of retirement once boredom, bill collectors or whatever took hold. Typically, though, it doesn't end well, especially when age becomes a factor and brain health is involved.

Penn's own past is prologue until he proves it isn't. So before he gets another shot under MMA's brightest lights, he should show he's capable of writing a different ending.

Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more, follow Scott on Twitter.