Northcutt vs. Pfister

@GreenHornet, You're kidding right? he's easily the biggest underachiever the sport has ever seen. My point is he could have been even greater had he cared more, had a better camp that gave good technical advice and had more determination, thus the meme of motivated BJ vs unmotivated BJ mattering a lot come fight time. No doubt hes an all time great, but he held himself back, it was so hard to be a fan of his with all his ups and downs that he caused. First of all, he pressed his luck too much at 170 and above, especially at the end of his career, secondly, he stopped training with Marv Marinovich because it was too hard for him, and he left the UFC and his WW title in his prime to fight in Japan.

* Edited at 12.09.2015, 5:57 PM ET *

@GreenHornet, 

"And my point is that BJ Penn's career shouldn't be looked through the lens of "what if"


And I'm saying it could and it should, guess we're at an impasse there.


"BJ Penn, given in the context of the era when he fought, was one of the best P4P fighters around."


Yes, but like I said, he was always hindered by the fact that he didn't take the sport as seriously as he should have and in fact had very lax training for most of his career and got by on mostly skill alone. I'm a big fan of his but I was disappointed that he never took that extra step.


"The only reason anyone would consider adding a "what if" tag to his career is that he is overshadowed by an even better and more motivated fighter in GSP who beat him twice."


That's clearly not why I'm adding a what if to BJ's career. If you had actually read what I said I think you would have gotten some insight into why I was ultimately disappointed with BJ's career as have many other fans of his. It's not that he's not a great fighter with an impressive resume, it's just always the question of how good could he have really been. That has nothing to do with GS*******P at all.