Former UFC champion B.J. Penn has lashed out at Jake Paul for copying one of his iconic moves.
Jake Paul was recently featured in the main event of a Showtime PPV boxing card, where he defeated former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley.
During the fight, Jake Paul was clipped by a hard shot from Woodley, who then taunted the YouTuber. This prompted Jake Paul to lick both of his gloves, reminiscent of B.J. Penn's iconic celebration, which would see him lick the blood of his opponents off of his gloves.
Catch the celebration below:
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Following the Paul vs. Woodley fight, B.J. Penn took to social media to warn Jake Paul not to copy him again.
"Don’t ever copy me again you f***in p****, look at my gloves, look at the pillows on your hands 20 years of war! #mankinestuff @jakepaul #kindergarten."
There was a large amount of support for B.J. Penn from the MMA community for his post. One of the legends of MMA, Mark Coleman, commented the following:
"Don’t ever copy @bjpenn it can’t be done #Legend #HOF."
Clay Guida, Brad Tavares and CM Punk all also made their thoughts on the matter known.
Where is B.J. Penn now?
In his prime, B.J. Penn was one of the greatest mixed martial artists in the world. He competed in four different weight classes: featherweight, lightweight, welterweight and middleweight. Such versatility is nearly unheard of in modern MMA, and Penn had success in all four. He was even able to claim the UFC lightweight title at one point in his career.
However, after Penn defeated Matt Hughes in 2010, he would not win again in the sport of MMA. That's despite him continuing to compete in MMA up until 2019.
Since the Hughes fight, Penn has gone 0-7-1. Admittedly, the majority of those fights were against high level opposition such as Yair Rodriguez, Frankie Edgar and Rory MacDonald.
After losing his seventh consecutive fight, this time to Clay Guida, the UFC cut B.J. Penn from their roster. He now appears to be retired and walks away from the sport with a 16-14 record.