It’s rare that a UFC star gives fans a glimpse of exactly what goes into producing those “Countdown” specials, but BJ Penn has done just that. In his latest video shoot for BJPenn.com, Penn admits that several of the comments that he had to make for the clip were forced by the UFC production team and that he wasn’t happy to have to use them as he himself has been painted the “bad guy” in the past in regard to his previous Georges St. Pierre fights:
“They had to come back to film the Nick Diaz countdown. One thing that was a trip about that whole thing was that, I got a lot of respect for Diaz, I’ve trained with him, that whole thing… they forced me to say, at the end of the whole thing, they forced me to say… ‘You gotta say Nick Diaz’s name now, you gotta say his name.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ They were like, ‘Say you’re going to beat Nick Diaz. Say you’re going to beat Nick Diaz.’ And I said, ‘I’m going to beat Nick Diaz.’ I wish … I would have said my hand is going to be raised; at UFC 137 my hand is going to be raised. I don’t know if they’re going to come back and try to show Nick Diaz that, I don’t know what’s going on with that.”
Diaz, as you will remember, was famously removed from his main event title shot at Georges St. Pierre at UFC 137 after a series of unusual press conference “no shows.” Carlos Condit, who was Penn’s opponent on the card, will be stepping in to fill his shoes, while Diaz was given to Penn instead.
