BJ Penn was once known for his performances in Jiu-Jitsu and professional MMA but recently he’s become more well-known for his out-there statements, like the recent claims that both evolution and dinosaurs are ‘fake’. Penn had a lengthy career in combat sports after starting out with BJJ, where he achieved a black belt in the art quicker than the majority of people ever have. Penn wasn’t just promoted for no reason though, as he actually showed an incredible amount of grappling skill over the three years that he was training up until that point. He was able to prove it too, as he competed in the IBJJF World Championship just three weeks after his promotion and won a gold medal in the featherweight division.
He then went on to an incredibly successful 32-fight MMA career that saw him compete across multiple different weight classes and for all of the best promotions in the world at the time. The highlights of his career included winning titles at both lightweight and welterweight in the UFC, a feat that resulted in him being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. After retiring from combat sports, he got into politics and ran for Governor of Hawaii in 2022.
Although he wasn’t successful in the election, he remains very popular in Hawaii and is still an influential figure in the area. Regardless, he’s drawn some criticism for some of his recent comments that have denied the existence of a number of things. Prior to this, BJ Penn claimed that CTE is “fake” and now he’s moved on to debating the existence of both evolution and dinosaurs instead. Several fighters have been known for controversial opinions or beliefs in conspiracy theories in the past of course, but Penn has become increasingly more vocal about topics like this over the last few years.
BJ Penn appears to have made his statements on evolution and dinosaurs being ‘fake’ in a comment on an Instagram post, and the image was shared to the official Twitter account of Full Contact MTWF:
https://twitter.com/FullContactMTWF/status/1680534258249609217/
