The story of how Greg Jackson came to work with B.J. Penn, and what comes next

B.J. Penn

It was right around Christmas that Greg Jackson, one of MMA’s most respected and busiest coaches, got a call from B.J. Penn.

The UFC Hall of Famer had been hinting at a return to the UFC’s octagon, pushed by a simmering grudge with UFC lightweight Nik Lentz. But he was now serious about it.

“He said, ‘I’ve been thinking about a run at it,’” Jackson remembers of their conversation. “I said, ‘That’s an awesome idea.’”

Those were not the first words used by some longtime MMA observers when Penn on Tuesday made his comeback official, announcing on “The MMA Hour” that he was coming out of retirement after tipping his hand this past week.

Penn (16-10-2 MMA, 12-9-2 UFC), 37, returns to the cage with a 1-5-1 records in his past seven UFC bouts. The fighter who brilliantly dismantled Diego Sanchez to defend his lightweight title in 2009 is now widely regarded as a casualty of time, losing the speed and agility that allowed him to become one of only two UFC fighters to capture belts in two separate divisions.

After a one-sided throttling in a third bout against Frankie Edgar, who outpointed him in 2010 to capture the lightweight title and then did it again in a rematch later the same year, even Penn conceded he could no longer keep up with the competition.

“I’d always kick myself in the butt and complain to (UFC President) Dana (White) and complain to everybody, ‘Man, I could have done it again,’” he said. “Now I know for sure that I can’t.”

But opinions change, especially in the fight business. Penn, who’s retired several times only to change his mind, is once again convinced he can return at 145 pounds and will wage a campaign for the featherweight belt. Jackson is fully on board.

“I stayed up for a couple of days putting together a plan, and that’s kind of how it happened,” he told MMAjunkie

Penn has now been at the Jackson-Winkeljohn MMA academy in Albuquerque, N.M., for two weeks, preparing for a return at UFC 197 against a yet-unofficial opponent. Fighters are starstruck, if you look at their Twitter feeds. The aura of Penn is undeniable.

Holly Holm, B.J. Penn and Jon Jones

Jackson, for one, believes the former champ hasn’t reached his expiration date. He’s taking on the challenge of revitalizing Penn’s career because of the belief it’s not the body that’s failed the fighter, but the mind.

“He’s such a talented and great athlete, once he finds himself and finds his love for it, I think he’s got a good two or three more years in him,” Jackson said. “Why not? What do we have to lose?”

If you watched Penn’s third fight with Edgar, the answer to that question is obvious. It didn’t take long to realize “The Prodigy” was in far over his head and took a lot of unnecessary damage before the bout was mercifully halted in the third round.

“That doesn’t matter to me,” Jackson said when asked about the Edgar fight. “Everybody is like, ‘Did you see Holly (Holm’s) last performance? Did you see Andrei’s performance?’ That’s nothing. Everybody has their idea about what fighting is, and I have a pretty good idea of what I think fighting is, and I’ll go with my gut.”

And right now, Jackson’s gut is telling him is that Penn can and should pursue his desires.

“Performances due to information limitations and morale limitations, don’t matter to me at all,” he said. “What I look at is context and relevance within that realm. The performances don’t matter, because the potential is there.”

Unlocking dormant talent is one of things for which Jackson and coach Mike Winkeljohn draw unanimous praise. Among his most recent projects is ex-UFC heavyweight champ Andrei Arlovski, who joined the team in 2009 amid a severe career slump that saw him lose four straight bouts, including three by knockout.

Arlovski went on to win six of his next eight bouts and a new contract with the UFC. He won four straight in the promotion’s octagon before his streak was finally ended earlier this month with a first-round TKO against Stipe Miocic.

“Greg Jackson gave me hope,” Arlovski said this past May. “He gave me his hand. Some people said, ‘Oh, Arlovski’s done.’ I was so mad, I was so upset, I was so angry inside. But I gave him a call, and he told me to come to my clinic, and we’ll start from the beginning.

“If I would have started training with Greg Jackson before (a knockout loss to Fedor) Emelianenko (in 2009), it might be a different story right now. But better later than never.”

Penn has brought several friends and family members with him to Albuquerque from his native Hilo, Hawaii. Jackson said he gave Penn no specific stipulations or requirements to train at his academy and the two “clicked right away.”

Historically, the knock on Penn has been that his talent has given rise to a petulance inside the gym, with former teammates and coaches catering more to his whims than the requirements of a world-class fighter. The grudge with Lentz blossomed, in part, after he assisted Penn in a training camp for the third Edgar fight. After the loss, Penn went after nutrition guru Mike Dolce, who said he arrived in Hilo with Lentz only weeks before the fight when the ex-champ’s team was in “crisis mode.”

“I made some strong suggestions and very strong observations to members of the team about what I saw, what I’m accustomed to and what I think would really benefit him,” Dolce later told MMAjunkie Radio. “The suggestions that I made, I made them officially, and they were accepted but not responded or reacted to.

“It was just a matter of that’s the direction he chose to go. He’s either going to win and look like a (expletive) genius, or he’s going to not win and he’s going to make the oddsmakers look like geniuses.”

Dolce, according to Lentz (25-7-2 MMA, 9-4-1 UFC), who later penned a scathing poem and statement welcoming a fight with Penn, was never paid for his work. A condition of a potential fight, he wrote, was the payment of $22,000 to Dolce.

Asked whether Penn’s career suffered as the result of mismanagement in the gym, Jackson said, “I don’t know, because that was before my time. I think he’s a wonderful guy, but I’m just going to do what I do. That’s all I can do. I have a pretty good track record with helping people out in that situation, so I hope we can keep it going.”

Jackson said the difference between building an inexperienced fighter and one with years of experience varies slightly in the technical demands placed on them during camp. But the key principle in achieving breakthroughs is understanding who the fighter is and how he or she relates to “ubiquitous, strategic principles that govern combat.”

So far, he said, Penn has proven to be a devoted student. He gets nightly homework assignments designed to make him think more creatively about certain fighting positions, Jackson said. The extra work is designed to kickstart his development by forcing him to solve problems and think about how techniques fit into a bigger picture of fighting.

“I just have one word for him: talented,” Jackson said. “His sense of how he can find rhythm, how he sees fighting, there’s a reason he’s one of the greatest fighters. If he’s happy and productive and pushed mentally, I think he’s going to do great things.”

At the moment, the UFC has yet to announce Penn’s return opponent, though a source close to Lentz, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the matter, believes the promotion is veering away from a grudge match.

Whoever the UFC chooses, Jackson anticipates six more weeks with Penn, which will align him with a potential fight at UFC 197, which takes place March 5 in Las Vegas. It’s a partnership that could prove to be long term, or merely an experiment in Penn’s long and often tumultuous odyssey.

Whatever it is, it’s not a rehab project, all appearances to the contrary.

“I think of it as another step in his evolution,” Jackson said. “I don’t think he’s rehabbing anything. I think he’s just beginning to evolve again. He’s no any more of a challenge or less of a challenge than anybody else. It’s just another challenge.”

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.