Outrage at Penn Camp Over VaselineGate Complaint is Unjustified
by MMAEruption on Feb 2, 2009 10:06 PM EST
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PrintI noticed that there is quite a bit of animosity towards BJ Penn's camp over the possibility of a formal complaint with the NSAC over VaselineGate. I find this reaction quite ridiculous for two reasons.
1) Whether intentional or not, GSP's camp is the one that messed up. They are the ones that were busted for violated the rules - so it's THEIR fault if somebody calls them on it.
2) Any complaint, formal or otherwise, does not take anything away from GSP's victory. I'm a huge BJ Penn fan and looking back at the fight, I firmly believe that even with a roll of Gorilla tape and a Taser, he wasn't going to sub GSP from the bottom.
On the ground, BJ's biggest strength is his ability to pass the guard and otherwise move to dominant positions - NOT sub opponents off his back. For God's sake, if BJ couldn't keep Jens Pulver in a triangle, he wasn't going to catch GSP, especially as the fight went on.
It's painfully obvious that BJ wasn't in the fight after the first round and the application of vaseline, whether intentional or not, did not play a role in GSP's victory.
So GSP fans, don't worry so much about this complaint. Everybody knows the truth, and like (un)intentional groin shots, grabbing the cage/shorts, and eye pokes in other fights, this ugly detail will fade from fans' memories.
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I’m not going to vote because I don’t know. Perhaps it did, I rewatched the fight and round 2 BJ tries to throw his legs up but isn’t able to capitalize on anything. To me it looked more like GSP changed his posture to ensure that there wasn’t anything threatening more than something on GSPs shoulders.
As far as your #1 item, as the rules stand now GSP’s camp didn’t break any rules.
copy and pasted from another thread...
Stop Blaming BJ’s Camp
The commission had officials near both corners… Bj complained after rd. 2 to officials… Coincidentally officials near GSP’s corner had seen the application after rd 1… and studied again, and saw a different person than Nurse applying vaseline to the face and body of GSP (i believe Jackson)… They then wiped GSP’s body after rd. 2, and again to make sure, after rd. 3… They were very pissed… and Dana, and Chuck, and others were aware well before any complaint was made. BJ said he felt GSP may be a little more slick than usual AFTER the commission saw the infraction… Kizer wasn’t aware that BJ complained until today, and had acted on his own accord…
Stop blaming other people for mistakes made by GSP’s team… BJ isn’t the only one bringing it up… he wasn’t the first… and he wasn’t the loudest… Your love for GSP is blinding your judgment.
The outrage is more than justified at Penn his camp and his fanatics, take your butt whooping like a man don’t cry about vaseline when you get tooled and quit after 4 rounds.
There is no point in speculating. NOBODY will ever know if it changed the outcome of the fight. You can only look at it one way.
Was vaseline applied to GSP’s back?
Can vaseline on a back effect the outcome of a fight?
Yes and Yes…. that’s the end of the story…. it’s pointless to argue. If you throw a basketball at a full court shot behind your head with your eyes closed and get fouled, you damn well know the shot wasn’t going in, but since you got fouled, you get your 3 free throws. Because it was a possibility.
1) Whether intentional or not, GSP’s camp is the one that messed up. They are the ones that were busted for violated the rules – so it’s THEIR fault if somebody calls them on it.
… except they were not busted for violating the rules. In all of the threads on this subject and all of the comments on all of the threads on this subject, there is still not a single documentation of a rule that was clearly violated. In my mind, at least some of the animosity related to the complaint is that because there was no violation of any rule, a formal complaint against GSP and his camp is missing the mark. The better approach would have been to go about publicizing the actual rule, debating it, and working to make it both clearer and more effective so that there is no such controversy in the future. By directing a formal complaint at GSP, for no violation of any rule, all it does is come across as seeking an “excuse” or minimizing the outcome or otherwise taking away from what happened in that fight. Some of the animosity is pure GSP love or BJ Penn hate, for sure, but I think some of it is more complicated than that.
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