Season 6 winner of The Ultimate Fighter weighs in on Saturday's main event. Notable quote:
MD: I'll say this as far as Stevenson-Penn goes. BJ Penn is probably one of the most talented guys in the fight game, and Joe is no slouch at all. But, if BJ does what he's supposed to do and does those things correctly in the beginning of the fight, he is really going to be dangerous. However, the longer the fight goes, the more it is in Stevenson's favor in my opinion. I know Stevenson trained really hard for this, and I think he'll be ready for a long fight. BJ has shown that he fades the longer a fight goes on, and that was a problem for Penn throughout his career. Unless we see the fight end early, I would say the longer the fight goes it would be in Stevenson's favor.
He's totally correct, of course, but does anyone else get the feeling that the "longer the fight goes..." argument is merely a way for folks to insure their BJ predictions don't go too far? In other words, it seems as if everyone believes BJ has no chance to lose this, so they bring up the conditioning argument as a way to cover themselves and grant Stevenson some modicum of respect.