BJ Penn Offered Strikeforce Fight Against Gilbert Melendez, Declined

By Chris Howie
MMANEWS.COM Staff Writer

Former UFC Lightweight and Welterweight Champion BJ Penn finds himself with an itch to get back into the cage and fight again after announcing his retirement last October.Penn has had offers put on the table since that night, and discussed one of those proposals with MMAFighting.com this week:

“[White] offered a fight against Gilbert Melendez in Strikeforce. We sat down and we thought about it for a little while. We talked back and forth. It was kind of one of those things where I guess at the end of the day we thought about it a thousand different ways and we were like 'Is that downgrading yourself fighting in Strikeforce? If you win the Strikeforce title are people going to say you did it because you couldn't win the UFC title?'”

“At the end of the day, it just didn't make sense to us,” Penn said.

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