The goodness of the "Prodigy"

In case you were wondering the "Prodigy" is BJ Penn and the sport is MMA. I had seen on the Yahoo! rankings that Penn was in the top 10, but to look at the guy he really doesn't look like he belongs or that he should even step in the octagon. That is until you see him in action. Before this weekend I saw maybe part of one of his fights and he didn't look that impressive. But this weekend I saw two different fights and he is every bit of the #3 ranking. He just has a different look when he is fighting, he looks right at his opponent the whole time, and he just peppers them with jabs until they make a mistake and then he just clobbers them. One fight was against Sean Sherk and Sherk is smaller, but just super ripped and it looks like he would just tear BJ apart, but he never really gets close to him. They make it through the first round, and by the end Sherk is tore up with some bleeding and what not, while Penn looks like he just stepped in the ring. In the second round with 10 seconds to go you can kind of see that Sherk is just waiting for the bell to end the round, but before that happens Penn just unleashes a flury of punches that knocks Sherk back against the cage and just as he is coming off the cage Penn catches him in the face with a knee and then hits him about 10 more times in four seconds. It was impressive, and even though the ref didn't stop the fight before the end of the round Sherk is unable to go any further. He gets back to the back and is asking people what happened, because he didn't even know. And the crazy part is Penn looked the same stepping out of the ring as he did getting in, not a scratch on him. Uriah Faber's (WEC feather weight Champ) only loss was to Penn and before I would have said that Faber would probably beat him now, but I really don't think that he could. Penn is just too good and I really didn't see and weak parts of his game. Faber definitely wouldn't want to stand toe to toe, but I think he would have a hard time bringing him down. The toughest fight for Penn now might be the Welter weight champ St. Pierre (Rush) who has beaten Penn before. Did I mention though that Penn has held the Welter weight belt before too. Yeah, that dude is good.