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Our sporting heroes grow old and move on. It’s a fact of life.
There are some tell-tale signs, to be fair. In team sports they start to spend more time on the bench as their flashes of brilliance come few and far between. The rest of the team picks up the slack.
In individual sports it usually comes in a ‘passing of the torch’ moment in a big match or tournament. A hungry up-and-comer beats the ageing legend in a story for the ages. Think back to when Lleyton Hewitt beat Pete Sampras at the U.S. Open final in 2001.
As clichéd as it sounds, combat sports are a different beast. There’s no team to pick up the slack, no substitutions to save face or an unscathed defeat to the next generation. When father time catches up to you in a fight, it shows. And it hurts.
Following a near two-year layoff, former UFC welterweight and lightweight champ BJ Penn returned to the Octagon on Monday to face top featherweight and perennial rival Frankie Edgar in their third meeting.
With his reflexes slowed and his killer instinct waned, it was a grim image of an old fighter. Penn stalked the cage but threw nothing of note and ultimately had no solution or offence to offer for Edgar’s relentless attack. After three one-sided rounds, referee Herb Dean rightly called a stop to proceedings.
I take nothing away from Edgar – he dethroned Penn when he was champ and has proven himself to be a great fighter in his own right. Penn will go down as one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time. This was certain long before he attempted his comeback. But in an arena where pride, heart and skill are king, the sad truth is that when skill disappears the other two often hang around for too long.
In decades past fans saw combatants like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard attempt one too many comebacks. For MMA fans there are the examples of Chuck Liddell and ‘Cro Cop’ to look at. Heart gets them back in the fight and pride tells them to keep going. Unlike tennis, a loss to a young killer isn’t capped off with a humbling trophy ceremony. For fighters it often ends with a trip to the hospital and a damaging effect to their long-term health.
For us fans it’s truly heartbreaking to see. It goes beyond watching one’s idol lose a contest. It’s a beating in every sense of the word.
Penn has rightly called it a career, saying that the third fight with Edgar was a means of finding closure on whether he could still compete with the current crop. He’s got his business ventures and good health to look forward to.
To him I give all my respect and kudos. Happy retirement, champ. Thanks for the memories and may your legacy serve as a reminder to the young guns to get out while the going is still good.
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