A day after the UFC issued a statement saying that BJ Penn’s comeback fight has been postponed following serious allegations from a former writer for the fighter’s official website, a new statement has emerged on the same site in defense of ‘The Prodigy’.
According to former writer Pedro Carrasco earlier in the week on Twitter, Penn is alleged to have sexually assaulted his girlfriend Amber Paxton back in August of 2015 and is also alleged to be a cocaine user, but bjpenn.com’s statement counter-claims that not only is this not true, but that Carrasco is trying to extort the UFC hall-of-famer.
“The allegations that Pedro and his girlfriend are making against BJ Penn simply aren’t true,” the statement on bjpenn.com reads. “Penn trusted Pedro to run his website for almost a decade and considered him family. He was fired last year for unethical behavior and was provided a severence that ended on February 16, 2016. One day later allegations appeared in a one sided Twitter rant which happen to be many months after the alleged date in question. (August of 2015). There are many holes in Pedro’s story. In the almost 15 years that Penn has been a champion fighter there has not ever been any incident or allegation in regards to his conduct with women. He is family man and father of two young daughters with a known long term girlfriend. It is unfortunate that someone that BJ considered family is trying to extort him.”
The 37 year-old Penn had been expected to end his three year retirement at UFC 197 in April, but his chances of returning to the Octagon now hang on the result of an investigation into the claims leveled against him.
