Penn Chokes Out Florian

What can you say about B.J. Penn? The best analysis of his fight with Florian, or at least the most articulate, came from MMA Mania's Performity Picks' Eric Foster who noted:

I've written before about overvaluing recent fights as one of the classic mistakes in MMA handicapping (see my MMA Wagering Guide series of articles), and I'd caution people evaluating this fight to put Penn's recent loss against St-Pierre in the proper perspective. In fact, I would go as far as to say that fight at 170 pounds should essentially be irrelevant to handicapping this fight. St-Pierre demonstrated in that fight that modern MMA has evolved to the point that the days of a smaller fighter using technical superiority to overcome a larger, stronger opponent are essentially behind us (see: Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir at UFC 100 for an exclamation point on the concept).

I think that is the key point. Sometimes experience teaches us badly and there was ample opportunity for "bad education" in watching BJ Penn get dominated by GSP. I'll admit that I had a hard time shaking the image of that epic defeat. But it was and remains near impossible to doubt B.J. Penn at 155.