BJ Penn (photo via UFC)

By FCF Staff

Following the release of two videos, which showed B.J. Penn in a street fight and getting knocked down, the UFC Hall of Famer is claiming he attempted to diffuse the situation before it turned violent.

Recently TMZ shared out videos that showed Penn in an altercation in Hawaii, and in one of the videos, he was knocked down or out. In a follow-up interview with TSN, however, the former welterweight and lightweight champ said this:

“I’m at a concert going to meet a friend that I’ve known since we were really young kids and I’m over there and an acquaintance of mine, he gets mad about something, you know something was said or it was an old past thing and then he wants to fight about it,” Penn said.

“I was like, ‘no, no, I don’t want to fight, we’re friends, everything is cool.’ He even walks outside and I’m thinking, this is silly I’m going to go get him, calm him down and get him to come back inside and enjoy the concert, we’ve got some other friends there. I walk outside to go give the guy a hug and then he hits me twice and I’m like no, calm down. I try to give him another hug and he hits me a couple more times and he hits me again.”

“Whoever put that video up cut it in half, I wish they had the whole thing that showed me trying to hug the guy. Finally my adrenaline picked up because he was hitting me so much so I said go ahead and hit me again, really I thought the guy would eventually just say forget it BJ, whatever, walk away, but he hit me and he hit me good and knocked me down and then when I got back up he tried it again and I just had to defend myself and that’s what you see in the second video.”

The 40-year-old fighter also claimed that instigating incidents like this, and another one this past July, is the “last thing” he wants to do, as a result of an ongoing custody case for his children. Penn’s former partner, and the mother of his children, has accused Penn of domestic violence. The Hawaiian star has denied the allegations.