With BJ Penn’s recent retirement from MMA last month, many BJJ fans are hoping to see The Prodigy go back to his roots and focus on BJJ/Grappling tournaments. Renato Babalu Sobral has followed that path.

As the first non-Brazilian to win a World Jiu-Jitsu Champion in 2000. In Jiu-Jitsu, Penn won the silver medal at the 1998 World Cup, and won bronze in the following year, as a lightweight. In 2000, three months after receiving his black belt from the hands of Andre Dede Pederneiras, the Hawaiian won the gold medal by beating Edson Diniz in the final.

In recent interview with BJPenn.com, BJ talked about his current state, and if he would consider competing in Metamoris:

“I’ve just been hanging out at home, hanging out on the big island, enjoying time with the family and just kind of putting everything into perspective.”

BJ, are you going to stay retired?

“I think I should stay retired. One thing I know is that I put a lot of effort, a lot of energy into this camp. I trained for the last year to do this camp, to do this fight, and one thing at my age…I love training, I was looking to do five fights, but now that I look back and I’ve fought the last four or five times without any reward and staying in training camps and waiting for all these young kids to come in and spar with me; the Dominick Cruzes, the Nik Lentzes. You know? I just sit around for hours on end waiting for them to come in and spar with me and punch me in my face. And not that I don’t hold my own but I’m getting very burnt-out, very exhausted, and very discouraged to not have my hand raised, to not have a smile on my face after the fight, and it’s been a long road and a long fight. If you saw me spar in the gym or workout with any of these guys you would say, ‘man, this guy should be fighting everybody.’ But after the last few fights I’m kind of getting tired.”

About a participation in grappling superfights such as Metamoris:

“When it comes to the competition aspect of anything I just love the Ultimate Fighting so much. I’ve been involved with it for so long. I’m just so used to training for a fight, in those ways, you know, it’d be tough to go back to anything else. I’m not totally counting myself out from doing any professional grappling competitions but one thing that would be different is, I wouldn’t train at all for it. I cannot see myself spending money, bringing people down and this and that, for a grappling competition at this point in my life.”

BJ’s BJJ highlight: