Although nothing has yet been carved in stone, the 22-year-old beast, Canadian-cagefighter Rory MacDonald, and 33-year-old Hawaiian pound-for-pound legend B.J. Penn, have now verbally agreed to meet sometime in the coming months.
MacDonald, originally from the western-province of British Columbia, is currently training here on Canada's east coast at one of the world's premier mixed-martial-arts centers, Tristar Gym, which is run by famed trainer Firas Zahabi, who's also, notably, the mentor of UFC welterweight-superstar, and Montreal native, Georges St-Pierre.
Zahabi, recently weighed-in on a few topics concerning MacDonald vs. Penn, and also reiterated some previous statements regarding MacDonald vs. St-Pierre:
"It's the UFC, I think they want to see that Penn vs. MacDonald fight. And when the UFC offers you a fight like that, I think it's because the fans want to see it. And us, we never say no to a fight the fans want to see, and I know B.J. Penn loves to give the fans what they want. In the end, I just thinks it's a matchup everyone wants to see," stated Zahabi.
"BJ is a big name for Rory to fight," Zahabi continued, "It puts you on the map. ... It's great for Rory. No matter what happens, he'll have his name out there more than ever."
The elite fight-trainer also told MMAjunkie.com Radio that—even though both MacDonald and St-Pierre are friends and training partners, who are competing for the same prize—the UFC welterweight championship—there will absolutely-never be a conflict of interest, so to speak, where they will need to square-off and fight each other:
"We're not going to make a problem out of it before it becomes a problem. But, if it ever comes to that point, we'll sit down and discuss who's going to shift weight or not. But there are a lot of fights before there's that bottleneck. ... I don't think we're there. I think we're a long way from there," Zahabi said.
He, Zahabi, also said that he feels personally, that it may be too soon to worry about a potential Rashad Evans and Jon Jones type scenario. But if the question of fighting each-other is ever asked of the two, from UFC President Dana White, the answer from all three people involved in the match would be a resounding No:
"Definitely the two aren't going to fight," Zahabi said. "We've agreed on that several times. We work together too often. I work with the two guys religiously, constantly over the years, so I could never condone that. You spend too much time with each other, and you're not going to be punching each other in the face."
As for the big-boss-man White? ..well, he's already thrown in his two-cents worth on the subject:
"I guarantee you if Rory looks looks at GSP's fucking-bank-account, he'll want to beat the fucking shit out of him," White said.
*As for my opinion, I like to use the example of Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes—who trained together for years and loved each other like brothers, but managed to put all that nonsense aside in order to pass the torch, so to speak, from the old to the new.
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