Felipe Pena recently shared an update on his potential transition to MMA, revealing that the time has now passed for him to make that move. Pena has been at the very top of the sport for a long time now and his multiple ADCC world titles have proven that he has the no gi grappling skills to succeed in MMA. He’s also been open about his desire to make that move in the past, so it’s been something that many grappling fans have been keeping an eye out for. He’s been very busy with his Jiu-Jitsu career since then though and apparently that’s prevented him from making the transition.
Pena spoke about it recently and revealed that he knew that time was against him even just a few years ago:
“I had this idea a while ago, but these episodes ended up making me discard it because I couldn’t find the time to transition. Let’s assume I was, I don’t know, at the time, 30 years old and so on, I said, man, there’s not much more time to waste.”
Pena was very eager to make the switch to MMA just 3 years ago but as he said, even that would have been pretty late to switch to a new sport. Most BJJ competitors who have success in MMA make their transition at some point in their 20s at the very least, and they have usually been preparing for it for much longer than that. Even as recently as last year Felipe Pena was still planning on competing in MMA, but a lot has changed since then. Not only is he another year older but the landscape of professional Jiu-Jitsu has been forever altered, and making a living in the sport is now much more realistic.
Pena revealed that he still has the urge to do MMA even today, but he knows it’s not the right time anymore:
“Nowadays I’m already 33 so I’m going to transition to MMA I’m going to spend some time there adapting, you know, I’m obviously going to have to stop competing jiu-jitsu because there’s no way around it. They’re two completely different things. So I have the desire but I think at this point in my career today, I don’t think it’s worth it anymore.”
The full interview with Felipe Pena, where he shares his thoughts on a transition to MMA was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMA Hoje:
