Early Life
Penn was born to Jay Dee Penn, an Irish American and Loraine Shin, a third generation Korean-American. At the age of seventeen, Penn began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu after being introduced to it by his neighbor, Tom Callos. Callos had put up fliers in local gyms looking for people to train with, and BJ's father Jay Dee Penn had called Callos and said his boys were interested. Callos then taught BJ and his brother what he knew. Shortly thereafter, BJ moved to San Jose, California to begin training at AKA with Dave Camarillo and Bob Cooke, who he lived with and became close friends with. It was here during his time in San Jose that he decided to pursue a career in martial arts (albeit not mixed martial arts at the time).
Read more about this topic: B.J. Penn
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)