Last week, footage surfaced of UFC Hall of Famer BJ Penn getting into a street fight. His attorney had issued a statement, but the former UFC champion had remained silent until earlier today.

In an interview with TSN, Penn explained the situation from his perspective. “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,’ and 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.”