Jose Torres has been called the winningest amateur fighter in MMA. But as he found out, you never really get a break from having to prove yourself.

Torres, two-time IMMAF bantamweight champion with a reported amateur 25-0 record, went to Jackson-Wink MMA to train for his second professional bout, which comes Saturday against Reynaldo Duarte at Titan FC 38.

Once in the altitude of Albuquerque, N.M., Torres found out the high standards expected of fighters. To move from the gym’s big mat to the cage, he said, you had to show you were ready to train with the guys who were getting ready for UFC fights.

Torres found himself working a lot with UFC flyweight Sergio Pettis, who was then prepping for a bout with Chris Kelades at UFC 197. As a wrestler and judo specialist, he was a perfect compliment to the younger brother of ex-champ Anthony Pettis, whose fast strikes kept him honest.

There were some tougher lessons, though. One day, UFC Hall of Famer B.J. Penn was doing rounds and introduced himself with a, “You wanna go?”

Torres immediately agreed, and then muttered an expletive when he realized whom he’d just consented to join in the cage – a former two-division UFC champion widely seen as one of the best fighters of all time.

“I had a little star-struck moment there,” Torres (1-0), who faces Duarte (8-8) on the UFC Fight Pass-streamed event Saturday at Miccosukee Resort and Gaming in Miami, told MMAjunkie Radio.

To make himself feel better, Torres told himself he was on to Penn’s strategy; the techniques that had been used against others to such fine effect were nothing new. Then they started sparring.

“I’m doing fine,” he said. “I’m taking him down; he’s trying to take me down. And I messed up – I tried to shoot, he scrambled, and he takes my back.”

Normally, that wouldn’t be such a big deal. But this wasn’t any ordinary opponent on his back.

“I was like OK, I’ll get out,” Torres said. “I’ve got a big old head and a big old chin – he’s not going to get under my neck. He never did, but it was the struggle that he had to get under my neck, he was just beating the crap out of me.

“He just really, really, really wanted my neck. He kept punching me, kicking me, and mounting me. Once you get on the mat with B.J. Penn, there’s literally no escaping. I felt like Kenny Florian.”

In case you haven’t seen the now-retired Florian’s fight with Penn, that means things weren’t going too well. And what’s worse, Penn was using all the same techniques Torres thought he was prepared to defend.

“It was a really good lesson,” Torres concluded.

Torres is grateful for such things in advance of his second professional fight, which brings with it more attention than you’d expect for a fighter with a 1-0 record. He said almost immediately after his debut win in Titan, he received a call informing him that the UFC was interested in his services.

A win over Duarte could mean a ticket to the big show, which would prove his choice to remain an amateur for so long was a little bit more conservative than necessary.

Torres studied kinesiology and exercise science and once wrote a 50-page paper on the biomechanics of a spinning back heel kick. A full-ride scholarship recipient, he resisted the urge to go pro because under NCAA rules, he would lose his funding if he fought professionally, and because he felt it would be wiser to have a degree to fall back on if fighting didn’t work out.

Now, it looks like he could have a career in the sport if he continues to win impressively.

“They told me I had the eyes of the UFC –I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Torres said. “So I go back in there, and I face a veteran. I can’t take this fight lightly.”

That’s why taking a few beatings at the hands of a UFC legend is a good thing – it prepares him for the hard road ahead.

For more on Titan FC 38, check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.

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