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For Griffin, pain ain’t nothin’ but a feelin’ - 5/31/2005
by Jason Probst

Even in a sport filled with tough guys with take-no-prisoners attitudes, Forrest Griffin stands out for sheer doggedness, coupled with a disarmingly humorous take on the hard knocks incurred with being a mixed martial artist.

After his three-round war with Stephan Bonnar in the April 9 finale of "The Ultimate Fighter," Griffin earned a UFC contract that’s put him right where he’s always wanted to be – tackling the big names in the game. Ironically, the Augusta, Georgia battler has given up a lot of things that would’ve kept most people out of fighting. As a graduate of the University of Georgia and a police officer, Griffin’s first match was against UFC legend Dan Severn, where for $250 he took the plunge, losing a decision. But since then, he’s never looked back.

"I just got really big balls,” Griffin told InsideFighting last Friday. "I told the UFC, I’ve got to beat those guys who’ve been there before. That’s how to get there."

After their incredible fight, Griffin and Bonnar are names in MMA, with their follow-up efforts potentially elevating them into stardom. And even if neither of them fought again or did anything of significance, their war on The Ultimate Fighter finale will forever hold a special place for even the most casual followers of the sport.

But now, it’s time to take the next step, and Griffin is tackling Bill Mahood, a tough Canadian with a slugger’s style, at this Saturday’s UFC 53. At 11-2-1, Mahood’s victories have all been by knockout, and in his last bout, he was stopped by Patrick Cote. Given the predictability of his style, it could be the kind of night where you see the best of Griffin, with his solid ground game and big-time chin. Or his worst, where, despite the best laid plans, he can’t help but battle another guy on the feet because getting hit just flat ticks him off, and tactics can go out the window.

“He has real good energy, finishes fights late in rounds, and has a good right hand,” Griffin said when asked about his scouting report on Mahood. “He has good legs and good scrambles. Sometimes you hear (an opponent) does this or does that. He’ll be out of a gym where he had good kickboxing. But I pretty much go and do what I want to do.”

At the fighter house, where 16 athletes often rubbed each other the wrong way in a mix of jostling egos and rising tensions, Griffin still managed to stand out as a wisecracker with a true “I don’t care” attitude. Give him King Kong, or a kid in a wheelchair, and he’s bringing his mojo and mouthpiece either way, looking to win big. He also showed excellent conditioning in the Bonnar fight, as both men pushed each other early in a breakneck pace that never slowed up. But jokingly – one must assume – he is reverting to his off-the-cuff mode when asked how training’s going for Mahood.

“It’s going horrible. The worst ever,” he quipped. “I should quit now because I might get hurt. The hookers and the blow, it’s great for cutting weight.”

He is still living on buddy/training partner Rory Singer’s couch. Now, for the first time in his life, he can live the fighter lifestyle to the hilt, throwing himself into training, and the schedule agrees with him.

“I’m buying cappuccinos at Starbucks. I love my life, I get up at 10, sit around and drink coffee till noon, then meet with my strength coach,” he said. “I’ll do some lifting and conditioning and then chill out from 2 to 5. Then I’ll teach a beginner jits (jiu-jitsu) class from 5 to 6, then work out around 6:30 till 8 or 9.

When I got back from the show, it was the first time I ever had time for that. My whole thing is, I only need about four hours a day to train properly. Twenty hours a week. I keep a log. Any more than that and I don’t know what the hell you’re doing in there. I can work a job and still train. I just need a job that allows me the hours, and the bitch about training is you do it 6-8 or 9 at night. It’s just hard to find a job. You end up working around bars, but I hate being around smoke, and drinking.”

Though he won a 2005 Toyota Scion with his victory over Bonnar, it still hasn’t arrived yet due to processing and various delays, but he doesn’t mind. He’s got transportation enough to get where he needs to be, and when you’re a guy with a criminal justice degree, who worked three years as a police officer only to give it all up (for now, at least) to be a fighter, material possessions are of secondary importance. Griffin just wants to fight and play the hand out. This approach to minimalism is as much a source of humor to him as anything, because he can still do okay with the ladies to boot, despite overt lack of bling-bling.

“I can’t be good with women, but I can’t be that bad. If you can bring a girl back to your place, she asks where do you sleep, and you point to the couch and it works out, something somewhere’s going well,” he said. “I’m not overly endowed in the looks department.”

But while fighter groupies would probably be the easiest target market for a guy like Griffin, he prefers the more intellectual types.

“I don’t like chicks that dig fighters. There’s a certain type of chick that digs fighters and I don’t dig that. I like the coffeehouse girls with glasses, artsy,” he said. Such a change in dating habits means sometimes you have to improvise when asked what you do for a living, he adds.

“I told this girl I managed a limo dealership. It was just the first thing that came into my head!” he said.

But ladies aside, Griffin, 26, is still deadly serious about taking his MMA career as far as possible, despite the battery of injuries that have left him “showing up in a cast on a different body part every year.”

In a match against Edson Paredao in December 2003, Griffin suffered a broken forearm in the first round, but knocked out his opponent in front of a Brazilian crowd. Another day at the office, albeit a pretty rough one.

“I’ve broke my shoulder, my clavicle doesn’t attach, broke my forearm in Brazil, shattered metacarpals training,” he said. “You get hurt.”

The forearm is still in need of fixing, but because the recovery process will take 8 to 9 months, Griffin will wait probably until his career is over or there’s problems in using the left arm in a fight. So far, it’s held up.

“There’s still a fissure in the bone. It’s just a calcium deposit, and the two ends of the bone are so far away, there's a big hole in it,” he said.

While he showed decent standup and excellent clinches and knees on the show’s three fights he won, Griffin has entered recent grappling tournaments and done very well, including a win over Brazilian Roberto Traven in the finals of the NAGA tournament in May. He said there are a lot of good fighters in the 205-lb. division, but for now he’s just going to work his way up the food chain.

“I’d rather fight a striker and get beat up. Or a jits guy. I can handle a good jiu-jitsu guy. But a good wrestler is a bad match up for me. It’s about the styles,” he said. “Then there’s guys like Babalu (Sobral) in his last fight he looked like he could do everything.”

“I knew he was a good fighter and I was surprised,” Griffin said of Sobral’s win over Travis Fulton at UFC 52. “It’s not like he’s that good against a nobody. I’ve known Travis for a while, fought on same card with him in Brazil when I broke my arm and then came back and ended up cornering him.”

He knows guys like Mahood, who are hungry and eyeing the same opportunities that come with winning, are the way up the mountain.

“I just kind of want to feed on table scraps,” he said when asked how far he think he is from a title shot.

Meaning, guys who’ve lost to the better guys, but even Griffin knows that that won’t last for long if he keeps winning the way he has. And at the higher levels of competition, the likelihood of having to walk through fire to dig out the win is inevitable.

“I never minded pain. The way I look at it now, I just never gave a fuck. I figure the more I get fucked up the better pills the doctor will give me,” he said. “I guess I’m just self-centered. I talked to my stepdad this morning. The only thing he had to say was make sure you know when to quit. I was like, I’m nowhere near quitting right now. I’m loving it. It’s an opportunity to fight on biggest stage in world,” he said.