Introduction
If you ask twenty Mixed Martial Arts fans (MMA) for their opinion on what is the best fight of all time, you may well get twenty different answers. If you asked the same people what the most important fight of all time is, some would give similar answers. Forrest Griffin Vs. Stephan Bonnar is likely to be in the bag of responses.
Griffin and Bonnar delivered one of the most memorable fights in MMA history, and the bout is etched in the memory of avid fight fans worldwide. It was clear both during and after the fight that the observers had just witnessed a classic. Less clear was the impact it would have on the UFC and MMA in general for many years to come. It left a print on the sport that will last forever, and almost twenty years on, the fight between Forrest Griffin and Stefan Bonnar still comes up as a topic for discussion by those in MMA circles regularly.
In this article, we look at how Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar ended up competing on The Ultimate Fighter and how their personalities and fighting styles had a lasting impact on the sport of Mixed Martial Arts.
Forrest Griffin
Prior to entering the UFC, Forrest Griffin was working, rather reluctantly, as a police officer. It’s fair to say the role wasn’t best suited to him. In his own words, he was incompetent and didn’t get many things right during his brief stint in law enforcement. Griffin recalls a time when he arrested a minor and subsequently sent the report to his sergeant. He was supposed to take pictures but didn’t. Griffin was also supposed to notify the child’s parents; he never.
After realizing that being a police officer wasn’t going to work out for him, Griffin decided to pursue a career in Mixed Martial Arts. He spent two years training and competing while simultaneously working as a part-time bouncer. His first MMA fight came in October 2001, a loss against UFC Hall of Famer Dan Severn – a world-class wrestler.
Impressively, the inexperienced Griffin went the distance with Severn, eventually losing via unanimous decision. Quite the initiation for Griffin, but despite facing such a tough test in his first outing, he wasn’t deterred by the outcome and continued to grind. Eight straight victories followed, including an impressive submission victory over Chael Sonnen in September 2003. Things were going well for Griffin, and he racked up a 9-2 record in his first two years of competing.
Inevitably, the UFC came calling and offered Griffin a spot on the first series of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF), a reality-based show where up-and-coming fighters are put together in a house and fight each other in an elimination format until somebody emerges as the final victor. Griffin was initially unsure; he felt it was a big risk to give up his job for an endeavor that may not work out for him.
Dana White intervened by calling and selling the dream to Griffin. ”Not many people get an opportunity to become a professional fighter and compete in front of millions” were along the lines of the words used by White. The pep talk worked, and Griffin hopped on the plane at Atlanta airport to make his way to the TUF house.
Not only was it a roll of the dice for Griffin, but it was for the UFC, too. They were on the brink of bankruptcy and bleeding millions of dollars. If the show wasn’t a success, the company was at serious risk of ruin, meaning Griffin’s dream could become a fantasy, even if he succeeded on the show. Needless to say, Dana White left this information out of his pitch to Griffin, and the first series of TUF went ahead as planned on terrestrial television. However, it was a rocky road getting there.
Unlike Griffin’s plane at Atlanta airport, TUF was close to never getting off the ground. Dana White pitched the idea of TUF to Craig Piligian, a reality television producer, and tasked him with developing and selling the idea to networks. Piligan was intrigued by the concept and thought the show would be great, but negotiations didn’t go as planned due to networks not wanting to take the chance on such a violent sport. Rejection after rejection followed before the now-defunct Spike TV agreed to air the show, provided the UFC produced the show themselves using their own funds.
Stephan Bonnar
A compliment often given to the UFC is that they do a great job of telling stories about their fighters. Fans become invested in their personalities and, in turn, want to follow their careers. Stephan Bonnar is just as unique and eccentric as Forrest Griffin, if not more. His path to the Ultimate Fighter was very different; unlike Griffin, Bonnar had to do the chasing.
One of Bonnar’s childhood memories was sitting at home with a broken leg in a plaster cast. His older brother was responsible for the injury, and to get his own back, Bonnar decided to get his own back by kicking his brother’s a** one day.
Bonnar always wanted to be the tough guy and prided himself on being the toughest in his school year group. He eventually got his own back over his brother as a twenty-year-old, finally beating his brother in a fight during summer break from college after all the years of taking whoopings at the hands of his older sibling. Upon graduating, Bonnar moved to Chicago and began training Jiu-Jitsu.
At the gym where Bonnar trained, the guys were talking about a new reality show the UFC was auditioning for – The Ultimate Fighter. Bonnar sent in an audition tape that included highlights from his fights and a self-recorded message explaining why he wanted to be on the show. No doubt his bold personality got through on video as he got a call soon after from someone at the UFC, offering him a space in the TUF house. At the time, the submission specialist Bonnar had amassed a 7-1 record in MMA, his only defeat coming against the legend that is Lyoto Machida.
Griffin and Bonnar’s relationship
Did the pair get on well during filming? Was the relationship smooth sailing? Well, it depends on who you ask. Bonnar had a positive first impression, saying he believed they would get along; they clicked and shared the same sense of humor. On the other hand, Griffin said there was tension between the pair on the first day of filming.
Griffin and Bonnar sparred on the first day without any headgear, and an accidental clash of heads led to Bonnar being cut above his left eye, jeopardizing his chances of competing. The coaches were annoyed at Griffin, but luckily, Bonnar healed quickly and could continue.
Keen to keep the show’s schedule on track, Dana White removed alcohol from the house to prevent any unexpected events from occurring. Bonnar took it upon himself to go on a booze run, and the housemates subsequently got wasted, which led to people fighting, urinating in the house, and damage to the property. Things got so bad that the production team had to intervene to drive a contestant away from the house. To this day, White said he doesn’t know why he never kicked Stephan Bonnar off the show due to his rule-breaking. Looking back, it’s a good job he didn’t.
TUF Finale
The pressure was on the UFC; they needed the event to be successful, and Bonnar said he could see for himself how nervous Dana White was during the event. In the middleweight division, Diego Sanchez dominantly defeated Kenny Florian to become the first TUF winner in the co-main event. Dana White became even more nervous as the bout wasn’t very competitive. It wouldn’t have gotten people off their seats or drawn much attention from the MMA media. Time was running out on the broadcast and potentially on the whole company.
All eyes were now on the headliners, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar, who had both earned their spot in the light-heavyweight final following two wins each during their time living in the TUF house. Unlike the middleweight final, Griffin and Bonnar began the fight swinging for the bleachers pretty much from the outset. Griffin secured a takedown and attempted an armbar towards the end of the first round, but Bonnar held off as the klaxon sounded.
It was a phenomenal first round, and when the show aired in 2005, social media had yet to take off. Dana White believes that fans watching at home were calling their friends at the end of round one, telling them to tune in to Spike TV to watch. The theory made sense as viewership increased as we entered round two and exploded five minutes later.
Bonnar started round two strongly, but much like the first round, the contest was significantly back and forth. The fans were going wild; both men were desperate to win the UFC contract, and it showed. Ratings continued to improve, and the roars from the fans in attendance grew louder as Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar threw everything at each other except the kitchen sink.
The fight went to the judge’s scorecards; a jubilant Griffin won unanimously, and Bonnar sank to his knees in disappointment. There was no real loser on the night, though, as the UFC also offered Bonnar a six-figure contract. Both men had written themselves into the MMA history books and were rewarded accordingly.
Aftermath of Griffin Vs. Bonnar
Once the event had concluded, executives from Spike TV pulled the UFC’s owners, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, and UFC President Dana White to one side and offered them a television deal on a napkin. There was a real hastiness to the deal, possibly because Spike knew the UFC would have multiple offers the following morning. The broadcast deal was signed that night, and the UFC’s future was secured. It could not have come at a better time.
White and the Fertitta brothers spent over 40 million dollars from 2001 to 2004 funding the UFC. They later sold it for 4.025 billion dollars in 2016. The Ultimate Fighter gamble certainly paid off, and Dana White will be forever thankful that Forrest Griffin decided to board his plane and that he never kicked Stephan Bonnar off the show.
The Ultimate Fighter still airs today and has bred numerous world champions and mega-stars during its thirty-season run. TUF has certainly lost some of its magic in more recent times, and the reasons for this are multi-faceted. When TUF aired in 2005, reality television was all the rage, and the UFC created a show with a format that already appealed to the masses. As with all fads and trends, things die down, and others develop, as the UFC would later find out.
The UFC creates an abundance of programming in the present day, especially when compared to the earlier days when they were on the brink of bankruptcy. Pay-per-views air more often than ever thanks to the company’s lucrative broadcasting deal with ESPN. More in-house shows are also made today, including the popular ‘Contender Series,’ the success of which has hurt TUF as the Contender Series tends to have more high-caliber prospects competing, thereby drawing more interest from both fans and the media.
Conclusion
The UFC is now known worldwide and has developed genuine superstars in recent years, such as Conor McGregor, Ronda Rousey, and Israel Adesanya. It’s not farfetched to say that if Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar decided to wrestle for three rounds instead of slugging it out and delivering a classic, Rousey wouldn’t have become a WWE star performing at Wrestlemania, and Conor McGregor wouldn’t have numerous, multi-million dollar businesses.
Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar smashed the doors down (and each other’s faces in) regarding what is achievable for fighters today. The sky really is the limit, and a large part of that is down to Griffin and Bonnar.
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