Forrest Griffin puts his paradigm shift enacting fight with Stephan Bonnar above becoming a father. This was touched upon during a 20 year celebration effort for The Ultimate Fighter with specific season 33 related Q&A also interwoven into the proceedings with coaches Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen involved.
The inaugural season of the show saw Forrest Griffin emerge as the champion but it was quite a curious road to get to then TUF 1 house and then subsequently to the finale as Griffin said,
"I was a last-minute replacement. I had no idea—I didn’t audition for the show, wasn’t trying to be on a show, didn’t even know if I’d fight again. I found out 17 days before the show. I was a cop, didn’t want to get on the plane. I said, ‘I may have made a huge life mistake—going to do reality TV.’ But obviously, I got on the plane."
"Everybody knows the fight with Stephan Bonnar is the thing that basically saved the UFC or put it on the map. It’s one of the highlights of my life—way bigger than having a kid. Any jabroni can have a kid, but not any jabroni can be in the right moment and have the right fight to put the UFC on the map."
Forrest Griffin and TUF 1 as a catalyst for MMA's mainstream success
Forrest Griffin was correct in his assessment of how key his first Bonnar fight was as a device to shoot MMA into the pop culture zeitgeist. Prior to entering the TUF house for the first ever season of the ground breaking reality show, Griffin had a professional MMA record of 9-2 at the time with a recorded win over the aforementioned Chael Sonnen. Upon becoming part of the reality show fold, Griffin would secure wins over Alex Schoenaur and Sam Hoger after finishing both with strikes inside the distance.
Then on April 9th, 2005, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar would create an electricity inside the cage that not only caused the live TV rating to spike through the roof in real time, but it pulled the sport out of the precarious spot it was in at the time. Griffin would get his hand raised via unanimous decision that night and while he eventually became the UFC light heavyweight champion, many see this Bonnar performance as Griffin's biggest career moment in the context of how it was such a shot in the arm for the sport itself.
