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CoutureCop
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Las Vegas
Posts: 2,971
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Forrests blog for last nights episode (Spoiler Warning!!)
Quote:
Forrest Griffin is the number one contender to Quinton "Rampage" Jackson's UFC light heavyweight championship and coaching opposite the champ in the new season of The Ultimate Fighter. After the season the two coaches will go at it one on one for the 205-lb unified world title, but first Griffin brings you an inside look at each episode of the new season of TUF.
Courtesy of the UFC and Spike TV, Forrest Griffin and InsideFighting will receive a copy of each week’s episode of "The Ultimate Fighter 7" before it airs. Forrest will then provide InsideFighting readers with his reaction to the episode in his coach's blog which is immediately posted online after the show is done airing every Wednesday night.
It was actually pretty hard to pick teams, especially because Quinton had the first pick. I thought that by watching these guys fight that I would get to know a lot about them.
And there were a couple guys like Amir Sadollah and CB Dollaway that I did feel I got to know from watching them fight. But a lot of the guys won their elimination fights very quickly and impressively so I couldn’t really tell if they were that good or if they were fighting someone that was not good. Although I had previously rolled with the guy Jesse fought and I thought that he was pretty decent.
So what we did was that Cameron looked at everyone’s record on the internet and told me about that. A thing like CB’s wrestling at Arizona, so we kind of used things like that to go by.
When it was my turn to choose my first guy CB was already gone and I was really impressed with Tim. I had also heard he was a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and so there was a selfish part of my choice as well.
I wanted to roll with decent guys and I was coming off of rehab. Most black belt guys you can roll with and learn from and they will not hurt you. So I figured that I could get some good rolling in and not get hurt.
I chose Amir next because I felt that I knew how he would be from watching his first fight. His opponent Steve Byrnes had fought in the UFC before and I knew Steve and liked him.
Amir overcame some bad positions in that one and gutted it out. He looked crisp at times, scrambled hard and never gave up.
There was definitely pressure to pick the guys I knew from outside of the show. I knew had to pick Cale Yarbrough, for example, but I didn’t know when Quinton would pick him.
I had an outline but after three or four picks the outline went out. Basically what I had was names in order of who I wanted and when it was my turn to pick I picked the highest guy available
I’m happy the way it worked out with Quinton getting the first pick. I liked someone else having to make that decision.
They omitted something in the matching up process on the episode. For each round these guys fought in a bout they had to have three days before they could fight again. So everyone who had their elimination fight go into the second round was not eligible to fight again at this point. The choices on our side were guys that had won in the first round and the people we could choose to pair them with from Quinton’s team also had to have won in the first round.
I knew that Jess was good and I thought that match-up wise Mike Dolce was a good fight for him. I knew that Dolce would be tough but I thought that Jesse would be the guy to put him on his back and suffocate him, take life out of him.
I didn’t think Dolce would do well off of his back power. He is a powerful puncher but not a great wrestler. I thought Jesse could grind on him.
The biggest thing for Jesse going in was to stay on top. Obviously he eventually got the rear naked choke that he had worked too hard to get the whole fight but I would have liked to see him let that come a little easier. You grind him out, stay on top, pound, pound, pound and then the choke presents itself a little easier.
But obviously the biggest thing is that he got the win and got the money and the finishing bonus and he’s not hurt so we’re all happy. The main lesson from that fight is that you shouldn’t drink a carbonated energy drink five minutes before a fight..
I walked in and saw him five minutes before the fight and Jesse was chugging a 32-ounce carbonated energy drink and I just asked, ‘why, why, why?” That can’t be good for your stomach.
It was something that he had been doing before practice but then there are not as many nerves, stomach butterflies and acid being built up. Afterwards it was something I addressed.
I said, “Look, before each practice prepare like it’s your fight coming up. Eat what you are going to eat before the fight, sleep the way you do before a fight, so it’s not a change of pace.
Jesse said that he had felt a little tired before the fight so he needed a boost. That was a horrible idea. You needed a boost but you end up throwing up after the fight.
When Jesse said those nice things about him being glad to be on my team in the beginning I had no idea about that. Whenever you see the guys saying things to the camera like that I never got to see any of that. What they told me during taping was not what they say on show. I think Jesse and I got a long as far training went.
For practices we actually had everyone doing the same things and I made a checklist with strengths and what each guy should work on right off. When a guy had a fight the other coaches and I would put together a three day mini camp where we would work with them on whatever they needed to for the fight.
But overall you have to understand that there are eight fighter and three coaches. You’ve got to be in charge of your self and vocalize and let it be known what you want to work on
”The Juice is worth the squeeze”
On this episode they showed me talking with the team during a practice. People have asked if I planned to talk to them like that. The answer is not at all.
That stuff’s got to be spur of the moment. I just wanted to instill in them that I’m not a confident person and you don’t have to have a big ego or think that you’re God’s greatest gift; you just have to know two things about yourself going into a fight.
One is that you won’t quit and two is that you have done everything you could to prepare. If you know that you can be at peace when you walk into the cage. You feel better about taking a test when you’ve studied, so study.
If you have done everything you can and then fail well f_k it man, it happens. There’s an old saying; There are just two ways to lose – you quit or you die, and you’re not quitting.
House Visit
Quinton visited his team before the fight and looking back it would have been nice if I had as well. But here’s the thing; Quinton and his guys don’t live here in Las Vegas.
I live here and have my life to manage at the same time. I have lots of stuff to do even though I’m on the show and I only have so much time.
I thought it was great that Quinton did that, it was a good idea. I didn’t even know it was an option at the time but even if did know it was an option sh_t, I had stuff to do.
Team Brown Nose?
That’s just true. I can’t argue with Quinton for calling us that. You can’t fault a guy for telling the truth.
Its funny Dana White walked in with a CBGB shirt on and me and Tim got all excited saying, “wow, that’s the best place, that’s a cool shirt the roots of punk rock,” and all this stuff and Quinton said, “shut up all ready. You guys would have still gotten excited if Dana was wearing an R&B shirt.”
I said, “Yeah probably.” It’s learned behavior. It’s how I learned to get my way.
Underestimating Jesse
I was almost a little surprised that people were considering Jesse an underdog against Dolce. Everyone thought highly of Dolce because he had been around and had fought the tougher names out there for sure.
But I just thought that the good wrestler, Jesse, beats a good striker in Dolce. Even if it would have been boring, I didn’t care. I thought Jesse could get Dolce down and grind on him, especially for only a ten minute fight.
I don’t think at this point we were quite there yet as a team in terms of gelling together. We were still strangers for the most part.
The reason winning that fight was important to me is just to get the guys to have faith in you as a coach. That was it, for me.
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Good stuff. I'm glad Forrest won the first fight considering he was limited to only picking from fighters that had won in the first round.
It seems to me that Rampage would have wanted first fight pick instead of first fighter. Yeah, you get to pick who you think is the best guy, but the fights are Make-it, take-it setup. All Forrest has to do is keep winning and that will allow him to semi-neutralize Rampage's best guys through bad stylistic matchups.
Just my opinion
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Forrests blog for last nights episode (Spoiler Warning!!)
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