On this day in 2008, a new UFC light heavyweight champion was crowned in controversial fashion.
‘The Ultimate Fighter’ has produced many great fighters and UFC champions but there’s one name that comes to mind when you think of the true original ‘Ultimate Fighter’.
Forrest Griffin featured on the first season of the show and would go on to become the first fighter inducted into the Modern wing of the promotion’s Hall of Fame.
Griffin’s fight with Stephan Bonnar in the finale remains one of the most important matchups in the history of the sport as it helped to take mixed martial arts as a whole to another level.
While Griffin had many ups and downs throughout his run, it’s his underdog UFC title win that remains the highlight of his incredible career.
Forrest Griffin hit back at the fans following backlash to his light heavyweight title win at UFC 86
Heading into UFC 86 on July 5 of 2008, Forrest Griffin was considered to be the underdog heading into his first title fight.
Griffin had some notable wins under his belt but with losses to the likes of Tito Ortiz and Keith Jardine in the past, he would face an uphill battle in trying to dethrone Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson.
The light heavyweight title fight would prove to be a great back and forth battle that ended up winning fight of the year honors.
After overcoming an early storm from ‘Rampage’, Griffin responded with some damage of his own by landing some huge leg kicks, which he later revealed were an accident.
At the end of five rounds, the judges scored the fight unanimously for the challenger, with one scorecard being 49-46, which the fans inside the Mandalay Bay Events Center clearly didn’t agree with.
The controversial outcome appeared to split fans and the media in the days after the fight but Griffin didn’t take that long before addressing the immediate backlash.
“I want to thank you guys so much,” Griffin said in his post-fight interview before reacting to the response from the fans. “Hey, what the hell? What? Are you kidding me? Come on. I want to thank Quinton Jackson. I think that was pretty close. I don’t want to because he hits too f—— hard but I think we’re going have to do that again and that sucks for me.”
Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson still doesn’t believe that Forrest Griffin believes he won
Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson was convinced he should have got his hand raised at UFC 86 and he still holds that belief to this day.
Though Jackson and Forrest Griffin have sat down together to speak about their rivalry during an episode of the JAXXON podcast, ‘Rampage’ remains confident that he deserved the win.
In another episode of his podcast, the former champion argued that he doesn’t even believe that Griffin thinks he won that fight, which the Hall of Famer would later dispute.
“I feel like Forrest actually knows that he didn’t win that fight against me and I felt like he kind of played up to [that] he did really good. See if I would’ve won the belt that way, I would have taken the belt but I would’ve let it be known like, ‘Ah I don’t think I really won this belt.’ I take a lot of honor into fighting.”
Griffin would go on to lose the light heavyweight title in his first defense against Rashad Evans at UFC 92.