Forrest Griffin came away from his UFC 148 clash with Tito Ortiz on Saturday victorious, with a unanimous decision going in his favour.
It was a fight which retired Ortiz and saw him enter the UFC Hall of Fame. With that inauguration, questions are now also being asked of the 34-year-old Griffin and his place in the UFC’s pantheon of stars.
He has credentials, such as winning the UFC light heavyweight championship, defeating fighters of the calibre of Mauricio Rua, Quintin Jackson and Rich Franklin, and he took part in one of the most watched The Ultimate Fighter finales ever.
In the promotions recent history, he has been a big player. However, take the longer view, and the arguments in favour of his inclusion in the Hall of Fame are diminished.
While Dana White said at the time that the Griffin/Stephan Bonnar fight in 2005 was one of the most important in the UFC’s history, it may have been up to that point, but its significance has quickly faded from memory. The real torch bearers for the organisation were Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Brock Lesnar and George St. Pierre, who came shortly afterwards.
And even though Forrest Griffin won that match, he won it against a fighter that quickly faded into obscurity.
His title reign was also a short lived one. He failed to defend it even once, and with that loss to Rashad Evans, he’s gone 3-3 in his last six. Particularly embarrassing for him was the first round knockouts at the hands of Anderson Silva and Rua.
All his victories in that period, against Ortiz and Rich Franklin, were extremely closely run matches that could have gone either way. Against Ortiz twice, who has long been a spent force in MMA, and against Franklin once, who was fighting way out of his natural weight division of 185 lbs.
This is the record of a journey man fighter, not a Hall of Famer. For however fondly people like to remember Griffin’s time in the cage, his impact on the sport and the promotion has been mediocre. And for that reason, he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame.
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