Originally Posted by
peter mcneil
I don't totally agree with Crowe that Forrest has mentally retired either, he's won 3 of his last 4, 2 dull fights against Tito a decision win against Franklin and a loss to Shogun.
Don't believe me, believe Forrest, because he's told us a bunch of times, for well over a year now.
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"It quit being fun when I realized I wasn't getting better. I'm plateauing or almost getting worse sometimes. One of the essential elements to have in this is your perceived expectation of the future, and I'm a painful realist, so I realized that I'm not going to get better; this is it. It's only gonna get worse from here on and you fight as much as you can, you fight until you don't have it anymore, and then you fight a couple more times after that."
"... Griffin explained that he's essentially lost his hunger and is just going through the motions at this point. "Your cat's sick, you can't pay your rent, and for 15 or 25 minutes, however long, you're free of that. It's real hard for that to enter your mind when somebody's choking your face off. You're in that moment of getting your face choked. You ain't thinking about the bills, your mortgage or your boss," he said. "It's freedom from that. Well, now, the problem is that I've got a good life. I don't want freedom from my good life. I love my life. I've got an awesome wife, my cat's cool, he's pretty healthy, and life's pretty good."
This was from almost exactly 1 year ago.
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“I don’t know yet, I don’t think so,” Griffin said. “If anything for me now I’m realizing I don’t have much left. This is the end of the road for me. I want a couple more you know fight fights, like good ones, you know. That’s all I really want. … Fights where I don’t get knocked out in the first round. Fights where like I get hurt, bleed a little, but I kind of like rally, you know, something of that nature.”
From last 8 months ago.
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Here's what he said after his fight with Tito, in Vegas and avec le jus, as the French might say:
“He had nothing at the end of the second and third rounds, and I didn't have enough to take advantage of it. It was pretty pathetic." Indeed it was.
Forrest has a good family, he has plenty of money, and he's not in any line for a title shot. He's said over and over that this makes it very hard to get up for a fight, to train in the way that you have to to be successful in the UFC, and it ain't getting any better. Forrest knows it, Dana knows it, everyone watching knows it. That performance against Tito, that ain't gonna improve any time soon, it's gonna fall and fall fast, like it always does when fighters are done and they know it, but they still want the big paycheck that's calling their name.