UFC 148: Forrest Griffin's Mistakes Are Being Overblown

At UFC 148, Forrest Griffin defeated Tito Ortiz in a co-main event battle that ended up winning the Fight of the Night award.

However, no one seems to care that Griffin just earned a much needed UFC win.

Following the fight, Griffin showed off part of the weird personality that fans once adored. He ran out of the cage before the judges decision was even read, and then stole the microphone out of Joe Rogan’s hands in order to give Tito Ortiz his final interview inside the Octagon.

Running out of the cage wasn’t a big deal. We’ve seen Forrest do this before, and most fans just chalked it up to “Forrest being Forrest” without giving it a second thought.

Stealing the interview from Rogan, however, has fans in an uproar.

From the second Griffin grabbed the microphone you could tell Ortiz wasn’t thrilled that the man who had just handed him a loss in the final fight of his career was interviewing him. To Griffin’s credit he was very respectful with his line of questions, and it seemed like he was trying to let Ortiz go out on a high note.

Ultimately, Griffin’s choice to play commentator ended up earning him far more backlash than anything else he’s done in his career.

Both Ortiz and UFC president Dana White expressed their displeasure with Griffin for stealing Tito’s moment, and once Griffin himself arrived at the post-fight press conference, he was soon on the defensive.

Griffin was quickly informed that Ortiz had not enjoyed his little stunt inside the cage, and immediately the winner of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter started apologizing to anyone that would listen. You could tell he felt genuinely bad about what had taken place inside the cage.

It was an incredibly stupid decision on Griffin’s part, but the backlash from fans around the world has been shocking.

Bleacher Report’s own Scott Harris wrote an interesting article that gives the impression that Griffin’s good will amongst fans may be running out, and that seems to be exactly the case.

Griffin has been known as somewhat of an enigma for a long time, so it’s confusing as to why fans are so shocked an outraged by his actions at UFC 148. We should always expect something strange to happen every time Griffin steps into the cage. While last night’s events may have been a bit more eccentric than usual, it should be common knowledge that weird things are going to happen when Forrest fights.

In the end, Griffin made a mistake and he’s going to pay for it both in the eyes of fans and his fellow fighters, but lets not let one mistake ruin our perspective of Griffin.

Forrest made a mistake and he owned up to it. No one will deny that he should have handled things a different way, but in the end he made his apology, was sincere about it and tried to make sure he didn’t disrespect Tito any more than he already had.

You can’t really ask for much more than that.