Forrest Griifin's emotional reaction postfight

[Crafty_Dog]

Woof All:

  Those of us who saw the most recent UFC saw FG's unusually emotional reaction.   Comments?

TAC,
CD

[Guard Dog]

Let me start off by saying that it makes me very greatful to have an atmosphere such as the gathering to fight in.  The last thing that is on my mind when I step onto the mat is if I am going to win or not.  UFC however must play on these fighters much differently.  I can't even imagine the amount of pressure that these fighters are under with thoughts of the winning purse, doing this for a living, families and friends watching around the world, sponsorship depending on if you win the fight or not; it has to be hard when you loose.  On top of that, it is ALL up to the fighter to win the fight, there is no team such as in pro ball that can sit in for him while he takes a breather.  Let's not forget that Tito was more or less crying as well and we had a few fighters recently from TUF that balled their eyes out once they lost.  More recently Randy C. and Royce in their locker rooms which makes me wonder how many fighters cry once they are behind the curtains.  It has to be an emotional time for all of them and probably makes people wonder if they are taking it too seriously.  I could see coaches asking their fighters to hold it in and be strong because it really shows a weakness once they explode like FG did and fall down onto the canvas balling like a little child.

Gruhn

[peregrine]

these are observations... so don't go psycho babble on me, though articulate comments are genuinely welcome.

to qoute one of the greatest coaches ever to peruse the grid iron
"Winning is not a sometime thing. You don't win once-in-a-while. You don't do things right once-in-a-while. You do them right all the time.
Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that is first place...
I firmly believe that any man's finest hours, his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle victorious."

this may not be pc, but everyone loves a winner...

think-
agassi
roy jones jr

they can't stand to lose. why? enviromental or genetic? maybe a combo... both of these great athletes' fathers threw there 2nd place trophies into the trash. WHY? becasue second place is first loser.
it made such a HUGE impression(read "scar") on them that they always fought to win, created a training complusion/obsession. now both of these men are not close with their fathers, but they WIN(past tense).
Now, does that mean it would work for everyone? no. saddly this is the paradox of the average to good female gymnast, who can't survive intl competition.

to maintain a healthy father child relationship could the father be replaced by mentor/coach who throw's the trohpy away? possibly while allowing the father to be the childs emotional anchor ever encouraging with agape. thin ice here. 

this reminds me of a guy i used to work out with and we would give and take, to qoute others from my gym he was the "biggest cry baby"
where is that "cry baby" guy now?
he's rated at the top of the grappling world, beating some of the who's who.
why? cause he couldn't stand to lose, yet had the attributes to be a champ.

at the other end of the spectrum you have athletes who are professional with a win or a loss.

imho FG reaction has was satisfactory. he wasn't overtly obnoxious, didn't throw a tennis racket, didn't bad mouth anyone... he cried cause he lost, with that he fought valiantly, he had the nuggets to step in the ring and put it on the line.
females who i watched the fight with commented negatively on FG and Titos crying...
maybe it's cause i'm a scorpio born in the year of the tiger i feel this way?

are there better ways to handle a loss?
yes.
But, i feel there is a give and a take. you take away too much of the heat and the fire goes out.
if you have the right combination then BOOM-pyrophoria.

[Guard Dog]

Most of the females where I was watching it gave the ever so comforting "ohhhhhhheeeee"    Which just about every man wants to be on the end of that sound every once in a while.  Forgive me for reinterpreting this but a comedian I once saw put it this way:

When there are two guys and the one bumps his elbow into the door frame the other guy in an emotionless macho state says "dumb ass!"

When it is a girl however who is there to whitness the elbow bump they give the "ohhhhhhheeeee" and nurse the poor male back to health.

Gruhn

[C-Kumu Dog]

I didnt get the see the fight but I can only imagine that it must feel like to lose at that level. Like Ryan said there is no team to support you, it is all YOU. They have to believe in themselves because no one else is going to carry them through it. The public will tear you up win or lose. People just look at the physical aspect but the fighter is putting his / her blood, sweat &, heart into that fighting and training and just like it was mentioned before these guys lives and their families may depend on the income. Taking it too serious, maybe but what if it is your primary source of income then it has to be taken seriously. I think it was in a interview at MMA Weekly or maybe another somewhere else where Randy Couture said that things are really different, he talked about having to make ends meet and having to take care of things that were normally taken care of for him. So I can only imagine the disappointment, MMA is a rough business what if they get dropped (Well Im sure Tito wont.) Sometimes a lot more than just the belt is on the line.....

What about other sports activities like Team sports dont we sometimes see the atheletes cry when they lose the Superbowl or World Series or NBA Championship?

I guess as long as they are not being a bad sport about it or pulling a John Mcenroe, lol. Then let them shed a tear or two, they just fought their heart out for our entertainment.

Anyway..

[bjung]

I didn't see the fight so I can't comment directly...

I agree that the fighters must put in a tremendous amount of emotion in order to sustain them over the months of training, however I'm usually a bigger fan of the fighters who can get past losing. I once had a conversation with a guy about wrestlers transitioning to MMA. Although the consensus was that wrestlers hated losing, they let go of their losses much more easily than those who came from other competitve sports. In the career of a wrestler, they will inevitably lose. If not in competition, then in the thousands of practice matches they have over their life as a competitor. In some ways you get used to losing, you just do better next time. My friend contrasted this to other sports (sport JJ) and remarked, some people never had the hard competitive life which encompassed losing, so when a loss finally came, in broke them in some sense. They were not mentally equipped to deal with losing. Also, some people enjoyed fighting, and didn't take their validation from winning MMA all the time. They enjoyed the fight and from learning from it. When Matt Hughes lost to BJ, he had a sort of "aw shit, oh well" look on his face, then came back to be champion again. When Randy beat Rizzo the first time he had a sort of "no shit, i won?!?" look. Both probably hate losing, but have lost enough in order to know that they'll fight again, and it's just a speed bump, not a bottomless pit.

"If you never lose, you're not fighting the right people." -Matt Hughes, TUF season 2

"Strong men cry too. Strong men....cry too." -The Big Lebowski

[Dog Greg Brown]

Having fought and won and fought and lost in the MMA game. For me nothing that I had done up to that point had ever matched the emotional high/low. I think that the fact that it is all on you and noone else can do this for you, everything you do for 16wks(for me) or longer, every facet of your life revolves around the training and the visualization of beating this person. As cliche as it sounds you can't step into an MMA fight with a doubt in your mind in your ability to win. You have to know you are going to win. Obviously you must respect your opponent as a dangerous capable person, who will capitalize on your mistakes, and has the ability to beat you if you don't keep your head about you. But having been in the green room at a UFC and at dozens of local shows I will say this, the more emotionally charged and involved you are with your training, the harder you will come down when you loose.  Forest is a great guy, nice, funny, and above all a dedicated fighter. I haven't met many like him. I can only imagine how hard that fall is for a guy like that.  I can only speak for me, but I have no shame in saying that when I lost I cried, it wasn't at the show or in the ring, it was at home while sitting on the couch with an ice pack on my right ear/temple. It hits people differently.

I feel that I make the most growth as a person/martial artist in a gathering situation. It tends to fufill some primal need for a place among peers for expression of the art and of the agression the art embodies. I have never felt anything that matches that "fighters high" that you get at the end of a gathering. Nothing out there like it. Why do you think we all come back time and time again?

Its funny to be doing full contact stick fights at the gym and at the end of the class have guys like stephan bonnar/jorge rivera/pete spratt (name dropping sorry, it just proves a point) tell you that what your doing is crazy. It puts things into perspective about what is real and what is sport. Gatherings are as real as I have ever found as far as simulating the adrenal rush of a life threatening stiuation. It's always been the lessons that I have taken home from gatherings, not MMA that have got me home safe on some pretty scary nights at work.

Just my 2cents,

Greg

[sting]

Excellent treatise, Mr. Brown.

In agreement, I also  believe that much of a post-fight reaction has to do with the intensity of the fight as well as the intensity of the preparation (training as well as fight day).  I have watched many fights that appear complacent, and to no surprise, the post-fight reaction is neutral.  An intense fight takes you to a mind/body place that you are generally to experience on your own, short of life-threatening situations.  When you're feeling the chills or holding back the puke, tears aren't far behind.  If the outcome of the fight doesn't concern you, the experience isn't a fight.

Also, the spectacle of exposing the fighter during his post-fight tension release is enough to start the flow tears.  It's almost as if the struggle to hold them back opens the floodgates.

[Guard Dog]

Emotions come out for wins too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD6lbA138wI&mode=related&search

Gruhn

[Crafty_Dog]

I was afraid that was going to be IIRC Ricco Rodriguez giving Mark Kerr a kiss on the cheek when he won the UFC title

[Guard Dog]

Haha!  Please, I'll have to go find that now; I totally forgot about that!

Gruhn

[Crafty_Dog]

Woof All:

I got the idea for this thread from one of extraordinary immaturity on this topic on "The Underground" at mma.tv.  I was really struck by the juvenile tenor of many of the posts impugning FG's manhood despite the fact that he has been a fighter of remarkable courage, composure, and class.  So what happened this time that was different?  It is hard to think of so much emotion publicly shown in the world of boxing.

As I intuit my way on this subject, one thing that occurs to me is that unlike the business of boxing, full as it is of people from lives with little or no other options, MMA consists mostly of people who do it for reasons other than money.  I remember in the early days of the UFC when it was talking with us about fighting for them a conversation I had with Art Davie.  I suggested he pay the fighters more money.  "Why?" he asked, "They'd fight for free."

So what is the motive here?  And what are the consequences of losing to this motivation?

The Adventure continues,
Crafty Dog

[Dog Greg Brown]

This is a very true and very sad thing. Most of the people who are MMA fans have no idea what it is all about. Boxing is big money, those of us who have been around the MMA game for anytime know its def not the case. Even in the case of the UFC, I knew a fighter who about 3-4 years ago got his first fight in the UFC, he was paid 7500 to show and an other 5000 to win. This wasn't an opening card fight either. Granted since then the UFC has quite a bit more money so I'm sure that figure would be different if it was today.  To bring it back to point, a guy who is a professional fighter, no other source of income, puts in close to 16 weeks/4 months prep time for the fight and ends up wih $12,500, even if he fights 3 times a year and doesn't get hurt thats still not a huge annual income.

The mindset of those fighting MMA has changed over the last few years. It used to be for the most part you ended up with driven competitive guys who liked combat as a way to test themselves. With the sucess of TUF and the UFC I have started to see a slide twards more of the jock personality types, as well as with those who just want to hurt someone. This trend really has given me a good perspective on how special the gatherings are. The MMA community is now starting to be populated with people, to use guro crafty's phrase for it, "who are acting out".

Art was right to say that the fighters would do it for free. My first MMA fight was for no money. It was for the challenge, the competition, and just to see if i had it in me to get up infront of a thousand people and put it out there on the line. And I'll say it I liked it, winning with a full house chanting your name. There is something to be said for it.

Forest reacted the way he did I think because he knew he made a mistake and paid for it. He was probibly dissapointed and upset with himself more than just that he lost the fight.

Just my 2cents

Greg

[Sisco T.]

 i could be very wrong, but i feel alot of the reason he was so emotional was because felt he let down his trainers and training partners. yes he is a top competitor, but he doesn't really fight like one. he fights, to me, with more heart and will than with a well thought out AND executed gameplan. from what you read he is like one of the hardest workers in the gym, but also one of the nicest, most likeable, and most personable. i think he has alot of guys that put in their own personal time in helping him prepare for that fight that when he lost, especially the way he lost, he not only felt bad for himself but felt really bad for letting  all the guys down(coaches,training partners,friends,etc.). again, maybe i'm way off, but that is my feeling.

[Crafty_Dog]

I think C-Frankfurter has a good assessment.

I would add to it that I intuit that his unusually strong fighting spirit and confidence may have been pretty badly dinged this time and that this explains the tears.  He dreamed of being champion and now I suspect he doubts it.