Griffin won the fight and the contract that night, with the bout being so good that White and the Fertittas decided to give Bonnar a contract too.
“It was a good fight,” Griffin said in typical understatement. “I don’t try to fix anything or think about what I should have done when I watch it. I do remember how exhausted I was. But it was what it was and it worked out the way it needed to. Sometimes when you do things wrong, it still works out.”
“I knew it was a good fight during the fight,” Bonnar adds. “It hit me when everyone started stomping their feet and it felt like the whole place was shaking. And that was in the second round. I was like ‘oooh, this must be good.’”
It was better than that. It was the rare moment where everybody won.
“It was the night I realized I was going to make a living at my passion,” Griffin said. “The moment I realized that my hobby had become my job.”
“Everything changed,” Bonnar said. “I didn’t think I’d have a UFC career. It was just a little hobby I was doing, so it changed everything. Almost overnight, I became like a celebrity. Everywhere I went, someone would recognize me, even in obscure places. I was traveling with TapouT and we were in a small town. I was jogging and someone in a pickup was going ‘Hey Bonnar.’ And everywhere you go, someone knows who you are. It was wild.”
That night, behind the venue after the fight, the UFC and Spike TV agreed on a deal to keep The Ultimate Fighter going. History was made, and the UFC would not just survive, but thrive. Bonnar and Griffin, they made their way to a local hospital to get checked out and stitched up. When I asked Griffin a while back the first thing that comes into his head when he thinks of that fight ten years ago, it was that moment in the emergency room.
“I remember Stephan’s wife Andrea and my buddy Rory getting us some fast food crap and some beer in the emergency room,” he laughs. “And that’s the picture of us. Sitting under the ER sign, all beat up and laughing.”
