Former UFC light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin has been working with the UFC for a while now. Forrest Griffin retired in 2012 and managed to keep working for the UFC behind the scenes, which was a lot more rare back then.
But Griffin’s bout with Stephan Bonnar was widely credited with saving the promotion at a critical time so it’s not a huge surprise they hired him. Bonnar wasn’t so lucky, he ended up not keeping his UFC job and sadly passed away last week. He was just 45 at the time of his passing.
Griffin has a new position to brag about. He told TMZ Sports that he has now assumed the position of head catcher for Power Slap.
Dana White’s latest project Power Slap raised safety worries. The one fatality that came from competitive slapping came despite the fact that that promotion also had head catchers.
It should be noted that referees in Muay Thai also try to catch the head whenever they can.
Since we've been talking about how bad MMA refs are, here is two examples of Muay Thai refs being absolutely superb. pic.twitter.com/nPnrSTfzWC
— Miguel Class (@MigClass) November 15, 2021
Griffin cited the importance of his position. He said:
“That double impact. You’ve taken the first trauma and when your head hits the ground, bang bang, both sides of your brain actually bounce against your skull. We want to prevent that and make it just the initial impact and have that be what causes you or not causes you to win or lose the competition.”
Griffin isn’t wrong here, a dead weight drop backwards after a concussion could have fatal consequences however getting hit with another strike after the first one caused a concussion can produce the same results – this is what happened to Artur Walus in a loss that ended up costing him his life.
Dana White still tries to claim that the sport is safe.
White stated during the press conference:
“I know when we announced this, there were a lot of concerns about health and safety with some guys. Us getting involved guarantees that it’s going to be much safer… A lot of these questions that you guys have, the media, fans, potential fans have, will be answered in this eight-part series that we’re doing.”
“These guys who have been doing it for a long time, there actually is a technique to it. You can actually roll with the slap. They know how to actually defend, brace, whatever you want to call it. There’s actually a technique to this thing – believe it or not.”