Griffin on TUF7: I still thought that Dante won

by FORREST GRIFFIN, InsideFighting.com

Updated: May 7, 2008, 4:29 PM EST 10 comments

After watching Dante and Brandon's fight again, I still thought that Dante won. Obviously it was not in impressive fashion — it was pretty horrible actually — but he just had one of those days.

A lot of it was that Dante had a certain way he worked out before the show, but he bought into my workout and I had him do a lot of things differently and he really over trained and was flat afterwards. I kind of ran him into the ground a little bit.

It was a normal workout for guys who don't have a fight later in the week. It would have been a great workout if you had a ten day taper before a fight.

Some of the guys asked me, "Is this what you would do a week before a fight of yours?" and I said, "No way! Are you crazy? This is just what we are going to do here." The last time I did a workout like that was when I was on the show myself.

I'm not even sure the match up was my idea. The process for choosing match ups was not real formal.

In the beginning, it was whoever stepped forward and said whoever they wanted to fight. With Dante, the idea was to get Brandon on the ground and submit him. We knew Dante was a good Jitz guy and we knew that Brandon wasn't.

Dante told me he was gassed. I smacked him in the face before the third round and just told him, "Gut check. Go out there and do something." I didn't ask him to knock Brandon out, I would not have asked him for miracles, but I just wanted him to drop his hand on the other guy more than he did.

It was hard to tailor the workouts to the guys. Matt Brown and Jesse Taylor could do whatever you threw at them and ask for more. Nick Klein would work himself into the ground doing what you asked but it would be overtraining for him and he got worse over the course of the show. He did whatever I asked and never complained, but he over trained instead of backing off.

It worked out well for some guys and not so well for others. But eventually the guys decided what they were going to do. I gave them workout options and they decided whether or not they were going to do that or go on the treadmill or whatever else they needed.

One thing I should mention is that I took Dante for a hard run right before his fight because I forgot he had a fight coming up. We were doing these Native American runs and by the third mile he told me, "Hey, I think I'm going to quit doing this," and I said, "Oh yeah, I didn't want you to do this."

I had forgotten that he was fighting the next day. I didn't intend for him to do anything.

Don't mess with a Southern boy's tobacco

I heard about Jeremy May putting lemon juice in Matt Brown's tobacco chew because some of the guys came to me and said, "Matt Brown is going to fight Jeremy May."

I said, "Sounds beautiful." That makes my job easier and having bad blood between two guys certainly doesn't hurt the chances for a good fight.

I felt Matt hit it on head the head when he asked Jeremy, "Are we friends like that? Are we tight like that?"

That was something I've done to my friends.I've done the exact same thing to my friends but not with people you are going to fight in a house. That was the thing, they didn't have that certain relationship to joke around.

It wasn't me doing it to Gray Maynard, we do that type of thing to each other all the time. That's the reason I didn't say or do anything to Quinton.

I don't know him like that. I know my guys like that but I don't go outside that comfort zone.

But Jeremy did a bunch of dumb (stuff) making life harder for guys in the house. He was the first guy (messing) up the house and locking guys out of the house and stuff.

My impressions of Matt were that he was a tough guy. He didn't break down and he never complained about anything.

He always wanted to do more. We took days off from practice and he got mad asking, "Well, when are we going to workout?" I had to tell him, "Take it easy, we're resting a little bit."