Morning Report: Forrest Griffin reveals he forged medicals to be on ‘The Ultimate Fighter’

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JUNE 27: Forrest Griffin reacts on stage during the UFC Hall of Fame 2024 Induction Ceremony at T-Mobile Arena on June 27, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images) | Zuffa LLC via Getty Images Forrest Griffin’s time on The Ultimate Fighter chan

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Forrest Griffin’s time on The Ultimate Fighter changed his life, and the course of UFC history forever.

And it might not have happened were it not for a little fib.

Griffin first burst onto the MMA scene as a cast member of the inaugural season of TUF in 2005. His time on the reality show culminated in Griffin facing Stephan Bonnar in a light heavyweight tournament final, which saw the two future Hall of Famers throw down in an epic three-round contest that left fans – both hardcore and casual – buzzing.

UFC CEO Dana White has frequently credited Griffin vs. Bonnar as being one of the most important moments in the UFC’s rise to prominence.

On Dominick Cruz’s Love & War podcast, Griffin revealed that to avoid having to pay for medicals required to be on TUF, he got, well, creative with the required documentation.

“I forged my medicals,” Griffin said. “I forged my medicals for The Ultimate Fighter. This is back in the Xerox days. This is true. I had my friend Frank Bishop sign as the doctor and he was, like, stressed out. I don’t know, I was broke. So I Xerox’d [a previous form], whited out the date, wrote it again, and then re-Xerox’d a grainy copy so you couldn’t tell I’d whited the date. I just changed the date by a couple of years.

“I didn’t have HIV or hepatitis. I think you have to have sex to have those, so I was safe. I’m way more safe than I want to be here.”

Fortunately for Griffin, the UFC, and everyone involved with the show, the deception didn’t cause any issues (publicly, anyway), and Griffin went on to have an amazing career. After a shocking upset of the debuting Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, Griffin followed that up with another world-beating moment as he won a decision over Quinton “Rampage” Jackson at UFC 86 in 2008 to become light heavyweight champion.

It was a far cry from his early days of competition, which included several outlaw stories, which Griffin shared on Cruz’s podcast.

“I fought in Florida, and they had kind of lied to the athletic commission about what it actually was,” Griffin said. “There were signs on the door saying that if we fought it was ‘this-class’ felony and we would go to jail. Everybody’s like, ‘Wait, there’s literally a printout on everybody’s locker room door,’ like all the doors going in, and we’re just sitting there looking at each other like, ‘Are we really doing this?’ The guy said, ‘Oh, they just have to do that to cover their ass. Nobody’s going to do anything.’

“Sure enough, everything was fine. It was literally the venue was like, hey, we’re allowing them to have a fight in a state where fighting’s illegal. And that was, like 2001. Fighting was still illegal in Florida. It was crazy.”

The business has changed drastically since the early 2000s, with the UFC now a multi-billion dollar entity that operates all over the world. Back in Griffin’s day, few fighters could envision what the MMA industry would become and how potentially lucrative a career in it could be.

However, Griffin says he was always motivated by the possibility of making life-changing money.

“You know that it is the path to stardom,” Griffin said, reflecting on his mindset getting into MMA. “You know something really good can come of this. My goal was to do it for four or five years, make more money than I could as a cop, then go back, get my masters, work three years somewhere high speed, and then become a defensive tactics instructor. I had the plan.

“When I was 20, I went to the police academy, and there was like three of us that had actually done jiu-jitsu. This was 1999 and it was so cool. I just felt like—I can’t explain this to you, but you felt like a ninja. You felt like you’re magic. I just arm drag, choke people, arm drag, choke, ankle. Nobody knew anything. The guys I worked in the club with were like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to show me that shit.’ I was like, ‘It’s kind of hard to learn. It kind of takes a while.’ I’ve been doing this a couple of years now, I do this 10-15 hours a week. I work hard. I’m not smart enough to be a nerd, trust me, this is what I do. But it was crazy being able to walk around and fight back then.”

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