Forrest Griffin Defeats Tito "My Head Hurts" Ortiz

Another Forrest Griffin and Tito Ortiz bout and another split decision. This time, the winner clearly deserved the victory. The judge who gave the fight to Ortiz must have really sympathized with Tito’s cracked cranium. The judge who gave Griffin all three rounds may have been a little overly optimistic. Whoever scored the match two rounds to one in favor of Griffin agreed with me. Therefore, that judge had the most objectivity.

After all, there’s no way I’d have a bias going into this fight. That Tito’s a swell guy.

In the first round, Forrest proved he was by far the better striker. Tito did manage to get Forrest to the ground. Once there, he didn’t do much damage. Forrest was smart in using the butterfly guard to get back to his feet. At one point, he used a kimura to get back to his feet.

The worst thing you can do against Tito is sew him up in your guard because that’s where Tito wants to be. Like Joe said, Tito is one of the best at doing damage in full guard.

In the second round, Tito did a lot more damage on the ground. It was mainly that one elbow strike that cut Griffin. That dude tends to bleed a lot. That’s too bad, because without the blood the round would have looked a lot different. Especially considering Forrest swept Tito and got into half-guard.

The third round was all Forrest. Without takedowns, Tito Ortiz is a sub-par fighter. Once Griffin knew he wasn’t getting taken down he really opened up. This was the one round of the fight that was clearly Griffin’s. It was strange seeing Tito so lethargic, as he’s usually got great cardio.

Having said all that, I gave the first and third round to Forrest. I only gave the second round to Tito because of the cut. Either way, Tito didn’t deserve to win this fight. Hopefully, that clears up some of the confusion surrounding the split decision.

It’s also clear that Forrest is an emotional guy. He really needs to keep his confidence up to reach his full potential. Against Anderson Silva, he never looked like a winner. That did have a lot to do with him getting punched. However some of it was probably Griffin’s mindset.

You could tell Forrest had the right idea coming into this match. He said that this wasn’t going to be one of this “If I win I win, if I lose...oh well” sort of fights. He had that casual mindset in the Silva fight and he lost by a mile. Going in against Tito, he was determined to win and it showed.

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