Legendary UFC fighter Forrest Griffin will be a part of his boss Dana White's new Power Slap league, catching fighters heads when they are dropped.
The former UFC light-heavyweight champion was inducted into the sport's Hall of Fame in 2013, and is one of the most beloved figures in MMA over a decade after he last fought. He famously broke ground by winning the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter, taking on Stephan Bonnar in a finale dubbed the 'most important fight' in UFC history.
Now, Griffin and White will attempt to make history again as they work together on the promoter's new combat sports league Power Slap. He will help to cushion the fall for athletes who are knocked out during their bouts in the slap-fighting tournament, which will air next year in America on TBS.
“It seems like a pretty interesting gig, right? Also I get the best seat in the house,” Griffin asked during a recent interview with TMZ. “Honestly, I’m pretty good at catching injured people. I’m kind of doing it for research purposes, I’m interested to see the different types of impacts and what happens.
"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.”
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White has used his status in Nevada to have the sport of slap-fighting sanctioned in the state, which is known for hosting some of the biggest fights in history. And he's keen to legitimise the league similarly to how he and the Fertitta brothers did when they bought the UFC in the early 2000s.
“I’ve been working on this since 2017," White explained during a press conference in New York last month. "I saw some footage of slap fighting on social media and I was instantly hooked. From the first day I saw it, I felt like this could be big. I knew what needed to be done to make it a real sport just like we did with MMA."
