VS

Forrest Griffin (14-4) asked to fight the best fighters in the lightweight division. Well I think he bit off more than he can chew with this request as he will be fighting Mauricio "Shogun" Rua (16-2) the 2005 Middleweight (205 lb) Pride Grand Prix champion

If you have never seen Rua fight he is the most devastating striker in the world at the light heavyweight division and is a top 3 pound for pound mixed martial arts fighter. There is not a fighter in this weight class that can even come close to Shogun’s strike and his kicks. Coming from the Chute Boxe academy he is use to fighting the toughest strikers in the world like Anderson Spider Silvia and Wanderlei the Axe Murderer Silva. Shogun is a complete MMA fighter with so much skill at only the age of 26 as he is known for being an example of the new wave of mixed martail arts fighters; mastered both striking skills and having a very well developed ground game. Shogun has it all with a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from Nino Schembri and in Muay Thai from Rafael Cordeiro and he trains at the best striking club in the world. Shogun has fought in the Pride organization and has beaten such high level MMA fighters like Alistair Overeem, Kazuhiro Nakamura, Kevin Randleman, K1 striker Cyrille Diabate, Ricardo Arona, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Akira Shoji and Akihiro Gono.

I like Forrest Griffin as a person, as he is such a nice guy and great personality. He is great for the sport. However, in all honesty he is not a real great fighter. He has heart; in fact he has too much heart and his heart will get him the beat down of his life and he is basically a reality show contestant against a killing machine. This fight will be reminiscent to the Pros versus Joes where the Joes tried to fight Randy Couture. That is how big the discrepancy is between Griffin and Rua is. Another example is how bad of a beating Chris Leben got versus Anderson Silvia. Griffin does not know what he is getting into the octagon as he does not have the take down skills, grappling skills or striking abilities to even compete with Shogun.  

Bottom Line: At the start of the fight Shogun will punish and systematically beat down Forrest.This will be ugly and I mean ugly. Those with a faint of heart do not watch this fight as Rua will beat him down something fierce. Griffin is known for his heart so I say Rua will punish him the first round and KO him in the second round. Tnere is no way Griffin even has a shot at beating Shogun.

Mauricio Rua will beat Forest Griffin like he's his kid brother.

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