Griffin vs. Evans According to Their Trainers

Preparing for their main event light heavyweight title fight at UFC 92 "The Ultimate 2008" this Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, champion Forrest Griffin and undefeated challenger Forrest Griffin and undefeated challenger Rashad Evans are a study in contrasts.

Griffin (16-4), training to defend his belt for the first time, still hits the gym with that same sobering sense of purpose he first displayed some six months ago as he readied for his first title shot against Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. A unanimous decision victory made him champion at UFC 86. Griffin’s trademark sense of self-deprecating humor is still checked at the door, according to Shawn Tompkins, Griffin’s mixed martial arts coach at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas.

“There’s a new Forrest,” Tompkins said. “He’s hungry … just the fact that he’s got that belt and he has to prove something. And Forrest loves to have to prove something to people.”

A hundred eighty degrees away, metaphorically speaking, Evans (12-0-1), preparing for his first title shot, views Saturday’s bout as just another day at the office, to hear his camp tell it.

“It’s just another fight to us,” said Evans’ trainer, Greg Jackson, who runs Jackson’s Submission Fighting in Albuquerque, N.M. “If we were fighting Forrest and there was no belt involved, it would all be exactly the same. That’s how we come at it to deal with those pressure situations.

“We never look at it in that Rocky Balboa way, you know, ‘It’s my one shot at the title,’” Jackson added with a decent Stallone impression. “That’s for the movies.”

Griffin, 29, is a durable, hard-hitting boxer and Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner. Evans, also 29, comes from a wrestling background — he amassed a 48-34 record while wrestling for Michigan State University — but has developed into a well-rounded MMA fighter with explosive strikes. Both fighters are winners of “The Ultimate Fighter” reality series, Griffin in season one and Evans in season two. Oddsmakers favor Griffin at UFC 92.

Another contrast between the two fighters is that Griffin’s camp is considerably more willing to discuss its game plan for Evans, while Evans’ coaches prefer not to tip their hand quite so much.

Tags: Rashad Evans, UFC