(See, Forrest? You used to *love* microphones… / Photo courtesy of milwaukeemma.com)

When we hosted Stephan Bonnar on the latest edition of our Bum Rush Radio Show, we ran through the standard set of questions about his training for tomorrow night’s fight against Igor Pokrajac, his opinions on TUF 12, and his future as a broadcaster. But considering Bonnar’s long history with Forrest Griffin, we couldn’t resist asking for his take on the question that’s been plaguing us lately: "Why is Forrest such a dick to reporters?" Bonnar’s candid and insightful answer is after the jump. If you haven’t already, please give the new episode a listen, and subscribe on iTunes!


CagePotato.com: Not to get too off-topic, but your old buddy Forrest Griffin is getting a bad reputation for being hostile to interviewers and other media types. We’ve called him out on it, and a couple of other sites now have picked up on it as well, and I was just wondering if you had any insight because you know him personally. What’s up with Forrest’s attitude, does he just hate doing press?

Stephan Bonnar: Yeah, pretty much. He knows it’s really not necessary anymore. In the early days he was really good and funny — he could be funny and turn it on whenever he wants — but in his mind, you shmooze the media and do great interviews and make people laugh, and then he loses a fight and everyone hates him and writes him off and says he’s shit anyway. So then he gets bitter. Then he’s like, "well fuck it, I’m a New York Times best-seller, I’m pretty high on the UFC roster, I’m getting the big-money main event fights, and I don’t need to shmooze to you media anymore, who will just turn around and stab me in the back anyway, because I’m already here." And that’s kind of what I get out of it.