Franklin expects tough night against Griffin

THE CANADIAN PRESS

Rich Franklin put forward two goals ahead of his UFC showdown with Chuck (The Iceman) Liddell last June at UFC 115 in Vancouver.

“In a perfect world I would come out unscathed and be able to knock Chuck out,” Franklin said prior to facing the former light-heavyweight champion.

Franklin, a former middleweight title-holder in his own right, was half-right.

He stopped Liddell cold with a short right to the jaw — The Iceman subsequently retired — but not before Liddell broke his arm with a kick.

Fully healed, the 36-year-old Franklin expects another tough night at the office on Feb. 5 when he takes on another former light-heavyweight champion in Forrest Griffin at UFC 126 in Las Vegas.

“People ask me ‘Where are you going to party after the fight’ and I’m like ‘Probably Valley View ER,”‘ Franklin said, referring to a Vegas hospital. “Win or lose.”

The Franklin-Forrest fight is the co-main event at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Anderson Silva defends his middleweight title against fellow Brazilian Vitor Belfort in the main event.

Mixed martial arts is a tough way to earn a living and Franklin (28-5 with one no contest) and Griffin (17-6) both put their bodies on the line like few other fighters.

Griffin knows Franklin’s recent pain. His televised bloody slugfest with Stephan Bonnar in 2005 was credited with helping put the UFC on the map.

Like Franklin, Griffin had his arm broken by a kick — in a 2003 bout in Brazil. He kept fighting and also knocked out his opponent.

The good news is Griffin says the healed bone no longer juts out.

The 31-year-old former police officer went into his last fight against Tito (The Huntington Beach Bad Boy) Ortiz in November 2009 with a broken foot and a neck injury.

He believes he’s had the same break in his foot before.

“My whole thing is that in practice and fights, I’m going to kick recklessly. I don’t care,” he explained. “I’m going to sacrifice the foot for 15 minutes. I don’t protect the feet.

“I don’t have great range in my kicks but I’m going to throw them and I’m going to throw them hard and if my foot breaks, it breaks. I don’t care.”

Griffin, who has a BA in political science and has written two tongue-in-cheek books on his philosophy in life, showed his sense of humour prior to the Ortiz fight when he came out to Chumbawamba’s “I Get Knocked Down.”

He subsequently had to pull out of a scheduled UFC 114 fight with Antonio Rogerio Nogueira in May because of a third shoulder surgery.

Griffin also has plates in both hands. “Those are fine,” he said. “Those don’t give me any problem.”

Liddell’s kick broke Franklin’s ulna, the smaller bone in his left forearm, close to his wrist. Because of the location of the break, his doctor opted for a cast rather than surgery. The fear was that inserting a plate might limit his movement because of the proximity to the wrist.

So he wore a cast that extended to mid-bicep for four weeks. X-rays looked positive and he got a smaller cast for the next two weeks before moving down to a removable Velcro cast for two more weeks.

When the cast finally came off, he still faced some limitations on sparring, but eventually it was back to business.

“It ended out working really well for me. And of course when a bone calcifies, supposedly it’s stronger than it was before in that spot … if Forrest kicks me in the arm, it shouldn’t break this time.”

Franklin asked for the last cast to be pink. He signed it and got Liddell to do the same, raffling it off for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. They raised some $5,000.

Franklin said after the impact of the Liddell’s kick, he soon knew damage had been done.

“The thing is with the adrenalin pumping, you don’t feel pain like you feel when the adrenalin is not pumping. Not to say, you don’t feel pain at all.”

It didn’t take long to confirm the worst.

“As soon as I threw the first punch with my arm, the broken arm, I felt the bones go cer-clack. It felt the same exact way it felt in the Loiseau fight and it hurt a little bit. And I knew, I knew then it was broken. But it was my arm this time and not a bone in my hand.”

Franklin convincingly beat Montreal’s David (The Crow) Loiseau back at UFC 58 in March 2006. But the title defence came with a price for the champion.

A broken left hand, that required surgery to insert seven screws and a plate. Five stitches over the left eye. A hairline fracture in his left foot. Ligament damage to his left ankle and right knuckles.

Prior to Liddell, there was hernia surgery.

Against Dan Henderson at UFC 93 in January 2009, he survived a head-butt in the first round that opened two cuts on his forehead and a third-round poke in the eye that eventually required surgery.

Between rounds, he looked up at the big screen in the Dublin arena. That looks nasty, he told his handlers with a smile.

“I just look at myself and I say ‘Ah another scar, here we go,”‘ he said later. “And I’ve kind of got to the point where that’s just how things are going to be. The best thing you can do is kind of make a joke about it.”

The poke nicked the eyeball and scar tissue began to develop, catching and attaching itself to the corner of his eyelid. He had to have the surgery to have the scar tissue removed from the eyeball.

Franklin’s eyeball socket was numbed with an injection, then his eyeball was injected with Lidocaine. A scalpel was then used to remove the scar tissue while cortisone was injected to help reduce the swelling of the scar band on the eyelid.

After taking off the scar tissue from the eyeball, a cauterizing gun was used to stop it bleeding.

Franklin, a former high school teacher with a BA in mathematics and master’s in education, was awake the whole time.

“It’s really a weird experience watching your eyeball being cauterized and smoke actually coming off the eyeball and smelling the burned flesh,” he said later.

While he had his mother with him — doctors told him to bring someone along just in case — he donned sunglasses and drove himself home after the procedure.

Franklin needed reconstructive surgery after Silva broke his nose in each of their two championship bouts, at UFC 64 and 77.

At UFC 88, he beat Matt (The Hammer) Hamill despite reopening a cut that was suffered 10 days before the bout.

“I wasn’t really concerned about it until I could see the flap of skin hanging in front of my eyeball,” he said after the fight. “I kept trying to nudge my head back to get the skin out of the way and it just wouldn’t stay up.”

In addition to broken bones, Griffin often leaks blood in his fights.

So how does he feel most mornings when he gets up?

“Well after I get that pot of coffee in me and the Celebrex, I feel all right,” he said, referring to an arthritis remedy.

After the Liddell win, Franklin did his post-fight interview hanging onto his broken left arm, so the bones would not grind against each other.

Asked if he might have had trouble coming out for the second round, Franklin looked at interviewer Joe Rogan as if he had two heads.

“Are you kidding me?” he said. “I broke my hand before and I didn’t quit. I ain’t going to quit. It’s a broken arm. These fans came here to see a fight.”

But these days, Franklin asks for help to avoid injury.

“Believe me, when I pray before my fights, that’s part of what I pray for now.”