When Stephan Bonnar gets back to the North Side health club where he works on Monday, he will have lost a war but won a more important battle, all at once. And he’ll have the scars to prove it.
Bonnar reached the finals of “The Ultimate Fighter,” Spike TV’s reality series where 16 guys battled for a light-heavyweight and a middleweight contract for the Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts federation.
Several days ago, light-heavyweights Bonnar and Ohioan Forrest Griffin beat themselves silly for three five-minute rounds. When the blood and sweat were wiped away, Griffin won, on a judge’s decision, the series’ grand prize: a six-figure UFC contract, a new car, a motorcycle and a watch.
“I was crushed,” Bonnar, 28, said a few days after the match, which left him with four stitches in his eyebrow and assorted facial bruises.
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Bonnar’s devastation lasted about three minutes, until UFC President Dana White announced that Bonnar also would receive the same UFC contract, worth three fights.
Bonnar can thank his gritty performance in the match, where he and Griffin traded kicks, punches, takedowns, elbow shots to the head, knees to the body and other punishment (Griffin received a gash on the bridge of his nose in the second round that bloodied both men throughout the remainder of the fight).
While Bonnar awaits word on his first UFC match, he’ll continue as a personal trainer for Gold Coast Multiplex and move closer to completing his studies in muscle-activation therapy.
“It’s priceless,” he said of the experience. “It’s like, fame or fortune, right now I’m getting some fame. I’ve done a TV show and I’ve done really well. That’s something you can’t buy.”