Muhammad Ali was notorious for looking bad in sparring, but transcendent in the ring. Other fighters shone brightest in the gym. Ask old BTT vets about Ricardo Liborio. Ask Pat Miletich about Steve Rusk. In sum, not all the best fights take place in public.

Fightful recently asked a number of fighters about not the greatest sparring ever in the gym, but the craziest. It begins with UFC welterweight Max Griffin, who, along with UFC middleweight Anthony Hernandez, used to do four-on-sparring, to the knockout.

“We used to do four-on-one MMA,” said Griffin. “Me and Anthony Hernandez, my boy, we were at this gym in Woodland, [California] a while back. This must have been like 10-years-ago. We did three-on-one, four-on-one, full contact knockouts. It was so stressful when you were that one guy that got jumped. It was life or death.”

“The point of that – which wasn’t too safe, you got blind-sided and fucking cold-clocked and hit in the back of the head and jumped, you’d get cornered – but you learn that after fighting a bunch of people, fighting one person ain’t shit. So try me motherf***er. It was really scary. It wasn’t like sparring. And everyone was good. We’re not bums fighting. We were amateurs then but we had skill.”

Time Stamps
0:10 – Max Griffin sparring full contact with four opponents
1:21 – Eryk Anders shows how bad someone’s arm snapped
2:57 – Damon Jackson and the case of the flying tooth
4:05 – Brad Pickett says Hector Lombard has no chill
5:09 – Vicente Luque on the worst KO he has ever seen
6:41 – Dan Ige watches Uriah Hall KO multiple training partners
7:18 – James Krause goes kill mode against aggressive teammates

Griffin fights Kenan Song at a UFC event on March 20.

What do you think UG, what’s the craziest thing you ever saw in the gym?

h/t Shakiel Mahjorijan for Fightful