How to succeed in publishing without really dying

“I guarantee – a money back guarantee – that this book will not help your fighting, will in no way better your life or improve your life in any way. Not only that, but I also guarantee that this book will not help your love life in any regard.” – Forrest Griffin, UFC fighter, best-selling author

The most entertaining fighter in all of MMA is Forrest Griffin. He’s a great gutsy give-’er-all-he’s-got brawler inside the cage and he’s damn funny outside, making him one of the sport’s most popular athletes (there’s a reason he’s on the cover of the UFC 2009 Undisputed video game).

Well, like so many other UFC superstars, he’s written a book. Unlike those superstars, Griffin’s is actually worth reading. I’m about halfway through my copy and it’s laugh-out-loud funny. (I’ll write up a review once I’ve finished it to give you a better idea of what you’re in store for if you decide to pick it up – and you should.)

And I’m not the only one who thinks it’s worth the price of admission: Griffin’s Got Fight? The 50 Zen Principles of Hand-to-Face Combat debuted last week at number eight on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover advice books. That’s right, advice. What makes Got Fight? so great is that it’s not a straight-up autobiography; it’s like a self-help book for cage potatoes and wannabe UFC fighters. An alternate title could’ve been Forrest Griffin’s Guide To Manliness.

“I try to tell the truth and use a little humour to talk about how I really feel. Like if I think you’re a fucking idiot, I’ll try to tell you in a funny way. I’m kind of kidding, but there’s also some truth to it,” he told UFC.com. “I’ve always been pretty decent sitting around the bar telling the story in a conversational sense. So that’s kinda what I wanted to make it, just telling a story where you can picture me telling it.”

Griffin says his inspiration for the book wasn’t the best-selling autobios by other UFC champs, like Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell or Matt Hughes, it was books like The 48 Laws of Power, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Stephen King’s On Writing, in particular. “It’s just stuff about his life and then he talks about writing, and that was the kind of book I thought I could do, and have it be on fighting. I would talk about fighting and then talk about my own life.”

Griffin, who co-authored the book with Erich Krauss, is as surprised by its success as anyone. “We all like to be listened to in conversation, so for people to actually spend money to find out your thoughts on stuff is a very flattering concept. I thought that it might just get lost in the shuffle of there being so many fighters’ books. Now, it having the success it has, I’m almost thinking, man, if I had really tried, I could have really written a good book.”

As for his 205-pound non-title fight against middleweight champ Anderson Silva at UFC 101 in August, Griffin is prophetic. “I’m probably going to get hurt, if not die. This guy knows how to fight. The good news is, if I die, this book will sell a lot more copies and be worth more.”