A little more than a month after the news of the death of Anthony “Rumble” Johnson shook the martial arts world, another MMA great has sadly passed away.
UFC hall of Famer Stephan Bonnar died on December 24, 2022, at the age of 45.
The reason for his death is still unknown, but UFC issued a statement saying that Bonnar died of a heart complication while being at work. Late yesterday evening, the UFC confirmed the death of Stephan Bonnar (15-9-0), but later it was announced that Bonnar passed away on December 22 (12th month), on Thursday.
Stephan Patrick Bonnar was a professional mixed martial Artist and UFC hall of Famer. He competed as the light heavyweight in UFC. While known for very intense and good fights in UFC he was probably most known for the fight he lost to Forrest Griffin in The Ultimate Fighter 1 finale. That fight is also considered one of the most important fights in UFC History.
He was a Jiu-Jitsu master with a nine-year-long career in UFC. He fought many UFC former and future champions like Mark Coleman, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, Rashad Evans, etc.
Bonnar would have celebrated his 46th birthday in the 4th month of next year, and he is one of the members of the UFC Hall of Fame. Back in 2013, Bonnar received the honor of being included, and he received this credit because of the iconic match he did against Forrest Griffin in the finals of The Ultimate Fighter in 2005.
Bonnar and Griffin then did, according to Dana White, “the most important fight in the history of the UFC.” In fact, the UFC was broadcast live for the first time through a publicly available TV channel. It was about the Spike TV channel, and the UFC was about to collapse and be sold before that match.
The Fertitta brothers were not satisfied with the development of the company and felt that running the UFC was not worth their invested time, money, and effort. The sale of the company was considered, and the first season of The Ultimate Fighter was the last straw for the survival of the Fertitta brothers. The viewership of that show was surprisingly good, but they needed an additional step forward on a publicly available TV channel, and that it was not a PPV, that is, that the audience could watch the event for free.
Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin put on one of the best fights in UFC history that night and earned them a handful of new fans. It was the breakthrough that the UFC needed, and the two entered UFC eternity with that fight. Forrest Griffin won by unanimous decision after three rounds, but the UFC decided to reward both men with contracts.
You can watch the legendary fight between Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin in a video below:
At the end of his MMA career, he was under contract for Bellator MMA organization mainly for the fight with Tito Ortiz which he lost via split decision.
Soon after he went to professional wrestling where he worked till now.
He also suffered from a severe back injury that made him hospitalized together with “cavuum septi pellucid” and a potential future diagnosis of CTE.
We can conclude from everything that martial arts left a big mark on his health.
While the cause of his death is still pending he faced a series of challenges in his personal life lately. He lost his home in Las Vegas in April this year. His wife, Andrea Bonnar wrote a post on her Facebook account: “we lost everything in the blaze”.
Thanks to the former UFC welterweight champion Tyron Woodley and his generous donation he was able to move into a new residence. Also, there was a fundraiser of over $10k raised to support Bonnar.
In September 2021 Stephan Bonnar posted a lot of videos to his Instagram profile of a confrontation at the hospital where he was looking for treatment for staph, but doctors denied him care due to him having COVID-19.
Likewise, lately, he has been posting various videos and arguments against covid masks, etc.
