5 UFC fights that were hugely overhyped

#2 Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock – UFC 61

Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock had a TUF season dedicated to their feud - but their second fight was a mess

The feud between UFC stars Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock is undoubtedly one of the most important in promotional history. Beginning way back at UFC 19 when Ortiz beat Shamrock student Guy Mezger and then flipped Ken off, the bad blood culminated at UFC 40 – the Zuffa-era UFC’s first successful pay-per-view show – and the fight delivered hugely as Shamrock showed tremendous heart, but went down to Ortiz after the third round.

Nobody really needed to see a rematch some four years later, especially as Shamrock had lost his previous two fights in pretty bad fashion to Rich Franklin and Kazushi Sakuraba. But he was desperate for revenge and Ortiz was willing to oblige. And so the UFC’s hype machine kicked into overdrive.

The two men were announced as the coaches for the third season of The Ultimate Fighter – back when fans still cared about the show – and had slanging matches, pull-apart brawls, and even a strange game of pool to build their fight, which was scheduled for UFC 61.

By the time the show arrived, the fans had bought the hype, millions tuned in to watch and even UFC announcer Mike Goldberg was yelling about how it looked like Shamrock had some kind of secret gameplan that would allow him to defeat ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’.

But that wasn’t the case. Ortiz took Shamrock down with a body slam and began to hit him with heavy elbows from the guard. Referee Herb Dean decided Shamrock wasn’t defending, and the fight was stopped after just over a minute of action.

Worse was to come as Shamrock leapt to his feet to protest the stoppage, causing the crowd to rain boos down onto the Octagon. The first fight between the two was somewhat one-sided, but this was simply a mess, and it instantly deflated the massive hype going into the show – hype that probably shouldn’t have been warranted in the first place.