Pioneers of MMA: Tito Ortiz

Tito Ortiz with his UFC Light-Heavyweight Title, circa 2001

Money talks

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The next contender for Tito’s title post-Shamrock should’ve been Chuck Liddell, but there were a handful of issues with that.

Firstly – as everyone who’s an MMA fan knows – Chuck and Tito were former training partners and at one time they were good friends. And secondly, in a way linked to the first part, Tito felt that after the success of the Shamrock PPV, he wasn’t being paid enough to fight a good friend like Liddell.

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Liddell had beaten Vitor Belfort to cement his shot a few months before the Ortiz/Shamrock fight and even then you could see Tito’s mindset. Post-fight Tito entered the cage and when he was asked about the potential fight, right away mentioned that the friends weren’t being paid enough to warrant the fight.

The friendship allowed the UFC to spin the whole idea as Tito “ducking” Chuck with the story being that Liddell had dominated Ortiz in their sparring sessions. It didn’t help Tito’s cause that Chuck wasn’t exactly a guy who cared about money. He just wanted to fight and destroy guys.

So Tito did what we now see plenty of fighters, from Conor McGregor to the Diaz brothers do – he chose to sit out.

The move was the catalyst for the UFC to create their first interim title, in a fight between Liddell and former Heavyweight champion Randy Couture. Couture won and shortly after, Tito and Zuffa were able to come to a deal.

The fact that the deal was only done once Chuck was out of the picture, added more fuel to the “ducking” fire, playing into Zuffa’s hands. It was really at this point that the bad blood between Tito and Dana White began to boil over.

At UFC 44, Ortiz took on Couture and was dominated by Couture’s wrestling game. Although he’d lost to Mezger and Shamrock, this was the first time that Ortiz’s game just didn’t work at all as he was unable to bully Couture and was faced with a far superior wrestler.

It was also the first sign that Tito’s game was beginning to become a bit antiquated.

The UFC managed to finally put together the Ortiz/Liddell fight shortly after and indeed, the stories were proven correct. Tito was unable to take Liddell down and he was outmatched on the feet, and Chuck took him out with a violent combination in the second round.

Tito bounced back from the loss by winning his next two fights; firstly beating late replacement Patrick Cote in a classic Tito match, bullying an undersized opponent, and then a hard-fought win over Vitor Belfort in what was perhaps a career-best victory in hindsight.

The Belfort fight was the last on Tito’s UFC contract and he hadn’t signed a new one. The UFC was just breaking through into the mainstream due to the TUF boom, and while it’s common now, Ortiz was to become the first big free agent of the era.

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