Credit to insidefighting.
After more than 14 months on the sidelines due to a very bitter, public contract hold out, UFC superstar Tito Ortiz is finally back where he belongs – in the Octagon.
The former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion made a triumphant return to the UFC 12 days ago, defeating “The Ultimate Fighter” Season One winner Forrest Griffin by split decision in a very entertaining affair. But it was a fight that probably shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
“About a month before the fight with Forrest Griffin, I had an MRI and found out that I had a partial tear on my lateral collateral ligament, a partial tear on my anterior cruciate ligament, and a bulging disc between L4 and L5 vertebrae,” Ortiz told InsideFighting. “I had to just bite down and live with the pain. I took some pain killers and anti-inflammatory pills here and there. I had a lot of physical therapy on my knee. It seemed like I was doing that more than training. I only had two to three days a week of hard training each week. The rest of the time was spent trying to heal and recover. So, I was only 70 percent, at best, for the fight. But what was I going to do? I had to suck it up and put on a good fight for the fans.”
Ortiz makes no bones about the fact that his biggest advantage in any fight is his cardiovascular conditioning. With injuries severely limiting his normal intense pre-fight preparations, Ortiz had to rely on something else in search of victory at UFC 59.
“I was fighting on all heart,” he said. “I pushed myself past the limit against Forrest. Believe me, I didn’t have any cardio in that fight. Injuries prevented me from getting in great shape, like I mentioned. I came out quick because I was trying to get him out of there in the first round before I ran out of gas. But he took a good beating early and survived.”
With Tito running on fumes in the second and third rounds, Griffin was able to effectively defend the takedown. Ortiz, therefore, found himself engaged in more of a boxing match, something many critics said he couldn’t win. Yet, Tito was the one landing the bigger, more damaging blows on the feet, proving his detractors wrong once again.
“The critics been poking holes in my game since I won my first world title,” Tito said. “It’s not going to stop, either. If they can’t find anything wrong with my game, they’re going to make something up. I guess I’ll keep the ‘Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ name forever, because people are going to either love me or hate me. That’s fine as long as they keep buying tickets. I’m just going to keep working hard, trying to make my fights as exciting as possible for the fans. I hope I keep fighting guys like Forrest, who have a good personality and are willing to get in there and fight hard.”
Fans definitely love good, hard fights, but crowd-pleasing wars can take a very real toll on a fighter, including the winner. And that is precisely what happened to Ortiz at UFC 59.
“I’m still really sore,” he explained. “My back still hurts. My knee is sore. My hands and elbows are sore. Now I know what Frank Shamrock meant when he said his body doesn’t recover like it used to. I need about four weeks to recover and then I’ll be ready to start training again, I think.”
The problem, however, is that Ortiz was supposed to face fellow TUF3 coach Ken Shamrock at UFC 61 on July 8. It was supposed to be a rematch of their 2002 grudge match. A month off, therefore, would only leave him six weeks of preparation time for what could be the biggest pay-per-view event of his career.
Not wanting to risk fighting injured again, Ortiz said that he asked UFC President Dana White to postpone the Shamrock rematch one month so that he could completely recover, put in a full training camp and show up 100-percent ready to go at UFC 62.
No dice. Presumably looking to capitalize on the momentum currently generated by TUF3, White kept Shamrock on the July card and simply substituted in Griffin as his new opponent.
“I don’t know why Zuffa refused to postpone the fight for a month, but I guess that’s what happens when you aren’t the UFC poster boy anymore,” Ortiz quipped. “They do stuff to build up Forrest and make the company more money, but they don’t do anything for me at all. So, I understand where the line is drawn. Don’t worry, my time will come. Maybe Forrest will beat Ken and then me and Forrest can do a rematch. That would be awesome. I guarantee the outcome would be different.”
With Ortiz on the shelf until at least August, Ortiz fans will have to get their fill of the former champion by watching Spike TV on Thursday nights. Granted, he isn’t fighting on the reality-television show, but it’s still a great way to get a new side of the Huntington Beach Bad Boy.
“The real Tito Ortiz is the guy people are seeing on TUF,” he said. “As a coach, I really cared about those guys. I brought them under my wing and had love for them. Hey, I’m human just like anyone else. I was bleeding, sweating and crying right there along side the guys.”
Of course, Ortiz flips the switch when it comes time to take care of business, and fans get to see the brash, confident fighter that has dominated UFC broadcasts since the sport’s return to PPV.
“When fight time arrives, I’m a total different person,” he continued. “I’ve got to show the tenacity and ferocity that I’m known for. I have to make sure opponents are afraid of me. They have to know there is a chance that they’ll get damaged really badly when I take them down and elbow them in the face. It’s all about hostility. I fight with bad intentions. But afterward, I’m human again. I even feel badly for my opponents [after the fight].”
The one thing Ortiz doesn’t feel badly about, either before or after the fact, is his long 2005 holdout. UFC 59 was a vindication for the former champion on several levels, not the least of which was his decision to stand firm behind his demand for a bigger share of the financial pie.
“I told [InsideFighting] in the very beginning of my holdout that I wasn’t going to back down and I didn’t,” Ortiz said. “After the Forrest fight, I wore a t-shirt that said, ‘With great sacrifice comes great reward.’ I really believe in that. I sacrificed a lot sticking to my guns, but I’m getting rewarded a lot right now. It was all worth it in the end.”
Welcome back, Tito.
