Welcome to my new series for Sportskeeda, Pioneers of MMA. Every other week I’ll be looking at the career of one of the figures, who I feel has been pivotal to today’s juggernaut of a sport, exactly what they did to change the landscape, and how what they did still resonates today.
When it comes to pioneers, people usually think of the obvious names – the likes of Royce Gracie, Kazushi Sakuraba, and Maurice Smith, but today I’m looking at someone else.
He may not have introduced a new fighting style, nor was he the first man in MMA to play a pro-wrestling-inspired character. But Tito Ortiz was definitely a pioneer in his own right, and a lot of the moves he made in his career helped to change MMA entirely.
The beginning
Ortiz was introduced to the UFC way back in 1997 at UFC 13 to be exact. He’d been training under wrestling coach Paul Herrera, who was also involved in training the “original” Huntington Beach Bad Boy, Tank Abbott. Tito’s connections to Tank got him into the UFC as an alternate for the event’s Middleweight tournament.
After using his wrestling and ground striking to dispatch of Wes Albritton in the alternate match, Ortiz was given a chance to fight in the finals after Enson Inoue withdrew with an injury. Facing him was the far more experienced Guy Mezger, a student of Ken Shamrock’s Lion’s Den.
Tito was actually able to dominate Mezger in the early going, using a cradle to control him while landing knees to the top of the head, but after referee John McCarthy called a stoppage to check on a cut to Mezger, Tito made the error of shooting for a takedown with his neck out. Mezger caught him in a guillotine choke and forced him to tap out.
Over a year went by before Ortiz was seen again; this time fighting against another Lion’s Den representative, Jerry Bohlander. Bohlander had the reputation of someone who could deal with larger fighters – he’d tapped out both Olympic gold medalist Kevin Jackson and the obese giant Scott Ferrozo in previous UFC outings.
He could do nothing with Ortiz.
Tito was just too big, too strong and too good of a grappler for Bohlander to handle, and after a beatdown that went on for about 15 minutes, the fight was stopped.
Just two months later Tito was back, rematching Bohlander’s training partner Guy Mezger. This time around Ortiz had more experience and Mezger was no match for him. He was beaten in the same fashion as Bohlander – outmuscled, rag dolled and pounded into a TKO.
So here’s where Ortiz earns his first points as a legitimate pioneer. He wasn’t the best wrestler the UFC had seen, not even close – Tito wasn’t a Division I All-American even, and the UFC had showcased Olympic-level wrestlers like Mark Coleman and Kevin Jackson before.
No, the key to Tito’s success was his size. Fighting at Middleweight – 199lbs, under the old rules – Ortiz was the first man to really implement weight-cutting as part of his gameplan. He’d weigh in at the limit of 199lbs but then re-hydrate as far up as 220lbs, giving him a monstrous size advantage and allowing him to bully smaller foes like Bohlander.
Today of course weight cutting is commonplace, even on the amateur circuit, but before Tito, you fought at the weight you walked at.
Notoriety
Today it’s common to see pro-wrestling style antics inside the UFC – whether it’s the likes of Conor McGregor and Michael Bisping cutting charismatic promos, or Tom Lawlor’s outlandish entrances, or fighters such as Anderson Silva and Nick Diaz taunting their opponents in the cage.
Back in the late 90s though, antics like that were few and far between. So when Ortiz arrived with his bleach blond hair and shorts decorated with flames and adverts for pornographic websites, he was immediately a breath of fresh air and received attention like few other fighters.
The first sign that Ortiz could be a star villain for the UFC came after the Mezger fight when he pulled on a porno-sponsored t-shirt that read ‘Gay Mezger is my bitch’ and flipped off Mezger’s corner. Ken Shamrock – then a fully-entrenched member of the WWF roster – was in Mezger’s corner that night and went ballistic.
It was the beginning of one of the biggest feuds in MMA history.
Ken would not be the first Shamrock that Tito fought, though – first he faced Ken’s adopted brother Frank for the UFC Middleweight title. According to Shamrock, Tito had around a weight advantage of 35lbs in the cage that night.
Early on, the fight looked like it was going Ortiz’s way. The round system of three – or five – five-minute rounds had been implemented by then and Tito took the first three on the scorecards by taking the smaller Shamrock down and working him over from the top, even rubbing and gouging at his cuts.
By the fourth round though, Ortiz was exhausted and Shamrock was able to reverse him, then finish him off with strikes when he had nothing left in the tank. Post-fight Shamrock announced his retirement, which left the title vacant. While Tito had lost the fight, it seemed clear that he was destined to hold the title regardless.
Champion
Seven months after the Shamrock fight, Ortiz faced off with Brazilian Vale Tudo fighter Wanderlei Silva for the vacant title at UFC 25 in Japan. Silva didn’t quite have a fearsome reputation at that point but was still seen as a top-level fighter.
Ortiz was able to use his wrestling, size and strength to ground the striker and work him over for a unanimous decision. It was this fight that UFC fans – myself included – always pointed to when the more PRIDE-biased fans would try to claim that their promotion had the best 205lbers in the sport.
A title defence against the much smaller Japanese fighter Yuki Kondo followed, but soon after that, the UFC was purchased by new owners. And here’s where Tito gains massive credibility as one of the most important figures in MMA history.
At the time, Ortiz’s manager was none other than Dana White, who was essentially an unknown. When White heard that the UFC’s owners were looking to sell, he contacted childhood friends Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, who ran Las Vegas’s Station Casinos.
The brothers purchased the UFC under the Zuffa banner and installed White as the promotion’s new president. If Dana hadn’t been managing Tito and Tito hadn’t gained stardom as the UFC’s top fighter, would Zuffa have ever stepped in to rescue the promotion? I think it’s doubtful.
Today’s history books like to claim that Tito’s feud with Dana began there, as White was forced to resign as Tito’s manager due to his new position. Personally, though I don’t buy that – at that time Tito was the UFC’s poster-boy, their biggest star, and Zuffa wanted to keep it that way.
One shred of evidence for this? Look at MMA’s weight classes. They’re well-established today, but back in 2001 when what we now know as the ‘Unified Rules’ were put together, one of the changes came in Ortiz’s division.
Middleweight, as it was once known, became Light-Heavyweight, and more importantly, the upper limit was changed from 199lbs to 205lbs. Some would point to the fact that 199lbs was too close to the new Middleweight limit of 185lbs, but the long-standing rumour is that Ortiz had told Dana and the Fertittas that 205lbs was easier for him to make, and so they convinced the rule-makers to go with that instead.
2001 was Tito’s year in the UFC. With the new owners backing him and sinking plenty of cash into the promotion, Ortiz was pushed as the biggest star in the game. He was the one who was given personalised Limp Bizkit entrances, pyro, the works.
And he lived up to his side of the bargain, taking out Evan Tanner, Elvis Sinosic and Vladimir Matyushenko to take his number of title defences up to four. A knee injury would derail him going into 2002, but his biggest fight was firmly on the horizon.
Vendetta
By mid-2002, the UFC was losing money by the bucketload and the Fertitta brothers were close to breaking point. They decided to go with one last roll of the dice and managed to sign Ken Shamrock – fresh from a return to MMA in PRIDE – to fight Ortiz, re-igniting the feud that had begun back in 1999.
The match was booked for November’s UFC 40, a show that was titled ‘Vendetta’ and for good reason. And right away it looked like the Fertittas’ gamble was going to pay off. The feud garnered mainstream attention that was unheard of for the UFC at that point, with segments appearing on ESPN, USA Today, and Fox Sports’, ‘Best Damn Sports Show Period’.
Fans today like to poke fun at Ortiz’s mic work, but back in 2002 – as the villainous, arrogant villain to Shamrock’s virtuous MMA legend with a short fuse – he was perfect.
Despite Shamrock’s fearsome reputation, it was Ortiz who came out on top of the pivotal contest. This time he displayed improved kickboxing, battering Shamrock standing before using his trademark takedowns and ground-and-pound. After the third round ended, Ken was unable to continue.
The show drew 150k buys, a figure way above the numbers that the previous Zuffa-promoted UFC shows had garnered. It proved to the Fertittas that the UFC was a viable commodity, and it also proved that Tito Ortiz was the biggest draw in the sport.
It also led to another pioneering action from the Huntington Beach Bad Boy.
Money talks
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.
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.
Breaking records
After teasing a move to the burgeoning – and eventually unsuccessful – WFA promotion, as well as considering starting his own promotion with casino moguls the Maloof brothers, Ortiz was brought back into the fold in late 2005 after almost a year in the wilderness.
Although he didn’t actually do anything, this period was important for Ortiz because by constantly talking about signing elsewhere or starting his own promotion, Tito made sure that his name was always in the headlines as the TUF boom grew.
It’s the sort of move that Conor McGregor makes today in order to stay relevant when he’s not fighting.
Upon his return, Ortiz was able to squeak out a split decision over TUF Champion Forrest Griffin, in a fight that I scored for Tito but many fans didn’t. It was probably the last time we saw Tito Ortiz at his peak, as he followed it with two largely pointless wins over a totally shot Ken Shamrock, the second of which set a TV rating’s record for the UFC on Spike at the time.
Next up the UFC booked a rematch between Tito and Chuck, this time for Liddell’s Light-Heavyweight title. Tito promised that this time there was no lingering friendship and so things would be different.
The show – UFC 66 – drew over a million buys, a UFC record, and proved that Ortiz was still one of the UFC’s top stars. He’d already broken the buyrate record once in 2006 with UFC 61’s rematch with Ken Shamrock, built by a season of TUF with the two as coaches.
UFC 66’s record wouldn’t be broken for another three years until 2009’s Lesnar-driven UFC 100. Ortiz – and Liddell – managed to draw more than all of the UFC’s other big stars, despite the sport growing immeasurably in the years that followed.
It tells you a lot about the star power of Tito and was – along with the Shamrock series – the biggest example to younger fighters that the way to draw money was to create pro-wrestling-esque feuds, something that resonates hugely today.
Tito didn’t win the fight, though – the story remained the same with Liddell stopping the takedowns and eventually knocking him out.
The later years
2007 and 2008 were less pivotal years for Ortiz.
2007 saw him take a draw against up-and-comer Rashad Evans, a decent performance that saw him dominate the smaller Rashad early on before slowing down a lot in the later rounds. A fence grab actually cost Ortiz the match as he’d taken the first two rounds on the scorecards, but it wasn’t a vintage Tito performance.
Also read: Fall from Grace: Rashad Evans
2008 saw a fight with Lyoto Machida in the last one on Tito’s contract, and again – due to the bad blood with Dana, as well as Ortiz wanting more money – he was planning to head into free agency afterwards. Apparently, Dana even paid Lyoto extra money to beat Ortiz, which he was able to do despite a late scare with a triangle choke attempt from the former Champion.
Tito was once again outside the UFC, but this time he wasn’t quite as relevant, as his myriad of injuries, out-of-date fighting style, and the fact that the UFC now had bigger stars like Georges St-Pierre and Brock Lesnar, meant that he wasn’t the pivotal figure he once was.
By 2009 though, after the UFC failed to acquire Fedor Emelianenko when they announced a press conference to detail the takeover of the Affliction promotion, who was the big fighter they announced that they’d signed?
Tito Ortiz of course.
This time he’d apparently buried the hatchet with Dana White and somehow became a consummate company man. In terms of his fighting, it was realistically the beginning of the end of his career – one upset win over Ryan Bader was wedged in between a series of losses – five in total – and in 2012, three years after re-signing at the press conference, Ortiz announced his retirement.
He was immediately inducted into the UFC’s Hall of Fame on the same weekend.
The fact that even after all the feuding, Ortiz was able to bury the hatchet with Dana and be embraced back into the Zuffa fold is telling of both his acumen as a businessman and also of the fact that despite it all, he’s quite a likeable guy.
After all, the hatchet has never been buried between Zuffa and Tito’s old foe Frank Shamrock, and even when Randy Couture returned to the fold after all of the lawsuit issues in 2008, things were never the same and by 2012 he was back on the outs.
Even a largely pointless return to action under the Bellator banner in 2013 didn’t really sour Zuffa on Ortiz all that much. Sure, there were the odd barbs but for the most part, he was no longer persona non grata.
After four fights in Bellator – three wins and a loss to prospect Liam McGeary – Ortiz retired again, this time apparently for good.
The ultimate pioneer?
In many ways, Tito Ortiz is the ultimate pioneer when it comes to the way he changed the modern-day UFC.
As the first fighter to really use weight-cutting to his advantage, the ramifications of Ortiz coming in heavier than his early opponents, arguably lead to the situation we have today when practically every fighter cuts at least 10lbs to get into their chosen weight class. Good or bad in the long run, it’s important.
While his fighting style quickly became dated once he was faced with fighters closer to his size who were able to stop his takedown and expose his weaker kickboxing game, it was the out-of-the-cage actions of the Huntington Beach Bad Boy that made him important.
He was the first fighter to really develop feuds – first with the Lion’s Den and Ken Shamrock, then with Chuck Liddell, and finally with Dana White and Zuffa, which meant any fighter who faced him was almost Dana’s boy by proxy – that piqued the interest of the fans like nothing before.
Those feuds drew buy rates for the UFC that were largely unmatched during the time period he fought, making him by far the most recognisable star in the company alongside Liddell. Due to the work of Ortiz in building them, the blueprint was set for future feuds like Lesnar/Mir, Rampage/Evans and Sonnen/Silva that went on to draw equally huge amounts of money.
Furthermore, Ortiz was the first man to really challenge the UFC’s pay scale, and he did it by simply walking away when he was able to until the UFC needed him more than he needed them. While Randy Couture attempted to take the UFC to court, Tito just bided his time and was always brought back to the fold.
As far as I’m aware, he always got the contract that he wanted, too. He never came back with his tail between his legs like Randy did. Probably because for all of his faults, Ortiz always came off as someone who would deal with things face-to-face.
I get the feeling that it’s probably that side of Tito that allowed him to go from feuding with Dana to being back in Zuffa’s good books, time and time again.
In the end then, while Ortiz’s fighting style became out of date very quickly, he fought past his prime for years and was arguably somewhat overrated inside the cage, there are few fighters that can be looked on as more important for the development of the modern MMA scene.
That’s a pioneer if ever there was one.
Until next time....
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