Tito Ortiz: Defining a Legacy

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Set for September 1999, the bout remains a classic, with Ortiz weighing 20 pounds more than Shamrock at fight time and steamrolling into his guard in an attempt to overwhelm him. In a masterpiece of strategy, Shamrock figured the fight would go one of two ways, meaning he would have to be prepared for both.

“I knew it would either go 20 seconds or 20 minutes,” Shamrock told me in a 2004 interview. “I’d either get him quick or he’d wear down over a long fight.”

That is exactly what transpired, as Ortiz, battling through a five-round bout, slowed incrementally, with Shamrock letting him expend himself, spending much of the fight working an active guard from the bottom. In the final minute of the fourth round, Shamrock, seizing an opening in a scramble, attacked, delivering a finishing salvo as Ortiz gassed out.

Ortiz took some lessons from that fight, and the guy that emerged was one heavily reliant on conditioning. He also took the innovative step of working with Shamrock to learn new approaches to conditioning and training, something that is fairly in vogue today with the constant flux of fighters, camps and trainers but seemed relatively radical at the time. As a result, Ortiz would never be out-conditioned again. He would lose twice to Chuck Liddell and various decisions to other fighters, but his gas tank would never hit empty the way it did against Shamrock. Injuries dogged him later in his career, along with vastly improved competition, but he learned his lesson well after the Shamrock fight.

Liddell: The Iceman Cometh

No Ortiz retrospective can omit the Liddell factor. While Ortiz plowed through five title defenses in his reign from April 2000 to November 2002, his former training partner was facing superior competition. The problem with “The Iceman” was twofold: he had given Ortiz fits in training and was not as readily marketable, until a string of impressive knockouts scuttled that line of thinking.

When the two finally met -- after Ortiz had been upset by Randy Couture, who had also beaten Liddell -- the showdown provided the overdue closure the rivalry so desperately needed. After a tentative opening round in which Ortiz missed a couple nowhere-near-successful takedown attempts, Liddell buzzed him as the stanza ended.

A second-round barrage finished Ortiz for good, and the chapter was closed, for the time being.

Naturally, a great promotional storyline is revamped when circumstances are appropriate, and after five wins in a row, Ortiz got a second crack at Liddell at UFC 66 in December 2006. Essentially a replay of the first bout, Ortiz scored a fleeting takedown, only to see Liddell spring up immediately and resume punishing him.

Styles make fights, and Liddell’s style was tailor-made to beat Ortiz. In a way, it was good the third bout, scheduled for June 2010, was never made because Liddell had slipped considerably since 2006. Rich Franklin stepped in for Ortiz and knocked out Liddell, ending the career of “The Iceman.” No result in a third Liddell-Ortiz bout would have better reflected the outcomes of their two previous encounters.

Feud with Dana White

While fighters and the UFC’s head honcho have had -- and will always have -- public disputes, nobody’s can compare to the ongoing saga of that between Ortiz and UFC President Dana White. It is a decade-long saga of squabbles and at times harsh words, often aired through the media and, of late, via Twitter.

One comment from either guy can launch an entire news cycle in the mixed martial arts world and its blogosphere, mediums for which both seem tailor-made. Got a boring day in the MMA news world? Check the Twitter accounts of White and Ortiz. Honest opinions abound, and when they are vamping on each other -- the latest spat involved White telling Ortiz to put his girlfriend, Jenna Jameson, on a leash -- it is much more entertaining than recycling canned news quotes from a public relations agent’s press release on upcoming fights. Quick to adapt to social media as an outlet, one can only imagine how awesome Ortiz’s Twitter feed would have been in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It is equal parts comedy and entertainment, with two strong personalities in constant conflict. Keenly aware of the UFC’s need to retain him when its roster of stars was slim, Ortiz also understood the flipside of that promotional gravitas: at some point, his fading star could readily be cashed in to help build newer marquee attractions.

In closing, Ortiz’s bout with Bader may be his final act with the UFC; the organization’s rise to prominence closely mimicked his own. In a 24-fight career, 23 of them have been in the UFC. Today’s fighters have a world of opportunity before them, and tasked with kicking ass and building a name for themselves, they can make considerable headway in a short period of time doing that. Jon Jones is a perfect example. Ortiz’s exit from the UFC, whenever it comes, will mark the end of the organization’s longest-running saga, and it will be up to debate whether or not he will end up in the promotion’s hall of fame.

From the perspective of the things he did that simply were not conceived of or done, there is no question that Ortiz was one of a kind, someone who arrived at a time and place where his personality and mojo were sorely needed. For that, fans and fighters alike should be thankful.

Jason Probst can be reached at [email protected] or twitter.com/jasonprobst.