The legacy of Tito Ortiz will include not only his long list of accomplishments in the ring, but also the mark he left on the sport from a marketing standpoint. He is one of those charismatic competitors who was instrumental in bringing the sport to new levels of popularity.
A standout high school athlete who wrestled at Golden West College (a junior college) and later at Cal State-Bakersfield, Ortiz’s first contact with MMA came as someone who was actually readying another fighter - the tremendously popular Tank Abbott - for a superfight against Vitor Belfort in UFC 13. For that card, Ortiz was listed as an alternate, and as luck would have it, someone dropped out, pressing Ortiz into action. After getting past Wes Albritton in the first round of the tournament, Ortiz was beating up Guy Mezger pretty good and had him bleeding. At that moment the referee stepped in and brought Mezger to the doctor, who examined him and let the fight continue. In effect, that official, John McCarthy, had saved Mezger from defeat. Ortiz, who had thought victory was his, was later caught in a guillotine and had to submit.
As it turns out, that was only a temporary setback.
In UFC 19, Ortiz got his revenge over Mezger, and after losing a middleweight title shot to Frank Shamrock in September 1999, he went on a roll. Ortiz grabbed the light heavyweight crown over Wanderlei Silva at UFC 25 and defended that championship no less than five times. In one of those title defenses, he beat Ken Shamrock, scoring the first of three high-profile victories over the living legend of mixed martial arts.
Randy Couture beat Ortiz to win the light heavyweight title in UFC 44, and an Ortiz comeback was derailed by a second-round KO loss to Chuck Liddell in UFC 47.
He failed again in a title try when Chuck Liddell stopped him in three rounds at UFC 66, but Ortiz helped accomplish something that in the long run, was far more significant for the UFC and entirety of mixed martial arts. That Liddell-Ortiz fight became the biggest pay-per-view event in UFC history and one of the biggest events of any kind for the year. It truly put the UFC on the sports map and the industry map, as MMA was now here to stay as a major player in the pay-per-view world.
Some people who are familiar with both boxing and MMA draw comparisons between Ortiz’s drawing power and that of Oscar De La Hoya, in that he will bring “eyeballs” and more recognition to an event, whether he wins or loses. Ironically, Ortiz purchased De La Hoya’s Big Bear training camp for $2.1 million and uses it as his own training center.
The book on Ortiz is obviously not closed yet. At age 32, he’s still got a lot of butts to put in seats, and a lot of prospective opponents to put on their butts.
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