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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief Tito Ortiz, after leaving the UFC following his unanimous decision loss to Lyoto Machida at UFC 84, has had an interesting remainder of the year, as he's claimed to be close to new contracts with both the now defunct EliteXC and Affliction. At a press conference Wednesday, he took another step with Affliction, as he announced that he would be joining the broadcast booth for Affliction's Day of Reckoning pay-per-view event that will be headlined by the heavyweight contest between Andrei Arlovski and Fedor Emelianenko.
Ortiz joins Sean Wheelock and Jimmy Smith for the broadcast team. Wheelock and Smith are the regular tandem for M-1's events on HDNet. FiveOuncesOfPain.com quoted Ortiz clarifying his status with his Zuffa contract, and he said "Zuffa has right of first refusal cause with my contract...That expires during the summer. I will not sign any fighting contract until that is up."
So the question of where Tito will fight next is still unresolved, but it's looking more and more like Affliction will end up the place for him.
Penick's Analysis: The broadcast team for Day of Reckoning is looking to be a big improvement over the Jay Glazer run booth back at July's Banned event. Ortiz helps give a big name in the booth, while Wheelock and Smith have been solid on HDNet. The Ortiz contract circus will continue, however, and who knows when we'll have anything close to a resolution for that.
[Ortiz Photo by Wade Keller (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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