Staff Columnists
COLUMN: Tito Ortiz faces his greatest challenge yet - relevance
Feb 22, 2010 - 2:17:49 PM COLUMN: Tito Ortiz faces his greatest challenge yet - relevance

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By Steve Sutcliffe, MMATorch Columnist

You can call Tito Ortiz a gamut of negative adjectives, whether it be arrogant, disrespectful, or even egomaniacal. But no one can deny that the Huntington Beach Bad Boy is blessed (or as his critics would argue, cursed) with the gift of gab which quite simply is the ability to drum up interest in fights.

If MMA were to give out a Gene Simmons Lifetime Achievement Award for best self-promoter, Tito Ortiz would win hands down - no one is even in the same stratosphere. People paid money to see this man fight - both supporters and detractors.

But that was then and this is now. In the year and a half between Ortiz's fights at UFC 84 and UFC 106, the MMA landscape has changed as the level of competition has undeniably intensified. In most instances, fighters can no longer rely on a single skill-set to get by and instead must become true students of the game. A background in amateur wrestling is a great start, but striking skills and good BJJ training is a must in order to compete.

Which brings us back to Tito Ortiz, whose accolades in amateur wrestling are no doubt impressive. But are they truly world-class, especially when stacked against the likes of other accomplished wrestlers in the UFC such as Cain Velasquez?

People will pay money to see a competitive Tito Ortiz fight in the cage, but someone who hasn't had a victory over anyone besides Ken Shamrock is nearly four years? Well, that's a different story.

If the disappointing buy rate for UFC 106 was any indication, Tito is going to have to really tough time convincing people that he's worth yet another $45 investment. The man looked completely worn out and defeated in the third round, and decided he'd end the fight playing the part of Forrest Griffin's personal punching bag.

Listening to the post-fight interview and press conference, Ortiz did a complete 180 from his pre-fight promotional appearances in which he swore that he was finally healthy and 100 percent after years and years of back problems and other nagging injuries. More Tito being Tito. Did you expect anything less? It's hard to get emotionally invested in a fighter one way or the other when he's about as believable as Lionel Hutz.

Fortunately for Ortiz, he's got hours of television programming in the form of the next season of The Ultimate Fighter to use as a personal ad campaign. Accusations that Chuck Liddell is going through rehab is probably just an appetizer of all the shenanigans we will witness in the upcoming season. But no matter how many times Ortiz rubs you the wrong way or you wish someone would just finally shut him up, it doesn't solve his underlying credibility problem that he's past his prime, too banged up, or is just a dinosaur in a sport that is continuously evolving. But that won't stop him from telling everyone that he was so very close to submitting Lyoto Machida (good luck be damned, that was some serious skill right there, right right?) or that he's for certain this time, no wink-wink, pinkie-swear 100 percent healthy for the Liddell rematch.

Whatever the case may be, it's a testament to changing times when Ortiz's big mouth couldn't even save Mark Coleman from getting a pink slip. Perhaps that's an unfair accusation since it's likely that nothing could have saved Coleman after that performance, but if anything could, it would have been a good old fashioned exchange of smack talk with one Tito Ortiz and the inevitable grudge match on PPV.

In any event, the one MMA fighter that Ortiz should be concentrating on right now isn't Liddell or Coleman, it's the guy staring back at him in the mirror. The gift of gab got Ortiz a big-money UFC contract after posting an unimpressive 2-2-1 record in his 5 prior fights; it's now time for Ortiz to truly put his money where his mouth is and get back to winning.

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Steve Sutcliffe is about to enter his third month of Jersey Shore withdrawal and is counting down the days to the new Ultimate Fighter so he can get his reality show fix (The Bachelor is dead to him). Send encouragements to steve.w.sutcliffe@gmail.com.