This Is Gonna Hurt (11 page)

There were just too many distractions in Los Angeles and I really didn't feel like going up to Big Bear, so I packed all my stuff and moved to Las Vegas to train. While I was in Vegas, I decided to switch trainers. My longtime trainer wasn't too happy with my decision, but I hooked up with another trainer, Master Toddy, and we worked well together.

Côté definitely put up a tougher fight than I expected. In the first round he hit me with a solid right that knocked me to my knees. Trading punches with him was going to be tougher than I thought. I stepped up the elbow and forearm smashes. It was more of the same in the second round—a lot of punches. By the third round I was definitely trying to ground and pound rather than beat him with a submission. But he hung in there.

It was a real tough fight. I had to hand it to Côté—he put up quite a battle. But I felt I had beaten him. I ended up winning a unanimous decision against him. It was not my best fight, but it was a win. I celebrated for a while like I usually did after a fight, but then there were some realities I had to deal with.

Now, all of a sudden, I had no trainer, my personal life was a mess, and I was right in the middle of trying to renegotiate a new contract with the UFC without a manager.

Life had been better.

T
he last fight on my contract with the UFC was coming up soon. They were after me to re-sign and I refused.

I was not about to renegotiate at that time, because they were offering me shit—worse than my previous contract. They knew as well as I did that if I won the last fight on my contract, I would be holding all the cards. They also knew how important I was to the growth of the UFC.

I had been a champion for four years, and the UFC pushed me out in front and used me as the poster boy for the organization. I had the right image, the charisma, all the things they wanted to see in one of their fighters. I was articulate. I spoke my mind. I did promotion. I did charity work. I was the star they wanted to help push their sport. And now they were giving me shit.

After the Côté fight, I was on my own. I had no trainer. I had pretty much had it with my management. Kristin and I were barely speaking. So I moved to Huntington Beach and got an apartment with a friend of mine. And then the UFC announced that my last fight on my current contract would be with Vitor Belfort.

Belfort was a good fighter. He was a former lightweight champion. And as it always seemed to be, I needed the money from this fight very badly. My contract at the time indicated that I would get fifty percent of my purse if I showed up and fifty percent if I won the match. So if I lost the Belfort fight, I stood to lose eighty grand.

Needless to say, I was not going to lose that fight.

The only problem was that three months before the fight I had not done any training and still didn't have a trainer. At the suggestion of one of my friends, I called up a trainer named Saul Soliz and asked him if he would step in and train me. He said he would love to do it.

We went up to Big Bear about six weeks before the fight. Big Bear was a miserable place to train at that time of year. There was a major snowfall, and everything was frozen. We had to drive all over the place just to find a place for me to run. It was hell.

But by the end of those six weeks I felt I was ready for Belfort.

The fight was held on February 6, 2005. It was called UFC 51: Super Saturday. I had come into the arena carrying both the American and Mexican flags to honor my mixed-race heritage. The crowd was going crazy. My recent losses had clearly not diminished my support among the fans.

All I can say is that Belfort and I had a real good scramble.

I started the match by taking him down. Then we went back and forth for a long time. At one point he hit me with a left hook and broke my nose. I scrambled out and took him down. I was on top of him and there was blood streaming out of my nose and all over him.

I was thinking,
Holy shit! I'd better keep hitting him before the referee stops this thing.
So I kept punching him and then the round was finally over. In the corner after the first round my cut man was working on me, wiping the blood off and checking on the break. He said it wasn't that bad. I went out and dominated the second round. In the third round I finally gassed him out. He had nothing left, and I ended up winning a three-round split decision.

After the fight ended I put on my now customary victory shirt. But this one was different. Rather than saying something derogatory about the fighter I had just beaten, it read: “Bring Home Our Troops!” Then I picked up the flags I had come into the arena with and ran to the top of the balcony, waving the flags over my head as the crowd went nuts.

I don't remember making a conscious effort to begin to clean up my image. I'd like to think that what I did that night was just my way of supporting the troops. But however people took it, they sure noticed.

I was on top, and everything was in my hands now. Unfortunately the UFC did not get the message.

After that fight, we got down to some serious contract negotiations. I felt that I could negotiate my own contract, so I went in without anybody representing me. I really didn't need any help because I knew exactly what I wanted. But as it turned out, the UFC and Dana White were very mean and disrespectful toward me.

They took me off the UFC website completely. They blurred out anything on the website or advertisements that mentioned Punishment. I was taken out of all their commercials. It seemed as if their answer to my asking for a fair contract was to pretty much wipe me out of UFC history. Then things got really nasty.

Dana turned into a complete and utter asshole.

He would say in interviews, “I made Tito Ortiz and I'll make him forgotten.” The whole situation seemed to go from bad to worse. Dana was playing hardball, but Lorenzo Fertitta made it clear that the UFC did not want to lose me. And so the negotiations dragged on, not really getting anywhere.

And I was faced with fighting a billion-dollar company.

Word had traveled fast that my contract with the UFC was up, and I began getting offers from competing organizations. Pride out of Japan made an offer for a six-fight deal, but it was essentially the same money I was being offered by the UFC. Besides, the competition was a lot stiffer with Pride and there was a good chance that I would be fighting out of my weight division, so I turned it down.

The WFA (Wrestling Federation of America) was offering me what I wanted. But if I was going to basically help build the company from the ground up, I wanted a piece of the company, which they were not willing to give me.

Finally I decided that it was time to take the biggest chance of my career—I forced the UFC's hand. I said, “Okay, I'll sit out and we'll see how you guys do without me.”

My walking away from the UFC was big news. The press was all over it. The fans seemed to like the idea of my going up against the UFC, and that made me feel kind of good.

But I was smart enough to realize that if I sat out and did absolutely nothing, people would begin to forget about me. That happened a lot to fighters—once they stopped fighting, they were forgotten. That wasn't going to happen to me. I hired a publicist and began to do other things to keep my name out there.

For the next year I was not involved in mixed martial arts with the UFC or any other fighting organization. But that did not mean I wasn't busy. I did some talk shows and some other things for the publicity. I did a series of fighting technique seminars that were pretty much paying the bills at that point.

In May 2005, I sort of got back into the fighting game when I signed an agreement to appear with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. But not as a fighter—at least, not directly.

On May 15, 2005, under the name Hard Justice Ortiz, I served as a special guest referee in the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) World Heavyweight Championship between Jeff Jarrett and A. J. Styles. At one point in the match, Jarrett shoved me and I knocked him out, which allowed Styles to win the fight. I refereed a second match in October.

I had a chance to experience that whole side of professional wrestling as entertainment. It was fun and it kept me in front of the camera, which was the important thing…because nobody was telling me that they wanted me to fight again.

One night I had been watching a UFC event on TV and was feeling left out. All of a sudden, it was like I didn't exist. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I already had too much to drink, but now I was ready to go out and party. I shouldn't have been drinking and driving, but I had crazy thoughts in my head—I guess you could call them suicidal.

I was thinking about how cool it would be if I just crashed.

I hit the center divider. My car was launched into space and tore into a light pole on the other side of the street. The light pole went down, but the car kept going. It hit a wall and then it slid into a pine tree. The impact of the crash compressed the entire car on my legs. Luckily I had friends following behind me in another car, and they called for help.

There were chunks of my car everywhere, and blood was pumping out of me. The ambulance and the fire department showed up. It took forty-five minutes using the Jaws of Life to pry me out of the car. They took me to the hospital. Fortunately, it all looked a lot worse than it turned out to be.

I had some cuts and bruises, but I guess I just got lucky. I didn't realize how lucky until later in the evening when I went back out to the wreckage to get some of my belongings out of the car. The tow truck driver was there. He said, “You don't know how lucky you are. Most of the time when I come to an accident this bad, the driver is usually dead.”

When the tow truck driver told me that, I was stunned. I looked upon that accident as a sign.

I knew I had reached a point where I was being very careless with my life and that I really didn't give a shit anymore.

A friend of mine drove me back to my home. Kristin was at the door when I showed up and she said, “Oh shit, you were fighting!” I told her that I totaled my car and almost died. Then I broke down and started crying uncontrollably. A lot of shit in my life came pouring out of me. That night Kristin and I talked about a lot of stuff. We both knew that our relationship had been over for a long time. Kristin wasn't happy. I sure as hell wasn't happy. I was an emotional wreck. All the guilt and sneaking around and lying had ground me down.

Kristin deserved a whole lot more than what I was giving her, and that became crystal clear the more we talked. I only had one thing to say to Kristin that made any sense.

I told her I wanted to start my life all over again.

I
n the summer of 2005, Dana White said in an interview that as long as he was president, Tito Ortiz would never fight in the UFC again. But apparently there were other people interested in me.

My manager, pretty much in name only, stepped in and was going back and forth with the UFC. I was not surprised that Jim Gallow's negotiations with Dana were not going anywhere. I might as well have been negotiating myself, which, in a sense, I was.

In the meantime, the WFA still wanted to sign me. But then it turned out that the UFC was negotiating an
Ultimate Fighter
series with Spike TV, and a lot of people were telling the executives at Spike TV that they ought to be signing me because I would be great on television.

Word got back to Dana White and the UFC and it put a lot of pressure on them. I'm not going to lie to you and say I wasn't having a good time watching Dana and the UFC squirm. They wanted me signed, and it really seemed like they were losing the public relations war. At that point, I was seriously thinking about signing with the WFA and screwing Dana White and the UFC.

Sure, I wanted more money, but the big thing I was pushing for on my new contract was the very thing I had to give up on my last contract, which was owning my own image. I wanted a piece of whatever they were making off my name and likeness.

The whole time I had been away, support from fans and people whose opinion meant something to the UFC had been growing. They finally looked at the bottom line and at the number of people who supported me and realized that they couldn't let me go.

Especially to a competing organization.

So they grudgingly signed me to a three-fight deal. I got an extra $50,000 per fight and a bigger piece of the pay-per-view income. I got a percentage of my own image and I was given the
Ultimate Fighter
series season-three coaching position. I had finally gotten my way on the two most important deal points of the contract—more money and the rights to my likeness. Negotiating for a role in the
Ultimate Fighter
show was gravy, and I saw it as a great way to get the word out on the sport. The first two seasons had done real well and with the backing of Spike TV, it was a given that the third season would be a smash—and I wanted in.

So part of my new deal was to be one of the
Ultimate Fighter
trainers. I asked Dana if we could get Ken Shamrock to be the other trainer. I thought Shamrock would be good on a competitive level, and I felt that he and I should fight at the conclusion of the season. It would be a good build for the show because I knew Ken was a good fighter and that he could talk smack.

Ken and I met before the beginning of the season. It was a bit tense. We had never really gotten along and we had talked a lot of smack. So putting us together in this type of situation could be asking for trouble. But I went up to him at the beginning of the season and said, “You know, we're here for a job and to see who's the best coach. I'm going to respect your space as long as you respect mine.” He agreed. During the entire run of the show, I never said anything to him or so much as looked at him wrong.

We shot thirteen episodes in six weeks. A lot of people thought I was acting and playing to the camera, but that wasn't the case at all. I just used my skills as a coach and a trainer. Every guy who I picked for my team was a guy that I wanted. I don't think a lot of guys wanted to be on Shamrock's team; they clearly wanted to be on mine. Once we started training, I was beginning to think that Shamrock didn't really know what he was doing. I put my guys through all-around testing, while Ken just tested to see who was the strongest guy.

Once the actual matches began, I started talking a little bit of smack. My team ended up winning nine of the twelve matches and after each win I would turn to him and say, “How does that feel? You must be doing something wrong.” I know that got under his skin. The big issue during the filming of the series was that they wanted me to talk more shit to Shamrock, but I wouldn't. For me this was a great learning experience, and talking a lot of smack was not what this was about.

The
Ultimate Fighter
series did a lot for me. People were used to seeing the Bad Boy in the Octagon. They hadn't had a chance to see me as a coach and more of a person.

My first fight after completing the
Ultimate Fighter
series was to be against a previous
Ultimate Fighter
series winner, Forrest Griffin. Griffin was a solid fighter and a good guy. He was aggressive and had nothing to lose. I had everything to lose, so I knew this was going to be a tough first fight. I knew he would come out swinging for the fences.

I went up to Big Bear to train. But the truth was, I knew I shouldn't have been fighting.

I was having a lot of physical problems. I still had issues with that bulging disk in my back and a torn ACL, I still had some problems from the back injuries from when I fought Couture, and I also had a knee that was giving me problems.

There was the usual pre-fight hype and a bit of trash talking. A lot of people did not see this as a very competitive fight, and Dana White was doing his best to drum up interest, saying things like “Forrest Griffin is a better fighter than Tito Ortiz ever was” and stuff like that. But I didn't hold anything personal against Forrest. I was convinced that I was going to go out and beat his ass.

I wasn't a hundred percent. I was only training a couple of days a week and I was in no shape at all. But I did spend a lot of time thinking about what the T-shirt for this fight should say. I finally realized that this wasn't about Forrest or the fight; this was about me. Finally I came up with something.

The fight with Forrest Griffin was called UFC 59: Reality Check. Because of physical problems, the fight was close. In the first round, I just dominated. I took him down and punished the shit out of him. But I blew my wad in the first round and so, in the second round, I was a little tired. In the third round I was totally gassed until the last minute and a half. Then I got a takedown and won the round and the match.

I put on the shirt. A lot of people were expecting a putdown of Forrest. But what they got instead was: “With Great Sacrifice Comes Great Rewards.” It was a T-shirt for me, and I felt that I deserved it.

My second fight with Ken Shamrock was being billed as a grudge match of sorts. I don't know why. I was always talking smack about the guy, but I did not really hate him or anything. I guess it was just the normal buildup to a fight in order to put people in the seats.

I fought Shamrock on July 8, 2006. It was billed as UFC 61: Bitter Rivals. It really wasn't much of a fight unless you were rooting for me.

I got him down and elbowed him in the face a bunch of times, and the referee stopped it at 1:23 of the first round. Shamrock complained about the stoppage after the fight. All I could say was, “Just look at the tape of the fight.” The tape showed that he had been knocked unconscious.

My T-shirt that night was quite simply a statement of fact: “If You Fight Tito Ortiz You Lose!”

But he still continued to complain about how he had been robbed. I told him, “If you didn't think I kicked your ass, we can do it again.” The third fight between us, Ortiz vs Shamrock 3: The Final Chapter, was held on September 10, 2006. It was on Spike TV, and we had something like ten million viewers.

There was the usual hype and trash talking. I liked Ken Shamrock even less now. A lot of what passes for trash talking is pretty humorous sometimes, but I can honestly say that by the time we got around to that third fight, I was really pissed off at him.

Ken came out and tried to take me down. I muscled him into the cage. He tried for my leg and missed. That's when I got him up against the cage and just started punching him. I stopped him at 2:45 of the first round. And yes, I knocked him unconscious.

Shamrock and I have had our words over the years, and to this day we're not the best of friends. But we embraced after that fight and I think, to a degree, we buried the hatchet.

Although I did manage to get in one final shot with the T-shirt I wore that night: “Punishing Him Into Retirement.”

The third fight with Shamrock marked the end of my current contract with the UFC. By then I did not have management or an attorney. Dana was being all nice to me now and he reminded me that I was making good money. I had to agree.

I was back on the hot seat again.

I told Dana, “Look, I'm going to trust you completely. Give me the contract and I'll sign it and send it back to you.” It must have killed Dana to give me the contract that he did. He gave me a $200,000 signing bonus and raised my fee to a full million dollars a fight.

Given my relationship with Dana and the bad blood that was growing between us, a lot of people thought I was crazy to take his offer. It was kind of a ballsy move. But I knew that at the end of the day, business is business and that Dana White and the UFC had a lot to lose if they screwed me over on this contract.

I signed the agreement and was back in business with the UFC.