This Is Gonna Hurt (6 page)

Around that time I got hooked on this television program called
Ultimate Fighting Championship.
It was like a combination of boxing, martial arts, and street fighting. I was amazed at what I was seeing. The stuff was crazy, and the guys who were doing it had to be nuts. Ultimate fighting, or, as it's sometimes called, mixed martial arts, was in its infancy at that point. Not a lot of people knew about it compared to mainstream boxing or professional wrestling, and a lot of people put it down as being a barbaric blood sport. All I knew was that I was fascinated.

I became even more interested the day I was watching a UFC fight on television when all of a sudden I thought,
Damn, that guy looks familiar.
It was Jerry Bohlander. All I could think of was,
I manhandled that guy in high school and now he's doing this stuff?

Not long after wrestling season, Paul Herrera got ahold of me and said there was this Ultimate Fighting guy named Tank Abbott who was looking for somebody to train with and would I be interested? Paul suggested that since I was doing so well in college, I might be interested in giving mixed martial arts a try.

I hadn't really given much thought to the idea. I was doing well in the amateur wrestling ranks. But I wasn't planning on turning pro—nor was I being asked to—so I figured as long as this guy Tank didn't hurt me, I guess I could train with him. So I went and worked with him for a few weeks.

At the time I thought Tank was a pretty cool guy. I was his wrestling partner and that was it. I didn't put on the gloves and spar with him. We just did jujitsu and wrestling, so I didn't have to worry about throwing punches and kicks. He really didn't take too well to the wrestling part of mixed martial arts. I was taking him down at will and he was getting frustrated. Wrestling was his weakness, and he took what I was trying to teach him grudgingly.

But he taught me a lot about molding the persona of a fighter. He taught me that if you talk the smack, when it comes down to fight time, it doesn't matter if you win or lose. You talk the smack to make people either love you or hate you. Once they love you or hate you, then they'll talk about you. If they stop talking about you, then you've got problems.

I had a good time with Tank and worked with him through the summer. Then I went back to school in the fall of 1996. I had another good season, and I went on to win the state title again.

Then in March of 1997, I got a call from Tank Abbott. He wanted to know if I wanted to fight on an Ultimate Fighting Championship card. At first I wasn't sure. I knew how to wrestle and to street fight a little bit. But I had never done anything with punches and elbows before.

The owner of UFC at the time was a guy named Bob Meyerwitz. The events were typically selling out ten-thousand-seat arenas, and the pay-per-view shows were typically getting a half-million buys, which was not too shabby.

The organization seemed to be coming into its own slowly but surely. But then Bob got a little arrogant and told Ted Turner that he was going to be the biggest thing in sports and that he didn't care if Turner carried the show on cable or not. Turner's response was, “Okay, we're going to stop you.” And since UFC basically didn't have any rules at the time, it became an easy target. Senator John McCain started speaking out against it and pretty soon UFC was off the bigger cable channels and regulated to basic channels. But even though I knew enough about the history of the organization to know that it was on a downhill slide by that time, I was still interested in getting involved.

They approached me to fight as an amateur, which was the only way I would even consider fighting. I was on a scholarship for wrestling. I would've lost that if I had fought for money. So as long as I could fight as an amateur, I thought I'd give it a shot.

I started training with Tank Abbott late in 1997. Training for my first fight took six months. We would practice wrestling and jujitsu, we'd do a little bit of sparring like boxers do, and we'd run and lift weights. It was hard work, but I picked up on it really quickly.

In a sense I had become Tank Jr. But as we continued to train, I found that there were some definite differences between us. I brought the hard training and the work ethic to the relationship. I worked my butt off, but Tank was always looking for the easy way out. He partied all the time. Tank's attitude was always: “I'm going to fight and kick people's asses, then go out and get drunk, and then go fight some more.” He was a fighter; he was no martial artist. His style was that of a bar brawler.

A lot of people who have followed my career think that it began with the UFC. But they're wrong. I just haven't talked about the very first fight I had until now. It wasn't really a legal, sanctioned fight, and it does not count on my professional record, but here it is…

A few weeks before my UFC debut, I accepted an offer by a promoter named Larry Landis to fight this jujitsu guy in a high school gym in Rosemead, California. I took the fight as kind of checkpoint: I figured if I was going to fight in the UFC, I'd better see what I had at that point. The fight went to a draw—the main reason being that I was not real good at submissions back then and these jujitsu guys could take a pounding really well. But I can tell you that I gave this guy one of the worst beatings that he'd ever had in his life. And after that fight, I knew I was ready.

The first time I fought in an Ultimate Fighting Championship event was on May 30, 1997. The event was called UFC 13: The Ultimate Force and I was fighting for Team Tank. When I entered the arena that night, I didn't really know what to expect. There were about ten thousand screaming people in the stands, and the atmosphere of the place was just crazy. At that point, people saw UFC fights as human cockfights with no rules and no time limits. But there were rules, and each fight consisted of one fifteen-minute round.

I remember climbing into the ring and pacing back and forth in the corner of the Octagon. I was thinking,
Holy shit! I'm here! Don't make a mistake.

The guy I was fighting that night was Wes Albritton. Wes had a fifth-degree black belt in karate but no wrestling experience. The way the fight was promoted, Wes was on the striking side of the sport and I was on the grappling side of it.

The fight lasted twenty-two seconds. I remember the bell ringing and I immediately got into a clinch. I grabbed a double underhook on him, body locked him, and threw him to the ground. Then I sat on his chest and started laying in punches. I won with a technical knockout for strikes.

I was pumped. For me, it was a competition; I was competing to see who was the better man. That's how I felt about it. The experience was really cool. Since it was on television, all my friends got to see me beating somebody up and I wasn't getting in trouble for doing it. I was real pumped when we went back to the dressing room. And then I found out that I was going to have to fight again!

It turns out that one of the four guys who was supposed to move on to the next round had gotten injured. I had been named his alternate, so before I could catch my breath, they put me back in and I was fighting in the finals.

When I got back into the ring later that night, I was facing this guy named Guy Mezger. I remember walking back out and thinking,
Oh shit! Who is this guy?
Mezger was a pro. He had been fighting out of Japan for a time and he had championship credentials. I was still pumped from my first match, and my feeling going into this fight was that I was going to hit him real hard and get this thing over with.

The fight started and I was dominating him. I had him in the position to cradle and I was kneeing him in the head. Suddenly the referee stepped in and stopped it. Mezger was bleeding, but at that time, the UFC never stopped a fight for bleeding. Unfortunately, the perception of Team Tank was that we were all thug guys who talked shit and started trouble. And because I was on Team Tank, the referee automatically didn't like me much.

So he stopped the match, checked the cut, and then restarted the match. Mezger threw a punch and hit me. I stepped back and took a shot at him, but when I did that I left my neck exposed. He got a choke on me, pulled on it, and fell on his back.

I tried to pull out, but I didn't know how. I was just too inexperienced—I didn't really know how to train in a professional way. I was new to the fighting techniques and just about everything connected to the sport.

All of a sudden I couldn't breathe anymore. I tapped. The match was over. I lost.

I was so pissed off I got up and started yelling. I was so mad. I thought the way the referee handled the match was bullshit. To this day people come up to me and say that they shouldn't have stopped the match and that I should have won. They may have been right. But at that point, what did I know?

Yeah, I was disappointed. I never liked to lose at anything. But now I had a taste for the UFC. Everything about this kind of fighting excited me. I was still bummed after the fight with Mezger. But back in the dressing room Paul Herrera came up to me all excited.

“You did an awesome job,” he told me. “You showed an awesome fight! People loved that fight! Don't be bummed about anything!”

That cheered me up a little bit. But to my way of thinking, a loss was still a loss.

After the fight I went home to Kristin and we decided to go out. We went to a club called the Rhino Room down in Huntington Beach and, as always, we were waiting in line for the door guy to let us come in. All of a sudden, this big security guy comes up to me and says “You're Tito Ortiz! Come on, man! You don't have to wait in line.”

When he said that, I was kind of surprised. I had never had a problem waiting in line to get into a place. But being called out like that in front of a lot of people was something new to me.

So we went in and I was thinking that it was pretty cool to be recognized. We went to the bar and I'm about to order drinks when all of a sudden I hear a loud “Hey, Tito!” from the other end of the bar. Everybody in the place turned to look at me. Then this guy comes up to me and says, “Don't worry about it; this drink's on me.” I thought,
This is rad—people recognizing me and buying me drinks. This is the attention I've always been looking for. This is cool! Right on!

All of a sudden I was fighting and people were loving me for it.

I finished my second year at Golden State College with a perfect 28–0 record. We won the state title again. But it was just like it had been in high school: I was partying and drinking and doing drugs.

Mostly pot, which I was still dealing to make money. I was still doing meth but not as much as before—sometimes every other week, sometimes once a month. Kristin and I were very into school, and you couldn't do meth and go to school. When I got into Golden West, meth was something I knew I would have to stop, so I actually quit and had withdrawal symptoms. But it was never anything really heavy. All I would do was sleep it off for a couple of days and I would be fine.

When I finished my second year at Golden West in 1996, I was looking to transfer to a four-year school for my junior year. The University of Bakersfield was looking at me. Arizona State was looking at me. Nebraska was looking at me. Nebraska was too cold. Arizona was too hot. And Bakersfield was only a couple of hours away. It was out in the middle of the desert and kind of isolated, but I would be able to wrestle.

Kristin and I discussed my going to Bakersfield. She was working, and so we decided that I would go by myself and that she would join me at the beginning of the second semester.

Well, the second semester came around and Kristin still wasn't sure about coming up. Bakersfield was okay. I had some friends up there. I was doing okay in my classes and, of course, there was wrestling. But I was missing Kristin and I was kind of lonely.

That's when I cheated on her for the first time.

The girl was a fitness chick. She trained, so we had something in common. This went on for a while. Then Kristin found out. She was pissed. All I could think of to say was it happened because she was never around. Finally she said, “I'm going to move up there with you or you're going to lose me.” I didn't want to lose her, so finally in the third semester, she joined me.

That was the first time I cheated, but I was tempted all the time. For a long time I just could not bring myself to do it. I was very persuasive and persistent in trying to convince Kristin that it would never happen again. I knew I had made a mistake.

I was continuing to make a name for myself at Bakersfield, and word of my two UFC fights was getting around. One day this guy named Saul Garcia came to one of our practices. Saul was one of those guys who had been around the business a while and claimed to know people. I know, you hear that all the time. But what did I know?

Anyway, he came up to me after practice and introduced himself. He was real encouraging. He had heard about my fights and said that I could probably still beat a lot of those UFC guys. He said if I moved back to Los Angeles to fight, he would help me out. He was basically offering to manage me.

I was more interested in continuing my education than becoming a professional fighter. But I told him I would keep it in mind. Saul had this gym in Bakersfield, and I would go down there sometimes to work out and check out the other fighters.

I would also occasionally go back to Huntington Beach to party or hang out. And on one of those occasions I landed in deep shit.

I had gone to a house party in Huntington Beach with a few of my friends. Things started getting rowdy, and at one point one of my friends got hit in the face with a beer bottle by some skinhead guy. I stepped in the middle of it to defend my friend, and the skinhead tried to take me down. I got him in a choke hold while three of his friends were trying to hit me in the head with beer bottles. I kept choking the guy until he was pretty much out.

Finally, I let him go and he was unconscious. I stomped him a couple of times and then I turned around and everybody was yelling at me to leave, so I took off out the door. Then somebody called the cops. I was hiding in a bush near the house and I thought I was going to get away with it. But then a police helicopter spotted me and the cops chased me down. This one cop came up to me with his gun drawn and yelled at me to come out. It turned out that the cop with the gun was an old friend of mine named Brian Rainwater.

Friend or not, I was still taken to jail and charged with assault with severe bodily harm. I agreed to a plea bargain of guilty for some community service and a few days' jail time. But I was right in the middle of training and I didn't think I could take the time out to deal with this stuff. So I chose to just ignore it. That's when the charge went to warrant. Suddenly I needed a lawyer and I didn't have any money.

So I turned to Tank Abbott for help. He and I weren't getting along, but I couldn't think of anyone else to ask.

I called Tank up and asked him if he could loan me $1,500 for an attorney, and he said no problem—he would help me out. Well, a week went by and the attorney I hired called me and said he needed the money. So I called Tank and asked him if it was possible for him to get me the money right away. I think he must have been drunk when I called him because he said, “I ain't your fucking dad! I'm not going to take care of you! This ain't no charity!”

I was shocked. I said, “But you said you were going to help me out.”

He said, “Fuck that!”

I was screwed.

Kristin moved up, and things were going along fine for a while. But the wrestling coach and I were not seeing eye to eye. He was an army brat, a real hard-ass. I could put up with a lot of that because that kind of stuff kind of goes hand in hand with wrestling. But what I could not deal with was that he was very disrespectful to the kids.

David Ochoa, a longtime friend of mine, was also up in Bakersfield and on the wrestling team. David had a real bad stuttering problem, and still does to this day. Coach used to make fun of him. He constantly asked David questions just to make him stutter so everybody would laugh at him. I couldn't believe he was treating a student like that. If there was a purpose in humiliating him, I couldn't see it.

Coach was always playing favorites. He loved the guys who won. The guys who lost, he treated like shit.

I remember wrestling at the Midlands Championships during the third semester. It was not one of my better days. I went 3–2 in that tournament and did not place.

After the tournament, we were in a restaurant and one of our wrestlers who had won the tournament ordered a steak. That sounded good, so I ordered a steak too. Well, the food came and all of a sudden the coach was in my face, saying, “What the fuck are you eating a steak for?”

I said, “Excuse me?”

He kept at me. “What the fuck are you eating a steak for? You didn't place in the tournament.”

I said, “I was hungry and a steak is what sounded good to me.”

He said I didn't deserve a fucking steak. Now I was real pissed.

I got up, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “This is fucking wrong and you can have your fucking steak!” I got up, went to the bar, and ate my steak in peace. I was ready to quit the team right then and there. But I stuck it out a little bit longer. Which, in looking back on what happened next, was probably a mistake.

We had just finished a tournament in Bakersfield against Arizona, and when we got back to Bakersfield, I was having trouble with my right leg. I assumed it was what they called interior compression syndrome and didn't think a whole lot of it except that it hurt. During our next training session, when it was time to run, I told the coach I was having trouble with my leg and the pain was getting worse. Coach said, “Tape it up, you're running.”

We were running up and down the gymnasium stairs that day. I got about halfway through the run and had to stop. There was just too much pain. I went to the coach and told him I couldn't run anymore.

The coach said, “Go home, you fucking pussy!”

I went back to my dorm room, and my roommate David and another friend, Raphael Davis, were there. I told them that I didn't feel good. They took one look at my legs and said they'd take me to the health center, that it didn't look good.

The people at the health center examined my legs and said, “We don't want to touch this; you're going to the emergency room.”

So I went to the emergency room and the doctor told me that if I had come in two days later, they'd be chopping my leg off. It turned out that all the muscles in my leg had atrophied because of a lack of blood circulation. The doctor gave me antibiotics and told me to stay off my feet for four weeks.

I was laid up in bed for a month and the coach didn't call once to see how I was doing. By the time I recovered, the wrestling season was over. I had been ranked second in the Pac-10 when I got injured and probably would have gone on to the Nationals. But the coach not calling was the last straw for me. I quit the team, quit school, got a U-Haul, packed my stuff, and moved back down to Huntington Beach with Kristin.

We found an apartment, and my older brother Marty helped me get a job as a clerk at Spanky's Adult Novelty Store, which was run by this cool guy named Ron Haskins. I was making fifteen dollars an hour and fifteen percent commission on anything I sold.

Working at Spanky's was nasty sometimes. I would have to chase guys out of the store who would come in to masturbate to the video and toy box covers. Girls would come in with their girlfriends and try and play with the toys. Drugged-out people would wander in and try and steal stuff. It was crazy.

Even before I started working at Spanky's, I already knew in my head that I was ready to give this fighting thing a shot. It seemed like the only thing that mattered was to keep my head straight and to dedicate myself to the sport. I figured if I gave Ultimate Fighting the same dedication I had given to high school and college wrestling, I would do pretty well.

Saul was the one who got me back into it and got my mind working. He became my first manager.

I would work at Spanky's during the day and train at night. By all rights I should have been having my first professional, paying fight in the UFC in 1998.

But that was when Tank Abbott decided to stab me in the back.

Suddenly the UFC didn't want me and it was because Tank Abbott said he would not fight in the UFC if they used me. They wouldn't book me because of Tank, and that went on well into 1998. He carried enough weight at the time to be able to get away with that shit.

He shafted me; because of what he said, I was blackballed by the UFC. Yeah, I was angry at Tank and the UFC, but I was really frustrated because I wanted to fight. So I took my first professional fight—and this time there were no excuses.

I was fighting a totally illegal fight in a warehouse in Los Angeles. Once again, it was not sanctioned. Which meant anything could happen. And it did.

I showed up for the weigh-in and found out that the guy I was supposed to fight had dropped out of the match. I went to the promoter and told him that I really wanted to fight. The promoter said, “Well, I have this guy, Eugene Jackson.”

I said “Cool. How much money will I get?” The promoter offered me $200, and I told him I'd do it.

It turned out that Eugene Jackson was no bum off the street. He was an EFC (Extreme Fighting Championship) fighter and had been some kind of Hawaiian champion. The fight lasted all of eight minutes and ended up being a draw because this was not a sanctioned UFC fight, so there were no points awarded. But I dominated that fight. In fact, I hit the guy so hard that I almost broke my hand on his face. Once again I proved to myself that I was ready for the UFC.

But thanks to Tank Abbott, the UFC still would not give me a shot. Every time I talked to Saul, he told me the same thing: “I'm calling the UFC all the time and they're not returning my calls.” Finally, he suggested that we just go to a UFC event and present ourselves to the people in charge. He was convinced that would get us an in. I thought it was as good an idea as any and asked him where the next event was. Saul told me Brazil.

Ron Haskins, the owner of Spanky's, offered to sponsor us and pay our way to Brazil. So I made up these fighter cards, pictures of me along with my record, a list of who I had fought, and contact information. Saul and I went to Brazil and I presented myself to John Peretti, who was an official with the UFC. I went right up to him, gave him my card, and told him that I felt like I could beat a lot of the guys he had fighting that night. Peretti wasn't an easy sell. He wanted to know who and where I had fought. I told him I had fought twice on UFC 13, had beaten Wes Albritton, and even though I lost to Guy Mezger, I had given him an ass whipping.

Peretti would later tell me that I had come across as being very professional and that having a manager helped. He went back to the States and took a look at the tape of my fight with Mezger. Not long after we got back, Saul called me up and said he had gotten a call from the UFC. They had a fight for me.

Against my old high school opponent Jerry Bohlander.

When the fight with Jerry Bohlander was officially on, I was offered $7,500 for the fight. Now, for a former college kid who was used to getting by on Top Ramen, that was a huge amount of money. So I signed the contract without hesitation.