This Is Gonna Hurt (9 page)

I was the one out there promoting the sport and the UFC. I wasn't like Chuck Liddell, who had two-word answers to everything. I answered every question that was put to me. I didn't shy away from the press like most of the other fighters did. I was the flag bearer for the sport, and I felt I deserved a little more money because I was working harder than anybody else. And I finally got so frustrated that I told Dana that.

His response was, “Yeah, you're the champ, but we're still not making very much money.”

I told him, “Well, when the time comes and the UFC is making some money, then I want to start making more money.”

I was still pissed, but I let it go for the time being and got back to business.

The UFC did, as well, which is why they continued to exploit my popularity. Not too long after the Tanner fight, they asked me to defend my title again. This time against a fighter named Elvis Sinosic.

So it was back up to Big Bear and a solid six weeks of training in preparation for that fight. The main reason I go there is to get away from the city. A lot of fighters tend to take things for granted when they are living their normal lives. When I train in Big Bear, I don't have any fun at all. There's nowhere to go up there and friends can't come over to visit. All I do is eat, sleep, and train.

I fought Sinosic on June 29, 2001, in a match that was billed as UFC 32: Showdown in the Meadowlands. He was a good fighter, but he was just too skinny. He hit me with a punch at one point and I was dazed for a second. Then I took him to the ground and I just pounded him out. I stopped him in less than three minutes in the first round.

More press. More media attention. More partying. And yes, occasionally, more women. It was nonstop, and I was soaking it all up like a sponge. The UFC stepped in with yet another deal in place. It went without saying that the money was real good at this point. It also went without saying that the time between fights was getting shorter and shorter. But I was a young kid who really loved to fight, so I wasn't too concerned.

My next fight was with Vladimir Matyushenko. He was a Russian Olympic wrestler. The buzz was building that this might be a tougher fight than anybody expected and that I might get outwrestled by this guy. There was this kind of Rocky vibe going on, an us-versus-them kind of thing. The fight with Matyushenko was turning into a big deal.

So I went back up to Big Bear and started training real hard. I knew I had the chops to outwrestle this guy, but I put in a little extra time with Chuck Liddell and some of the other guys I was training with.

At some point near the end of training, Kristin came up to visit me. We were still talking constantly about having a baby. Well, one thing led to another and we ended up having sex. It was just one time and then she left. I went back to training.

I went to bed early on September 10, 2001.

When I woke up the next morning I found out that the whole world had changed.

Forever.

I
was sound asleep in my bed in Big Bear, California, when the first plane hit.

One of my trainers came in and said, “Tito, get up, man! You've got to see what's happening!” It was easily about four hours before I normally got up, so I told him to leave me alone and to let me sleep. But he insisted that I get up. Finally I got up, thinking this had better be really important.

I walked into the next room where there was a television going. What I saw was the New York skyline and a building on fire. There were shots of people running in the street. Then I saw the second plane fly into the second building and explode. I was shocked and in total disbelief.

I watched the buildings crumble and people jump to their deaths. I was stunned that something like this could be happening in America.

The worst attack on American soil in modern history was unfolding before my very eyes. Not too surprisingly, my phone started ringing off the hook.

Immediately people from the UFC started calling and saying that the right thing to do would be to cancel the fight with Matyushenko, which was to take place on September 28. I said no way.

First of all I needed the money and the arena had already sold out all thirteen thousand seats. But I also felt that with all that had just happened, Americans would need this kind of fight to raise their spirits. People needed something, anything, to unite them, and I felt strongly that this fight would help people begin to get over this horrible situation and to begin the healing process.

So the fight was not canceled.

That same day, I received a telephone call from Kristin. She was pregnant.

I was excited. I was stoked. I was happy. But then all of a sudden the full impact of fatherhood hit me.
I'm going to be a dad now? Am I going to be able to do it? I mean, look at what a lousy job my dad did.
All of that stuff from the past came rushing back to me, and I was starting to second-guess myself.

Money had always been an issue for me. And making money had always been very important to me. Suddenly, with fatherhood on the way, it was even more important than ever.

I wanted to make sure that I made enough money to support my family and to support my child. I wanted to make sure that my kid didn't have to steal and grow up in motels and cars and see all the stuff I had seen at a young age. It was so hard for me growing up that I decided my kid deserved to be spoiled.

All of which meant I had to make even more money than I was making now. Which meant that at some point I would have to do other things. But for now it was all about fighting—and that meant taking care of Matyushenko.

The fight with Matyushenko was billed as UFC 33: Victory in Vegas. The entire arena was rocking. I came into the ring carrying an American flag. My entrance music that night was the song “Break Stuff” by the band Limp Bizkit. Everybody was going crazy. People were screaming “USA! USA!” I felt so great that this fight was taking place.

I dominated from the opening bell and won a unanimous five-round decision.

The next few months were all about Kristin. The pregnancy was going along well. Kristin gained sixty pounds; she had cut out the soda and the junk food and was taking a lot of vitamins. And I was there for her constantly. It was beginning to look like things might work out for Kristin and me.

But then the bad habits returned.

I met a stripper named Heather in Las Vegas.

I was in Vegas getting ready to go to Japan to help promote a Pride fighting event. I was hanging out at the strip club where she worked, and I hid my ring, of course, so she wouldn't know that I was married. We got together. I hung out with her. Then I went to Japan. Then I came back to Vegas and hung out with her some more. Heather was a very beautiful girl, and she was very interested in me.

At that point, being beautiful and interested was all it took.

I would go home for a while and then I would go back to Vegas. Before I knew it I was having a full-blown affair that ultimately ended up lasting four years. All of a sudden I was leading a double life. For all the cheating I had done, this affair was the most serious. And I was doing it while my wife, Kristin, was carrying my child.

My son Jacob was born on June 1, 2002. He was delivered by C-section. I cried the first time I saw my son in the hospital. I was the first one to hold him. It was such a joyous feeling that I can't even begin to describe my emotions at that moment. He just opened his eyes and looked at me. When they pulled him out and handed him to me, I think I said, “Oh my God, he's so beautiful” about fifty times. It was so amazing. Until you have a kid, you don't know what love really is.

After Jacob was born, I have to admit that I started getting a little paranoid. I knew that financially I had to do my job, but as a father, I was really scared. I didn't want to make mistakes. I didn't want to hurt him. I didn't want to take him places because I was afraid that something might happen to him. I wanted to protect him as much as possible. For a long time, I was crazy with fear.

Shortly after Jacob was born, I reconnected briefly with my father. We had barely spoken over the years and my feelings toward him were not good. But I didn't want to deprive him of seeing his grandson, so I invited him over to the house. It was a strange situation having him over and seeing him with my son. But it was cool and it turned out to be a rare loving moment. I don't know if it really changed anything, but it was nice to see him.

Having Jacob helped Kristin and my relationship a little bit initially. But then I began to think about why we had gotten together in the first place. I had fallen in love with Kristin because I had been insecure about myself. I had asked her to marry me because I was afraid I was going to lose her. But I felt that she had trapped me by getting pregnant because she knew I wouldn't be going anywhere. Yeah, I know how shitty that sounds, but all I can say is that it was what I was thinking at the time.

The affair with Heather was still going strong. It wasn't until the second year of being together that she found out I was married. And she didn't care. It was weird. She just didn't care at all.

I felt guilty about the affair but clearly not guilty enough to end it. It was hard to be at home. It was hard to sleep in the same bed with Kristin. I was in love with my wife, but I was making love to both Kristin and Heather. It was easy to do, but it was hard to justify. I don't know if my behavior stemmed from the fact that my dad let my mom go out and be with men, but the fact remains that I made my own choices and I had to live with them. I figured there would be consequences for my actions, but I told myself I would just pay the consequences later. I really didn't feel any grief for what I was doing.

It was at that point that I decided to see a psychiatrist for the first time. I felt it was a good idea to try to unload all the shit that was in my head. But after only a few sessions, the psychiatrist told me that there was so much stuff coming out of me that he didn't know how to deal with me. It was obvious that I needed some kind of help, but after those sessions I just put it aside and got back to business.

After the Matyushenko fight, I was considered unbeatable. Many people referred to me as the Ali of mixed martial arts. I got a real big head, and a lot of times, I was hard to be around.

That's when I decided to give acting a try. My first role was in a martial arts action movie called
Cradle 2 the Grave,
which starred the famous martial arts actor Jet Li. The reason I got into acting was because it looked easy and I wanted to try my hand at something else. As a fighter in the Octagon, I had always looked at myself as a kind of actor. I was making good money basically beating the shit out of myself. In
Cradle 2 the Grave
I played a cage fighter who fights another character who was played by Chuck Liddell.

There was not a whole lot of acting involved. Basically all we had to do was fight on cue. It was easy. When I wasn't working I would sit back and watch the other actors say their lines. I was surprised by how often they would mess up and how many chances they were given to deliver their lines perfectly.

After finishing the movie, it was time to defend my title again. This time it was the other Shamrock, Ken. Ken Shamrock is a real good fighter. I was not intimated by him, but I guess you could say I was a little bit afraid. I studied his fights closely. I thought if I could push him as hard as I possibly could during the match, he would quit.

Ken came to Ultimate Fighting after being in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and professional wrestling forever. He had been a great fighter for his time, but in the five years he had been away from mixed martial arts, our sport had evolved quite a bit in terms of style and training. I felt he was just out of step enough for me to take him.

It was time to start talking smack.

I told a lot of people in interviews that I was going to break Ken Shamrock's heart and his will. It was all part of the pre-fight hype, which was a game I was quite naturally good at playing.

And it worked, because on November 22, 2002, when I fought Ken Shamrock in UFC 40: Vendetta, we sold out the MGM Grand Ballroom, sixteen thousand seats, and had more than two hundred thousand pay-per-view buys in the United States alone. That fight was easily one of the biggest fights in UFC history.

And my father was there to watch it.

Inviting my father to come and watch me fight was a big move on my part. We had not spoken or seen each other since he had met Jacob. But I was at a stage in my life where I felt I should try to be a forgiving person and attempt to make peace with him.

So I got my father and his brother a pair of tickets. Now, when I'm in preparation for a fight I'm being steered in a lot of different directions and my mind is on a lot of things. I was getting ready to fight when I heard that my father had arrived in Vegas, but he couldn't remember which hotel was hosting the fight and he was lost.
Shit! What am I supposed to do?
I sent some guys out to look for him, and thankfully, they found him.

Limp Bizkit's “Break Stuff” brought me into the ring for the second fight in a row. I had slipped out of Nice Guy Tito Ortiz and into The Huntington Beach Bad Boy. It was fight time, and I was there to destroy Ken Shamrock.

I dominated that fight completely. I think he got maybe two punches in the whole fight. We fought for three rounds, and he didn't answer the bell for the fourth round. The ringside doctor had stepped in, looked at Shamrock, and said no more. I would later find out that I suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament during the fight and would have to have surgery to fix it.

My victory T-shirt that night was probably one of my more humorous. I'm a big
South Park
fan. So I came up with a shirt that said: “I Just Killed Kenny! You Bastard!”

I don't know what happened to my father. Things always get crazy after a fight and I never met up with him. But at least he got to see me fight.

The victory over Ken Shamrock was a decisive one that pretty much clinched my reputation as an impossible-to-beat fighter. But you certainly couldn't tell by the way Dana White and the UFC were treating me.

After I fought Shamrock and I saw that the fees were going up and the pay-per-view was going through the roof, I thought,
Okay, the UFC is making their money, it's time for me to make mine.
By this time the UFC had become a recognized, sanctioned sport. A lot of our fights were in Las Vegas, which added legitimacy to the organization. Ultimate Fighting was really taking off and was about ready to explode.

So I went to Dana again. His response was, “If it wasn't for me, you would be nothing!” After hearing that, I definitely felt like I was being taken for a ride. I was beginning to lose sleep and I came to the conclusion that Jim Gallow was not looking out for my best interests.

But the funny thing is that even when Dana became UFC president, I trusted him to do the right thing by me. The sad part was that I felt like I had given my life to him, and when I asked to be compensated for my efforts, things started getting worse.

The reality was that when I was out there asking for more money, I wasn't just asking for myself. I knew that if I got what I wanted, the UFC would have to pay the other fighters as well. I was doing the other fighters a favor, but I was doing it alone because everyone else was too intimidated. They thought they couldn't fight anywhere else because the UFC had pretty much bought up all the major regional fighting organizations. So they kept their mouths shut.