Tito Ortiz to UFC Hall of Fame?
No one has fought more times in the octagon than Tito Ortiz. And no one has clashed so frequently, and…
No one has fought more times in the octagon than Tito Ortiz. And no one has clashed so frequently, and so harshly with UFC President Dana White. White has stated in the past that he thinks the two need “marriage counselling.”
The images below tell 2,000 stories.
In an organization so closely tied with the drive of its President, what does that mean for Tito’s chances at being in the UFC Hall of Fame. Not much apparently. The past is past between Ortiz and White. Indeed, White now sees the past battles with Ortiz as being postive for the company.
“Tito has a significant place in the history of this sport, whether he and I had (differences or not),” White said at the post fight press conference. “When you really think about it, the battle between Tito and I [as well as] Chuck and I and Tito really did help build this thing in the beginning. It was a big story. You had people who love Tito and hated me and were on my side and didn’t like Tito. It was a pretty big real storyline that happened.
“I can be honest now and tell you, me and Tito at our absolute worst, when things were just as nasty as nasty could be behind the scenes was when he fought Lyoto Machida. That was probably one of the craziest times in my entire career since I’ve been here.”
“To explain to you guys how angry that guy used to make me, it was crazy. It was literally crazy. Those were crazy times, man. It was weird.
“Someday you guys will see it all because most of it is on video. The video blogs that we shoot, those were video blogs that never went out.”
“Chuck (Liddell, was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in July 2009) is a guy who I really feel helped us build this business. It’s easy to sit back now and look at the ‘monopoly’ of the UFC, but back in the day, everybody was coming into the business. PRIDE was bigger than we were. When money was easy, you could just make a phone call and raise $300 million. All these guys, everybody loves the fight business. Everybody wants to be in it, and everybody was trying to be in the fight business at that time. There were certain guys through the thick and the thin that were there for us in the time of need. There’s guys like Chuck, Matt Hughes, Forrest Griffin, Joe Rogan.
“When Joe Rogan was on ‘Fear Factor,’ I don’t know if I’ve ever said this publicly or not, but when I called Joe Rogan and said, ‘I think that you would be great for commentary in the UFC. What do you think? Are you interested?’ or something like that, they guy was on the highest-rated show in network television at the time, ‘Fear Factor.’ He did the first 15 UFCs for free. We didn’t pay Joe Rogan a dime for the first 15 UFCs. Joe Rogan gets paid now. Believe me, he gets paid! But just to show you the kind of stuff that happened early on in the early days. It’s easy to sit back now and call us a monopoly and say all this other stuff, but it was rough times back in the early days of the UFC.”