July 14, 2011 – Heading into his last fight at UFC 132, Tito Ortiz had been as subdued as he’s ever been in his fight career, bypassing any sort of trash talking in favor of quietly doing what he had to do to get ready.
His career hung in the balance, Dana White was calling for his retirement, and nobody thought he had any shot at getting past Ryan Bader. By all accounts, everybody had stopped paying attention to Tito and for the first time in his career, he wasn’t out in the public eye clamoring for everyone’s attention.
Then he quietly went and proved all the naysayers wrong by handily defeating his much younger opponent by submission and showing everyone there is still some fight left in “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy,” contrary to popular belief.
With that career-saving win behind him, the plan was for to continue regrouping, maybe take some time off before getting back into training en route to his next fight somewhere down the road. As it turns out, there is no rest for the weary and Tito will jump back into the cage sooner rather than later.
With Phil Davis pulling out of his planned UFC 133 showdown against Rashad Evans and Lyoto Machida refusing to take the fight on short notice, Tito has agreed to step up and continue his Rocky Balboa comeback story versus Rashad Evan’s Clubber Lang in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center.
With this decision to take the fight on short notice likely seen as a great favor by the UFC brass, it is likely Tito will be back in the octagon after this fight, win or lose. But if WINS against the would-be #1 contender Evans, Tito could actually be in the UFC title hunt for the first time since facing “The Iceman” Chuck Liddell in December 2006.
A longshot? Maybe. But then again, nobody gave him a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Bader at UFC 132 either. Stranger things have happened.
“The future will hold great things for me, and this Cinderella story is not over yet,” Ortiz told MMAWeekly in a recent interview.
Maybe it’s time to start paying attention to Tito Ortiz again after all.
UFC 133 – Official Fight Card for August 6, 2011
Main Card (Pay-Per-View)
- Light Heavyweight bout: Rashad Evans vs. Tito Ortiz
- Light Heavyweight bout: Rich Franklin vs. Antônio Rogério Nogueira
- Middleweight bout: Vitor Belfort vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama
- Middleweight bout: Jorge Rivera vs. Alessio Sakara
- Welterweight bout: Rory MacDonald vs. Mike Pyle
Preliminary Card (Spike TV)
- Light Heavyweight bout: Vladimir Matyushenko vs. Alexander Gustafsson
- Featherweight bout: Chad Mendes vs. Rani Yahya
Preliminary Card (Facebook)
- Welterweight bout: Dennis Hallman vs. Brian Ebersole
- Bantamweight bout: Ivan Menjivar vs. Nick Pace
- Welterweight bout: Johny Hendricks vs. Mike Pierce
- Featherweight bout: Mike Brown vs. Nam Phan
- Middleweight bout: Rafael Natal vs. Costantinos Philippou
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