TITO ORTIZ

Tito Ortiz, Uncensored

In the cage with MMA Champ Tito Ortiz

PHOTOGRAPHY Andrew Takeuchi

Inside the cage he’s your worst nightmare. Outside of it he’s one of the friendliest, most laid back and playful guys you’ve ever met. So how do you categorize him? Is he a good guy or a mean fighting machine? His persona may be hard to decipher, but his fighting skill isn’t. In the sport of mixed martial arts, few fighters have risen to the top as fast as Tito Ortiz. We interrupted one of Tito’s workouts recently to find out how he’s gotten to where he is and how much farther he intends to go.

You call yourself The Huntington Beach Bad Boy. I take it you were born and raised in Huntington Beach, California.
I was born in Huntington Beach and then at age five we moved to Santa Ana. It was a bad time in my life because my parents got hooked on some drugs and I ended up just doing stupid stuff I should have never been doing. I hung out with some gangs. I was in and out of motels and hotels with my parents. I watched a couple of my friends die when I lived in Santa Ana, so after a few years there it was time for me to move out.

My mom separated from my dad. She did that because of my future. She believed what she needed to do was take me somewhere else before I was either dead or in prison. She got me out of there by moving back to Huntington Beach.

PLUS!
THE OYE
GIRLS:

EVA LONGORIA

JESSICA BURCIAGA

PAM RODRIGUEZ

CLAUDIA MOLINA

JEN JOHNSON

CC FONTANA

NIKKI TORRES

What about your ethnic background?
I’m half Mexican. My father’s parents are from Mexico City. And my other half is from Hawaii and the Long Beach area. My mother’s father was born in Long Beach and my mother’s mother was born in Hawaii.

Your background as a fighter is in wrestling. How did you become involved in wrestling?
When I came back to Huntington Beach I went to Huntington Beach High. I started wrestling and I excelled. From there I started believing in myself. I then went to Golden West College. Then I took a year off and was in and out of jobs, just doing side work like moving and carpentry. About that time I was partying with some wrong people again. That’s when I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought, “What the hell am I doing with myself?” I knew I had a bright future if I would just stop partying and doing the same stupid stuff. At that time I bumped into a coach from Golden West. He said, “Tito, what are you doing with yourself these days?” I told him, “Nothing, just working job to job.” He said, “Why don’t you come in and start wrestling?” So I went back to Golden West Junior College and I started wrestling. I won the state two years in a row. I was undefeated and I started training with a guy by the name of Tank Abbott. He’s from Huntington Beach and he trained for the UFC. He just needed a big kid to wrestle with. I was a three-time state champion in California so I started working with him. I started getting better and better with jiu-jitsu and boxing, and I helped him with his wrestling. My first UFC fight was in 1997. I stopped my guy, Wes Albritton, in 21 seconds. I won that match and then I ended up in the finals where I lost a controversial match to Guy Mezger…I was only six months into training in MMA (mixed martial arts). I was still a young kid, but it seemed like the more I learned the better I got, and the better I liked it. At that time everything just seemed to snowball.

What was the biggest challenge for you, as someone who was strictly a wrestler, in becoming a skilled MMA fighter?
It wasn’t really that much of a difference. The only thing was to make sure I keep my head straight. That’s all that mattered. It seemed that if I dedicated myself to the sport as well as I had to wrestling, I’d do pretty well. In the last five years I‘ve gotten so good, I mean I’ve been the champion for the last three years. It took me a year and a half to get the championship, and it seemed like I just learned quicker than anybody else ever did. It seemed that the harder I worked at it, the better I became at it. I guess I’m kind of like a freak. I’m a perfectionist and try to perfect everything I do, although I’m still a long ways from it. But I’ve been the champion for the last three and a half years so I guess I’m doing something right.

If someone who doesn’t know the first thing about fighting were to ask you, “I don’t want to end up getting beat up in front of my girlfriend one day.” Which fighting style would you recommend they learn first?
It would have to be jiu-jitsu. With jiu-jitsu you can subdue a person within thirty seconds. You can take a person down, actually choke him out or put him in submission. You can do it in a quick manner and not hurt anybody by throwing punches or hurt yourself by doing it. I think that is the greatest martial art you can probably learn because you’re not using any strikes and you’re holding a guy down with a move he probably hasn’t even seen before. I myself have choked men on the street within ten to fifteen seconds and it really becomes a martial art; my hands are deadly weapons. But I respect every human being walking on the street. I never try to cause fights. I really respect people a whole bunch, so I think that’s what makes me the champion and who I am today.

A lot of people in the general public don’t appreciate the abilities and versatility of MMA fighters? What would you say to those people to explain what makes your fighting abilities so special.
I would say watch an MMA fight; watch a couple of them. See the martial arts that we have to learn to compete in the cage. It’s not a street fight like it was before. In the beginning UFC was, as they called it, “the bloodiest fights you’ve ever seen,” because they didn’t use gloves. But this sport has gone through an evolution. We’ve done in the last ten years what boxing took 100 years to do, and it’s just because the guys are getting so technical. You have to be really good at grappling—which is jiu-jitsu and wrestling—and you have to be really good at striking—which is professional boxing and professional kickboxing (including muay thai and kickboxing where you use elbows and knees). Add all of it together and of course cardio and weightlifting. I train seven days a week, eight hours a day. Cardio is two hours of my workout. It’s really a hard workout, so when people get to see MMA, when they see how the guys compete and what level they compete at that’s when they get educated on the sport itself.

Put it into perspective for people. Isn’t it true that if you and someone like Roy Jones, Jr. got into a fight you would destroy him?
He wouldn’t last thirty seconds…maybe he’d run for thirty seconds. I am dead serious. Someone like Mike Tyson would last maybe two, three minutes in the cage with me. But don’t get me wrong. Mike Tyson, if I stepped into a ring with him with gloves on, it wouldn’t last a round—well maybe two rounds…but it would be the same thing as me trying to go into his sport, as him trying to come into my sport. It would be over really, really quick. So Lennox Lewis for instance, that guy would last maybe a minute to two because he could take it on his back, but the last time I looked boxing is not something you do from your back.

But what you guys do more closely resembles a true fight.
Yes, exactly.

Your style is primarily ground and pound fighting. Describe it for our readers who may not be familiar with MMA styles and techniques.
It's a combination of everything together. I do kickboxing, which is regular muay thai kickboxing—where you use elbows, knees, and kicks—and western boxing—where you use strictly punches—but I try to add everything together. And then I use my wrestling of course where I add the punches to set up the take down…that’s where wrestling comes in. Now the jiu-jitsu side comes in because I watch the offense of my opponent. He’ll use jiu-jitsu because he’ll be on his back most of the time or trying to set up arm locks and stuff like that from his back. At that time I use the ground-and-pound. For people who don’t know what ground-and-pound is, it’s taking a person down when he’s in his guard…and I try to punch him to the body to the head…that’s how I defeat most of the guys I fight.

What’s the biggest difference between someone who’s just a street fighter and someone who has more classical training such as yourself?
I guess it goes down to the cardio, and just being the best I can possibly be at what I do. Street fighters…yeah they can be tough, they can throw punches like a boxer, probably, but no further than that. We have the jiu-jitsu, the kicks, and the knees, the cardio and just the game plan that we use. Because like I said, when I do this seven days a week, eight hours a day, it’s programmed into my mind. So it’s like I’m a fighting machine pretty much. A regular person off the street doesn’t fight like that, they are not trained to do that. I am a trained fighter. This is something I’ve been working on the last five years. This is my life.

Do some pendejos ever try to pick a fight with you out in public?
Oh, all the time…although not as much anymore. As I’ve fought more and people have gotten to see my fights more they understand what I do and they respect that a whole bunch. Most of the time when people do they’re drunk and I can persuade them by the way I talk to them. I talk circles around them and before the night is over they end up buying me a drink. And that is pretty much how it always is. I’m a cool guy man. I don’t go out there trying to start fights. Usually when fights start is when somebody says something to somebody and they want to retaliate. I’m not the kind of person to retaliate.

But have there been times when you were forced to retaliate?
The last time I touched somebody I choked him out in about a minute in a half. He hit my friend in the head with a bottle. He tried to come at me with the bottle. I ducked it and I snapped him down into the ground and I got him in a front guillotine…I choked him out unconscious. His buddies hit me with a couple of bottles in the head. He was unconscious. I let him go. I turned around and the guys were like, “Dude, it’s cool, it’s cool. We’re sorry, we’re sorry.”

I guess there’s always some idiot out there who thinks he has to prove how tough he is.
People that watch movies and see people like Jet Li and all those guys, remember those are movies. What I do is reality. There’s nothing fake about it. This is no WWF.

So it’s like you transform yourself.
When the lights turn on it’s time to compete and it’s time to show everything I worked the last three months for. It usually shows up really well, like it did in my last fight when I fought Ken Shamrock. It took me three rounds to stop him. At the end of three rounds he said, “no more.” It’s the first time anybody has done that to Ken Shamrock, the first time anybody has picked Ken Shamrock apart the way I did. I just think it’s because of all the hard work and dedication I put into this sport.

You’ve talked about a future in Hollywood, which you’re already setting yourself up for. Does knowing you have this to fall back on make you less hungry than the guy who is solely focused on fighting?
Maybe not less hungry, but having a little less focus, yes it does. But at the same time when it is fight time my focus is 110% on the fight only. So as I have off time right now it is nice to work on the thing that will prepare me for the future. I am working on my foundation of what I really want to do in this whole scheme of life, and acting is the grand goal I mean that is the pot luck right there. You do things the right way and become a big actor…of course it takes a lot of work and a lot of dedication to do that job too, and I’m working hard to train myself. I think that acting is just the next step up to fulfill my whole “belts” of goals that I really want to achieve in life.

Some MMA purists miss the days when guys would go at it to prove their superiority regardless of weight. What’s your take on this?
We need to go through this evolution to make the sport better. Boxing was like that when it first started. They would box with no gloves. As the sport evolves, it gets better and better. You put more rules in it and more and more weight classes. You start organizing it and that is what the UFC is now. As for the people who want to live for the old rules of the ultimate fighting championship, sorry, that is when the sport first began and they should appreciate how far the sport has come already.

Who do you consider the greatest fighter of all time in any category?
No question about it, Muhammad Ali.

What words of advice do you have for your Latino brothers out there?
Believe in your goals. Always try to set an example for other people to better this world, because there are a lot of tragedies happening in this world. Try to be good to people all around. So just help out. Be really, really good people towards others, because if you’re good to one person that person will be good to another and hopefully that causes a chain effect where everybody is cool to each other. Then you don’t have to worry about people killing each other. A lot of this happens throughout the community and a lot of people don’t do anything about it. I’m speaking about gangs and stuff like that. People need to keep straight. We all need to live together and really make this a happy world. We can make it happen. People need to help others, work in the community—that’s something I do a lot myself. I go to schools and help out with kids, because that’s what I believe in. I’m not just about being a fighter. I try to go the extra mile and use my fighting status as a vehicle to do other things: help with kids, try to keep them out of gangs, and things like that. That’s what really matters.