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16/11/09 - Ortiz: Non-UFC fighters "are second-rate guys"
Tito Ortiz says he never wanted to be anywhere else other than the UFC and was talking to other organisations as “a negotiation tactic” to improve his position with the organisation whose light-heavyweight division he once ruled.
Despite apparently being close to signing with Affliction (now defunct) but having that deal fall through because of “unrealistic” wage demands, Ortiz maintains that "talking to all the other promotions was a negotiation tactic on my part. I never wanted to fight anywhere else”.
“You want to fight against the best guys in the world? You're fighting in the UFC. If you fight anywhere else, you're fighting against second-rate guys. And I never wanted that, I wanted to give my fans the best fights possible, and the UFC is where those fights were at," he told Heavy.com this week.
Ortiz says that his leaving the UFC when his contract expired and then engaging in talks with other organisations “raised the bar for all the other fighters. They don't know it yet, but I did. I'm very thankful for how forgiving Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta are, and I'm thankful to Dana for being a man of his word.
The Huntingdon Beach Bad Boy concluded, “It's nice to be back in the UFC machine”. His next fight is at UFC 106, where he will rematch Forrest Griffin. Their first fight ended in a controversial split-decision win for Ortiz and Griffin is hungry to avenge that. He also badly needs a win, having dropped his last two.
Ortiz left the UFC under a cloud after fighting Lyoto Machida in 2008. He and Dana White had a publicly acrimonious relationship and the UFC president has on more than one occasion described Ortiz as “an idiot”. That relationship is apparently now fixed.
Go to Heavy.com for the rest of the interview
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