Hmm i just posted one.... Unlike you im not a bandwagoner. You can believe what you like. Tito has been a very good servant to this sport. Irrespective of your opinion of him that cannot be denied.
I was a fan of Tito from the very beginning, basically because in the early days I was a big Tank Abbott mark and it amused me that he went and got some young wrestler from his hometown to cross-train with (sort of a scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours situation where Tank got to practice improving his grappling and Tito got his break in MMA...obviously it worked out better for the Bad Boy ultimately...but not before they had a nasty falling out :yep). The real Tito only had a few losses (all to very good fellow pioneers in or close to their prime). He is well past his expiration date. The sport has evolved and he hasn't...he's just aged and slowed. He was one of the younger pioneers but that doesn't mean he was any more capable of adapting.
I don't know how much of the history you know between Dana and Tito, but I'll give a quick rundown: Dana started in the UFC as a manager, he was both Tito's and Chucks manager at one point. So at one point him and Tito were close. Then they went through a period where they were beefing with eachother back and forth. Long Story short, they agreed to have a Boxing Match. It wasn't supposed to be televised, it was supposed to be personal. They both agreed to do it. Dana actually went through a real training camp and even showed up to the weigh-in for it. Tito never showed up to the weigh-in and pulled out of the fight. Dana made Tito look real bad in the public and on Spike TV about it. Televised his training, televised the weigh-in that Tito didn't show up to. It really was a bunch of propoganda by Dana, that did not tell the whole story. Tito's side is this: He agreed to the fight. No compensation was discussed or negotiated, basically no money was ever agreed to be paid to Tito BECAUSE at the time Tito agreed, there was no plan to televise it and market it :deal After Dana got Tito to agree, he then started promoting the boxing match and was gonna televise it on Spike. Tito realized what was happening and OBVIOUSLY wanted to get paid for it. He saw that the UFC was gonna be making money off his name and wanted to get paid (I don't know specifics of if any money was agreed and it wasn't enough, or if no money was ever agreed). But Tito pulled out of the fight due to this dispute. Dana made it look like Tito was scared. :good That's as much as I know about it.
I realise that Tito is not much of a stand up fighter (he has always been get you down and ground n' pound) but would Dana seriously have fought him in a boxing match ? Does Dana have any fighting ability at all ?
That's what happens when you carry yourself the way that Tito does. It isn't like fans have to like him, just because he did a lot for the sport. That doesn't give you a free pass to be a douchebag. That's like saying that the fans in the WCW had no right to boo Hulk Hogan when he turned into a bad guy (extreme example I know), because he had done so much for the sport. People are going to boo you if you give them a reason to. Look at how Tito treated Mark Coleman, who had paved the way for fighters like Tito to take the style Coleman brought into MMA and make a career out of it.
He was a boxing coach prior to working in the UFC, and is supposed to have competed himself at some level (probably amateur).
Coleman paved the way? They debuted in the UFC less than a year apart. Also, Coleman hardly invented the style that wrestling-base hybrid martial artists came to employ with great success over the years. It was more of a committee effort, with Coleman and Ortiz both holding seats on the committee. It isn't like Mark is a Pancrase OG.
Yeah, there's some lingering sour grapes & jealousy one way or the other... (or maybe both) This content is protected Depending on who you ask, either Abbott was insecure about Ortiz being clearly poised for a higher level of stardom and began to get verbally abusive and harass Ortiz with drunk voicemails taunting him and bragging about (then) making more money in the octagon...OR, Tito made those stories up to build his name off Tank's. Also, depending on which one you ask you'll get an entirely different opinion of who used to routinely kick whose ass in sparring...and which one of them would have been completely schooled in a real fight.
I alway liked Tito, he did come across as kind of a douche but he knew how to build anticipation for a fight. Can someone fill me in about what happened before his fight with Hamill I was at the pub watching without sound.
Dana White was an amateur boxer. Nothing special, but he knows how to handle himself in a boxing ring against a guy with zero boxing bouts.
