How much does Dana White dislike Tito Ortiz? Don’t answer because there isn’t a unit of measurement to accurately portray it.
But the UFC president did do his best to put a figure on that dislike at UFC 84 when Lyoto Machida defeated Ortiz. In the video, White admits to cutting Machida a personal check for the win.
“The only time in 13 years, all the fights we’ve ever done, Lyoto Machida beat Tito Ortiz,” White said. “I actually wrote him a personal check. UFC, we will pay him his win money, his show money. If he wins one of the bonuses of the night, he gets a bonus. I literally bonus’d him myself.”
White and Ortiz were infamously paired up to face one another in a boxing match years ago, but that never came to fruition and the two had a rocky professional relationship at the best of times.
It did seem as though Ortiz has found himself in the good graces of White towards the tail end of his UFC career, even being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.
However, that all went out the window when Ortiz paired up with Viacom and Bellator MMA. Ortiz even went as far as to compare working for White as to being condemned to slavery.
Depending on your view of White, this is either another example of White’s unprofessionalism as the head of a company or simply another case of “Dana White being Dana White.” Either way, you can bet Ortiz and all the other anti-UFC figures in the sport will be quick to use this as proof of the company’s corruption at the top.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com