Mile-high (fight) club: Dana White recounts airborne fist-fight with Tito Ortiz

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White was all set to fight former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz in some sort of bizarre celebrity boxing bout. Not surprisingly, their pugilistic grudge match never came to fruition.

But that doesn’t mean they never got the chance to throw down.

White was recently a guest on the Conan O’Brien late-night talk show (via FOX Sports), revealing a mid-air collision with “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy,” one that got so out of control it had to be broken up by the Fertitta brothers.

His words:

“We were gonna fight one time in a boxing match but I actually never told this story publicly before but we were on a private plane on our way to Japan and it was my partners, the Fertitta brothers, myself, Tito Ortiz and our matchmaker at the time, Joe Silva. Tito and I were messing around and he put me in what’s called a neck crank. I was tapping and he didn’t stop. You can seriously hurt somebody in a neck crank, especially as big and strong as Tito is. So I just started blasting him in the ribs, started punching him in the ribs and when he let go [I] just jumped up and it was just a full blown fist fight in the plane. We were literally taking off and the plane was [wobbling] and the Fertitta brothers had to jump in and break up the fight. So then I sat on the front of the plane, he sat in the back of the plane the rest of the flight.”

I guess it beats brawling in an elevator.

White and Ortiz enjoyed a love-hate relationship during early days of mixed martial arts (MMA), which was not without its fair share of growing pains. The former was part of a billion-dollar sale of UFC while the latter retired as a Bellator MMA fighter.

Maybe they can have a rematch in the recently-proposed League of Legends?

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White was all set to fight former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz in some sort of bizarre celebrity boxing bout. Not surprisingly, their pugilistic grudge match never came to fruition.

But that doesn’t mean they never got the chance to throw down.

White was recently a guest on the Conan O’Brien late-night talk show (via FOX Sports), revealing a mid-air collision with “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy,” one that got so out of control it had to be broken up by the Fertitta brothers.

His words:

“We were gonna fight one time in a boxing match but I actually never told this story publicly before but we were on a private plane on our way to Japan and it was my partners, the Fertitta brothers, myself, Tito Ortiz and our matchmaker at the time, Joe Silva. Tito and I were messing around and he put me in what’s called a neck crank. I was tapping and he didn’t stop. You can seriously hurt somebody in a neck crank, especially as big and strong as Tito is. So I just started blasting him in the ribs, started punching him in the ribs and when he let go [I] just jumped up and it was just a full blown fist fight in the plane. We were literally taking off and the plane was [wobbling] and the Fertitta brothers had to jump in and break up the fight. So then I sat on the front of the plane, he sat in the back of the plane the rest of the flight.”

I guess it beats brawling in an elevator.

White and Ortiz enjoyed a love-hate relationship during early days of mixed martial arts (MMA), which was not without its fair share of growing pains. The former was part of a billion-dollar sale of UFC while the latter retired as a Bellator MMA fighter.

Maybe they can have a rematch in the recently-proposed League of Legends?