After his loss to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira on Saturday night, Tito Ortiz has one more fight left on his contract.
The question is, should UFC president Dana White allow him to fight again before he probably retires?
I’ll say this: Ortiz had fought much better in his last two fights after convincing White to give him another shot. He shocked Ryan Bader in UFC 132 and fought well against Rashad Evans in UFC 133.
But, the reality is, after losing via TKO in the first round, Ortiz has once again proven that he isn’t the same as he once was.
Ortiz won 15 of his first 19 UFC fights, but he’s won once in his last eight fights. At some point, you have to say enough is enough. Ortiz has honestly been given way too long a leash. You win once in eight fights, it’s time to call it what it is: the end of a career.
I don’t doubt that White would give Ortiz one more fight based on his legacy in the past, but I don’t think he should. You start giving preference to fighters, you lose the competitiveness that has made the UFC so exciting to watch.
The end of Ortiz’s fight on Saturday against Nogueira was hard to watch. He failed to cover up at the end, and was the victim of several big blows while he simply tried to hold out until the end of the first round.
Ortiz deserves a lot of respect for what he did early in his career, and he will get that respect from the majority of the MMA community.
But he doesn’t look like Tito Ortiz anymore; he looks like a fighter who is trying to make up for his fall with heart. It’s respectable, but just because you have heart doesn’t mean you’re a good MMA fighter.
Ortiz needs to take a break and think about if he is deadening his legacy.
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