The recent Bellator fight between Tito Ortiz and Chael Sonnen, which Ortiz won by rear naked choke in round 1 had many fans saying that the fight was fixed because of the way Sonnen was fighting.
Sonnen let go of a Darce (which Tito defended well) and once Tito was on top, he defended very badly and barely defended the choke.
Ortiz took those match fixing accusations at heart, speaking with Submission Radio:
“For people to say the fight was fixed, fuck that. It’s just ridiculous. Are you kidding me right now? I’m gonna give 14 weeks of my life, I’m gonna miss out on a Thanksgiving, miss out on a Christmas, miss out on a New Year’s to have a fixed fight? I’ve never been a part of that. If I wanted to do a fixed fight, I’d be doing WWE. For people to say that, that’s just very disrespectful, and for fighters to say that, that’s disrespectful, especially fighters that I’ve helped out through their career. It’s just disrespect.
“I’ve worked so damn hard. The shit that Chael said, I hate the guy. I held on to that choke. I was trying to break his neck. I had the choke over his chin, I was still squeezing the shit out of him. I wanted to break his chin. I wanted to break his neck. This had nothing to do with [being] fixed at all. I was getting paid the same amount of money no matter what.”
“That’s just ridiculous. It’s disrespecting my career, it’s disrespecting my legacy and the hard work I put in, the sacrifice I had away from my children and my family. I sacrificed so much for this fight. That’s the best shape I’ve been in since 2006. I was shredded. I cut down from 225 [pounds] to 204.8 [pounds] in two and a half days. There’s nothing fixed about anything at all.”
Mark Lajhner, founder and chief instructor of Kaizen MMA Academy in Belgrade, Serbia analysed the recent Bellator fight between Tito Ortiz and Chael Sonnen. Mark is a Judo black belt (Serbian national team member), BJJ purple belt, MMA coach and undefeated MMA fighter. You can find Mark Lajhner’s FREE MMA course Here.
Here is Mark’s excellent analysis:
