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Video: Tito Ortiz Wrestling Chael Sonnen

Video: Tito Ortiz Wrestling Chael Sonnen

 

Tito Ortiz is a veteran of mma famous for his stint in the UFC where he was the reigning Light Heavyweight Champion for 3 years – from 2000 until 2003. He is a member of the first wave of UFC stars along with Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture.

But many years before he was a UFC champion, Ortiz (born in 1975) was in attendance at the Huntington Beach High School where he began his wrestling career sophmore year and excelled – he won the CIF championship at 189 lbs and finished 4th in the state tournament as a senior. Sadly due to a poor living situation his mother had kicked him out of the house at 18 at which point he was doing labor work and became addicted to meth.

About a year later he ran into an old high school wrestling coach Paul Herrera who encouraged him to enroll in college. Ortiz then began attending Golden West where he was a California junior college state champion and All-American two consecutive years before transferring California State University at Bakersfield, where he continued wrestling but was never a full-time starter. Ortiz also trained with the UFC fighter and fellow collegiate wrestler, Tank Abbott.

Chael Sonnen was born in 1977 and began wrestling from a young age. He was a state runner up at the West Linn High in Oregon.  After high school he had already had the hope of competing in the UFC but he enrolled at Brigham Young University regardless before transferring to the University of Oregon. At Oregon, Sonnen earned All-American honors, was a two-time PAC-10 runner-up, was a silver medalist at the 2000 Greco-Roman World University Championships, and was a two-time Dave Schultz Memorial Institutional Greco-Roman winner (source: wikipedia).

 

You can watch the footage of the two MMA veterans duking it out in Wrestling by pressing play below.