Tito Ortiz - Image: Zuma Press

Tito’s career with the UFC looked like it was over in May of 2008. He had just finished his UFC contract up with a loss to Lyoto Machida and relations with Dana White were at an all time low. Dana had gotten to the point where he’d regularly call Tito and his wife Jenna Jameson idiots on a regular basis, and Tito Ortiz wore a t-shirt to his final weigh-in that read “Dana White Is My Bitch”.

So what healed the epic rift between the two? No one is sure how it all worked itself out. Some point to the UFC’s other top exec Lorenzo Fertitta, who was also instrumental to bringing Mirko Crocop back to the UFC after Dana White got into a verbal tiff with him in the press. And you can’t ignore the magic a lot of money can weave. Tito Ortiz literally carried the UFC through it’s dark days with his popularity and is one of the company’s all time greatest money makers. Letting him go and potentially breath new life into another promotion would have been insane.

Also announced during the press conference: the return of another old school legend, Vitor Belfort, and a broadcast deal with ESPN’s new UK sports channel. Belfort will be stepping into the cage at UFC 103 to take on Rich Franklin … originally Franklin was set to rematch Dan Henderson, but the fight was scrapped because fans across the internet booed and hissed loudly enough. While I’m not happy that Rich vs Dan was canceled, it’s still pretty cool that the UFC listens to it’s fans like that.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tito Ortiz is Back in the UFC

Tito Ortiz - Image: Zuma Press

Tito Ortiz returning to the UFC: The great thing about Dana White as UFC president is that he gets so giddy he lets things slip all the time. While tweeting about an appearance on a radio show Friday evening, he added an “Oh yea and welcome back tito :)” to the end. On his radio appearance he played it more coy than that, but you can blame that on his attempt to save all the juicy news for a July 31st press conference. Chances of Tito coming back to the UFC? I’d say they’re higher than 90% now, with a 10% chance of talks breaking down as these two haggle over contract details.

Affliction is dead, long live Affliction: The days of the Affliction company throwing live events is over. On Friday morning, the company pulled the plug on their third event and by the evening news had come out that they were in talks to work with the UFC again. No terms were disclosed on the deal yet, but a joint press release came out early this morning confirming their ‘collaboration’ and the return of Affliction Clothing as a UFC sponsor.

What happens to Fedor: The biggest question is what happens to top fighter Fedor Emelianenko now that the UFC and Affliction are ‘collaborating’? Fedor has one fight left on his Affliction contract. Will the UFC pick that fight up and bring him into their promotion? Chances of that are low since the UFC has consistently refused to sign one fight deals with the Russian fighter, but this opportunity might be too good to pass up. Expect some statements from both Fedor’s camp and the UFC regarding his situation which should clarify where the best heavyweight in the world is going. I’m gonna let my inner fanboy get hopeful, but I wouldn’t recommend you hold your breath on this one.

MMA is a pretty crazy sport … I can’t think of another one where interesting stuff like this happens on a fairly regular basis. I’ll keep you informed of all the major developments right here at Everyjoe, so stick around and enjoy the ride!

Post from: EveryJoe

MMA world gets a major shake-up

Tito Ortiz - Image: Zuma Press

So while there’s been no deals signed, the biggest hurdle keeping Tito Ortiz out of the UFC – namely White’s abject hatred of the dude – has been crossed. But keep in mind that the UFC’s rocky relationship with Ortiz (one of the UFC biggest stars) didn’t materialize out of nowhere.

Tito has a long history of being a very difficult person to deal with … just ask some of the companies he almost signed with over the past year or so. At this point all it would take would be a decimal point put in the wrong place during contract negotiations to completely destroy this tiny bit of goodwill that just twittered it’s way into the mixed martial arts universe.

To see more tweets from Dana and Tito, go to DanaWhiteUFC and TitoOrtiz.

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Tito Ortiz and UFC kiss and make up

Shaquille O'Neal - Image: JR Davis / Newscom

Here’s what Dana White had to say on the subject during an segment on the Dan Le Batard show: “Shaq’s pretty serious, Shaq text messages me all the time and is twittering me all the time saying … he wants to fight Brock is what he says. And I said go win your next NBA championship because he’s gonna win one next year and then we’ll talk. You know he’s been training for 10 years.”

When asked about the potential weight problems – Shaq is 325 pounds while the heavyweight cutoff is 265 pounds – White responded that a fight at super heavyweight might be the way to go before reminding Dan that Brock used to be billed up around that weight before coming to the UFC and getting in hardcore fighter shape.

For those wondering if Shaq is ‘for real’, all I can tell you is he has indeed been training mixed martial arts for years and uses it during the off season to stay fit. Now we just have to wonder if his takedown defense is better than his three pointer skills.

Post from: EveryJoe

Shaq wants to fight in the UFC

Tito Ortiz - Image: Zuma Press

According to Tito Ortiz, he will be starting a new promotion with Strikeforce called Punishment Fighting Championships, which Tito will both manage and compete in. I have no idea how the hell that’s supposed to work, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the ‘new promotion’ is just a differently branded Strikeforce event which Tito gets a cut of the profits from. And that’s if the whole thing ends up happening at all – Tito has been known to talk out his ass on numerous occasions regarding unfinished business deals. Didn’t he learn anything from his time on Celebrity Apprentice?

As for the possibility of returning to the UFC, Tito has said it will never happen so long as Dana White is president of the UFC. I could write a novel about the bad blood between them, but suffice to say they’re not fans of each other. It is worth noting however that quite a few informed people are still betting on the Huntington Beach Bad Boy returning to the UFC in the end. Something to do with money talking and something else walking?

The good (or bad, depending on your opinion of Tito) news is that all signs point towards Tito returning to the cage by the end of the year. As unintentionally entertaining as he can be outside the cage, I’d rather see him fighting than talking any day.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tito Ortiz Talks Return to the Cage

Mirko Crocop visits a children's hospital with Jean Claude Van Damme - Image: Zuma Press

The reason why is slightly complicated. There are two sides to every story: Dana White’s involves a long angry slew of swear words, and Mirko’s involves contractual minutia. But the long story short version goes like this: Dana claims Mirko Crocop agreed verbally to a three fight deal if he won his fight this past weekend. Mirko claims the deal he was offered had the 36 year old fighting once every six months and had no clause for a title shot even if he won all his fights.

I’m sure there’s a bunch of small things on both sides that change to story one way or another but here’s the solid results: Dana White is extremely pissed off with Mirko and Mirko will be returning to a Japanese ring as soon as July 20th. That’s if Dana doesn’t decide to try and sue the checkered tights off him first.

There’s a saying that verbal agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, but there are actually quite a few laws regarding oral agreements. Because Crocop is basically contesting the terms of the deal and not just turning it down outright, I doubt the UFC would win any lawsuit they launched. But as we saw in the case of Randy Couture, sometimes the UFC wins just by making escape a gigantic expensive legal pain in the ass.

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Mirko Crocop and UFC in messy break-up

Post from: EveryJoe

Dana White On Jimmy Fallon

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He keeps it quite tame compared to some of his video blogs.

The WEC is also on twitter and has been for about the same amount of time that Dana has, with only 734 followers. The UFC twitter has the most updates and has a little over 2000 followers. Below are the twitter addresses as well as the twitter address to keep up with daily updates from here using the old Jab And Grapple twitter feed. Enjoy and happy tweeting.

Dana White Blog: http://www.twitter.com/DanaWhiteBlog

UFC On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ufc

WEC On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/weconversus

Follow Every Joe UFC/MMA On Twitter: http://twitter.com/jabandgrapple

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Dana White, UFC And WEC Now Tweeting

Imag: PrPhotos.com

As the sport grew and more fighters came in the the UFC, Chuck Liddell was still Chuck Liddell. He may not have been the most well rounded, adaptive fighter, but everyone knew who “The Iceman” was. He had a stand-up game that few could match and combos that looked almost choreographed as he let loose and fired away. If he started unloading, there was a good chance that the fight would be stopped soon after or his opponent would be knocked out somewhere in the mix.

By 2007 Liddell had three losses on his record. Of the three opponents he lost to, he had faced them again and had won. The only opponent he had lost to that he had yet to face again was Quinton Jackson, whom he faced in May of 2007. Chuck Liddell had been the Light-Heavyweight champion for over two years and had defended the belt 4 times against opponents such as Tito Ortiz, Jeremy Horn and a rematch against the man he won the title from, Randy Couture. Jackson, the younger man by 9 years just came off of a knock out win over Marvin Eastman in his first fight in the UFC and was hungry for the belt.

Liddell lost by TKO in the first round with Jackson. This seemed to be where things went down hill for The Iceman. 4 Months later he lost by decision after three rounds with Keith Jardine. In a highly hyped fight 3 months later, Liddell beat Wanderlei Silva by decision after three rounds in Silva’s first UFC since 2000. Chuck was on the comeback…so we thought.

9 Months later, Chuck has had quite a nice break between fights, as he should have. Rashad Evans, winner of the Light-Heavyweight contract from season 2 of The Ultimate Fighter had shown that he was no slouch that got lucky from a reality show. He, like Forrest Griffin was here to compete and win. A minute and 51 seconds in to round two and Evans catches Liddell with a big right, knocking him out cold. This is the first time that we saw Chuck get knocked out completely. Some people were talking about a Liddell retirement at this point.

At the post right presser Chuck Liddell never said for sure that he would be retiring from MMA. He left it open for the moment saying that he wanted to discuss it with friends and family. However, UFC President Dana White has pretty much made the decision for him, saying “He’s a huge superstar, and we could still sell lots of tickets, but I don’t care about that. I care about him. I care about his health, and it’s over, man. It’s over.“. White also mentioned that Liddell would likely continue to work with the UFC in one way or another.

Chuck Liddell always came out and fought his heart out. He was easily recognized in the ring with his blue shorts (most of the time), the short “Mohawk” style haircut, and how can we forget his beer gut that he somehow managed to keep fairly muscular and semi-cut. Lastly, when Liddell didn’t have that serious, “I’m going to kick the crap out of you” look on his face, he had one of those smiles that tells you that he’s real.  Ok, this is starting to sound like a eulogy. Anyway, you knew you were going to watch an exciting fight when Liddell was on the card, whether he won or not. If this last fight was in fact Chuck Liddell’s last fight, then he will be missed.

Post from: EveryJoe

Then End Of The Ice[man] Age

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He also said that he was going to stop doing the video blogs and take himself out of the lime-light. In this UFC 97 Video blog, Dana returns, though this time he speaks with a much quieter voice and keeps it pretty brief.

Does this mean that Dana will continue to do more video blogs in the future and being the mouth of war in the MMA world? We’ll find out soon enough!

Post from: EveryJoe

Dana Returns For UFC 97 Video Blog