The rant this week will focus on my favorite fighter and how he has inspired all the other sports to come to his par. What am I talking about, not the fitness and not the style of fighting, I am talking about the attitude. What the hell is the other sports coming to, Tito has brought the other minor sports up to his style of “tude” in the UFC. I see all the sports like Bowling and Armwrestling having people come in with an attitude. Now I am not going to rant this week about the BS that it's “Bad” for the sports. The sports world have come up to the style of Tito. I believe this is good and have brought many sports up to the popular people or mainstream people.
First off what is the “Style of Tito”, the Tito situation is simply this, most fighters come to the ring. They walk in and touch gloves and then win or lose. However, Tito Ortiz is the first guy I saw who was not faking it. He had his attitude and he made all the other people look like card board cutouts. First way to look at this, is back to the first UFC that Tito competed in, he was fighting a guy named Guy Metzger and he looked like a shrunk Tank Abott. However, then he kept fighting and eventually carrying his trademark mexican/usa flagto the cage. Tito also had his post fight t-shirts which talked smack on the person, he just whooped and/or challenged the next guy who wanted to step up and get smacked in the neck. Then his attitude on interviews, your best bet to know what I am talking about is to check out the Double DVD disc set of UFC 40. Tito taking on Ken Shamrock. The extras and the fight itself shows off Tito's style that many now try and often fail in trying to make their own.
I Tivo'ed the Arm wrestling championships the other day on ESPN. Now I had never heard about these till I saw Gary Goodridge win in the UFC 9 and heard he was former champion in this event. However, I have since saw none of these, Hell I figured after he went, these folks closed up shop and left air. However, they are back and now they have this dude in the event. Travis Bagent, now I see all these guys competing and most of them just stepped up and arm wrestled. However, this dude was talking smack at the weigh ins and then while he arm wrestled and before he arm wrestled. I saw this guy and I did not believe that he was “watching too much WWE” or anything like that but I thought, “it's the arm wrestling version of Tito Ortiz”.
Then I think back to the PBA, yes I said PBA, Professional Bowlers Association. Well the PBA has a few effective stars but none stand out more than Pete Weber, nicknamed PDW, after the WWE star Rob Van Dam{RVD}. Now I see that he is basically copying RVD however one thing, Weber does and that is talk smack well. He was profiled on Real Sports on HBO and I have saw him on PBA and he does talk smack the way Tito would, if he was a bowler. Weber has pretty much lifted PBA out of nothing and low ratings to now being a strong ratings winner for ESPN and has gained them new fans, not just bowlers and old guys in the same way that Tito took UFC from the near dead days of Frank Shamrock and darken buildings to Vegas and Fox Sports apperances.
So basically what has happened is that Tito has inspired a whole set of people and I am sure he has in other sports that I don't watch. However if they work hard enough people will have to notice them. However many people will see this as “Jiggy is a Tito nuthugger.” One thing that pisses me off about the net for that very phrase. However that is another rant all together. Finally let's end on a postive note, Tito may get smacked on but without Tito. People would be doing the same old boring crap and that's it.
