Posted on 12/29/2006 10:50:13 PM

UFC 66 Fighter Profile - The Huntington Beach Bad Boy

By Darren Cora

Tito Ortiz is good at two things.

Talking and fighting.

Luckily his fight game is better than his talk game because it most certainly has contributed to his fight record.

Talking smack is somewhat of a rarity in mixed martial arts. The majority of opponents have such a high level of respect for fellow combatants that they prefer to do their talking in the ring. That's not the case with Tito. In fact, In his last 12 victories he's donned a post fight customized t-shirt that attempts the emasculation of his defeated opponent.

That's pretty much as cocky and bad ass as you can get.

Tito made a special shirt back in 2004, a shirt he never got the opportunity to wear. That shirt was for Chuck Liddell.

 

As former friends and daily training partners. Ortiz and Liddell know better than anybody the nuances of each others technique. They know what each others strengths and weaknesses are, where the chinks in there armour lay. How they like to train and how they like to win.

It is no surprise then that Tito comes in as an underdog in this fight.

Tito is, and always has been a wrestler. His roots started in wresting and led to jui jitsu and then to kickboxing. He posseses a very lethal natural striking ability, but at his core he is a submission fighter. His strength in the clinch combined with his natural ability to strike makes for an overwhelming and brutal ground and pound. This often is misinterpreted as the ability to be an extraordinary stand up fighter.

This is significant for the oddsmakers because Liddell is an extremely accurate and heavy handed puncher. In their last encounter, Tito was intent on standing up and trading with faster, harder hitting Liddell. This proved his undoing as Chuck illustrated his uncanny ability to consistently land what look to be pure, wild overhand haymakers.

Tito insists that he can handle Chuck's stand up this time. That he can trade with the knockout machine. That Chuck has been k.o.'d before and will be again. But unless he can dictate the tempo of the fight, and impose his fight style on Liddell, its going to be a short night. He needs to get the fight to where he is most successful, on top, on the mat. If he applies his crowd pleasing, offensive hot dog style on Saturday night, a wise and poised Chuck Liddell will do what he has done dozens of times before, wait...and pouce.

There's one thing we've all learned from watching sports of all kinds, its that offense wins points, defence wins championships.

UFC 66 - Ortiz vs. Liddell check all the latest odds and lines here.

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Darren Cora is a freelance columnist and regular contributor to the BetUS.com Locker Room and BetUS.com Radio Show. To email Darren, send your comments to faceoff@betus.com.