UFC fans: why was tito ortiz such a huge draw?

[ron_mexico]

Tito was at the right place at the right time. At that time the talent pool was thin and the UFC almost had the feel of pro wrestling, with some of their top talent also having over the top personalities..like Shamrock, Tank Abbot and Tito. Shamrock was actually doing both wrestling and MMA. Chuck Lidell actually looked like a wwe star himself.

They had those corny ass ring intro's like wwe, with pyrotechnics and the whole nine. Some of the opponents were mad disrespectful to their opponents. Tito in particular. Chael Sonnen would have fit right in.


So Tito was perfect for that time. Now a days, personality and charisma only gets you so far with the talent pool being deep as hell, and mma feeling more like the rest of sports.

 

[Helico-pterFunk]

His in-your-face style sold, plus he was able to defend his strap in the early days on several occasions. Plus, Bruce Buffer was saying a year or two ago on his podcast IT'S TIME that Tito's always been great at self-marketing too. Buffer really respected that (given his own business acumen over the past 30 or more years being in his early-50s now). Said Tito was the kind of guy who would promote himself and forthcoming events regularly. He'd go to a restaurant ... and leave some stickers of his or those small 4x6 or 5x7-type ads on the walls in restaurant washrooms, or even drop them in the damn urinals. Getting his name out there ... getting the sport out there, etc. Plus his feuding with the likes of Shamrock, White, and others later on drew heavily (especially the televised scraps with Shamrock). They were big ratings draws years back. I had to laugh at his late-career resurgence and big win over Ryan Bader. No longer was he the Huntington Beach Badboy, but now The People's Champion. Dana was no longer his "bitch", etc. He was clockin' big bank too. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay, plus points on the PPV buys too (i.e. - if the PPV event sells this many buys, you get X amount extra ...like all the big names get - i.e. - Silva, GSP, Jones, etc). I respect that considering he started back in the late-90s and was stomping fools.