Should Tito be banned for life

[John Matao]

I sat in complete disgust after Tito's terrible display of poor sportsmanship on Friday night.
As Tanner lay on the mat motionless with the Doctor trying to find a pulse Tito was pretending to dig a grave for him. This disturbed me greatly and two of my friends wives that were there had to leave the room and vomit.

Never in all my life have I seen such a disgusting display. I urge Zuffa to consider banning Tito for life. He is not the sort of person I want as a role model for my children. These days football is being made less violent and so are many other sports. If the Nevada state athletic guys see footage of this then Zuffa can kiss goodbye the UFC. It will be banned tomorrow.

I will never subscribe to a UFC PPV again if that scoundrel Tito Ortiz is fighting in it.

[PassiveGuy]

Its not That big of a deal, Ortiz said that he hoped Tanner was OK, plus he was so pumped from his win good sense didn't play in. I'm not defending him, that display was very, very bad and he should be fined and suspended but not banned for life. Anyway boxers do this stuff from time to time also.

[Mr. Miyagi]

John has a point. Tito has acted like a jerk on more than one occasion following a fight. Yelling "F---" at the top of his lungs after getting choked out by Mezger, walking around the ring smiling like some kind of animal while Bohlander was getting his cut checked, and wearing that silly shirt and flicking off the Lion's Den are not exactly sportsmanlike things to do. They can't ban him but hopefully someone will dethrone him and knock him out of the sport.

[ss]

Come on let's give Tito a break. He was pumped and he is one of the most arrogant fightwers today. But actually that's what makes Tito,Tito. For those of you who can't forgive him instead of ban him hope for him to get a good ass kicking that he deserves

[Tim Mousel]

That display was terrible and is definitely bad for the sport. At least he showed concern for Tanner later.

Renzo also showed poor judgment when he stepped on his downed opponent in what I believe was his first USA fight. Because of all the backlash he recieved, he hasn't done it again and in fact seems to be a very good sport now.

Hopefully, the same will happen with Tito...maybe he'll realize he should change that type of behavior. I thought it was really funny when he did his shooting guns "trick" to Mezger, but digging a grave while your opponent is laying there unconscious is pushing it too far.

Tim

[Bau13]

what an asshole....

I was just starting to like him...

Anyways.....what goes around comes around...

[Karlinhos]

i like tito's fighting style, but displays like this are in bad taste.

as for renzos display against ben spijkers (stepping on the his neck while walking over him), that was more a culmination of spijker having made some real stupid remarks towards renzo's wife prior to their fight. bad move. so i think renzo was intent on really punishing spijkers and did it more out of anger/frustration. if you notice, renzo realized what he had done as soon as the ref grabbed him and talked to him. he's never done anything like that again.

tito on the other hand has done things like this a number of times and i really doubt that he'll stop anytime soon. one can only hope that he won't let it get too far out of hand.

[Hookah Smokin Caterpillar]

I thought it was funny and its something that is done in EVERY sport, ANYWHERE. If you want to vomit with your friends wives over someone celebrating his victory, thats fine by me, but Tito will never be banned because he's UFC's big draw. Come on now, he knocked him out, its not like there was concern over whether he was gonna live or not...

[Maxximus]

Spijkers had it coming with all the sh!t he was talking before the fight. The trouble is that no one in the audience knew that so it wound up simply making Renzo look like another a$$hole from the Gracie family. As for Tito, I just don't understand it. I mean when you look at Tito's positive mentality and great character outside the ring, its just hard to reconcile it with the Tito who does all that infantile postfight BS. I think that if you really pay attention to what the guy has to say, he realy seems like a good person at heart. But even he himself admits that when stepping into the ring, he turns on the fighter switch and becomes someone else. As one of the premiere fighters of the sport, this is definitely something he has to work on or he'll end up doing to MMA what Tyson did to boxing.

[keithws]

Tito's antic were definitely carried out in poor taste. The guy should have taken a page out of Shamrocks post fight celebration against Igor Zinoviev. Unfortunately, Tito doesn't seem to have Frank's class.

I really didn't see a major problem with his victory celebrations over Mezger or Bohlander. It might have been done in poor taste, but these men were clearly okay after the fight. On the other hand, Tanner looked like he may have suffered serious injuries.

Once Tito looked back at Tanner, this possibility never fazed him. His token, "I hope Evan's okay" really didn't seem sincere.

I've heard that Tito's a good guy from more than a few individuals, but his victory celebration over Tanner went way over the line.

As far as being banned, absolutely not. This is the fight game and not an afterschool special! Tito's the number 1 middle in the world with a very exciting fighting style regardless of his post fight celebrations.

I look forward to Randleman cleaning his clock when they fight within a yr.

later.......

[DIRE WOLF]

I say keep Tito around. I would like to see him fight Kevin Randelman or Vitor Belfort.

[MEB Boy]

I'd rather see Tito fight as a heavyweight, which is what he is anyway. He is 6'3" tall and usually weighs 220 lbs or so and then cuts weight to weighin at 199.9 lbs, then he eats a good meal, drinks water and shows up to fight a middleweight w/ a 20+ lb weight advantage.

If I remember correctly his fight weigh was 217 lbs for his fight w/ Shamrock. Shamrock weighs in fully clothed at 194-196 lbs. Sak usually fights in the upper 180's or so. Of course there are others like Guy Metzger and Vanderlai Silva who routinely weigh in at 199 lbs, and Guy has fought in the low 200's outside of the UFC.

Look at Tito's fight again w/ Evan, and tell me Evan didn't look like a little kid, size and weight wise, next to Tito. Then Tito's postfight ritual really turned me off to him. He thinks he's the baddest middleweight in the land, but to me he always fights w/ a 20 lb weight difference and in this day of highly skilled fighters that's a big difference.

I think he should leave the middleweight bracket to true middleweights and step up to his normal everyday weight, which is Heavyweight. I'd love to see him come in at his usual 220 lbs for a fight w/ Pete Williams (230), Gilbert Yvel (225) or Igor Vovchanchin. I'd love to see them knock his block off. That would be the end of his postfight gravedigging ritual.

MEB Boy

[Rock Ape]

I know I will get flamed.....

being mainly a US board but such "sportmanship" is ingrained in American Sport to a far greater degree than in any other country in the world. Arrogance, Rudeness towards opponents (before and after contests), a lack of humility and modesty seems to be an accepted way in US sport.

Fortunately, in most of the rest of the world this hasn't caught on as standard practice.

Unfortunately, such US sportsman in general are blind to this and also carry on like this when overseas believing the rest of the world marvels in their greatness - it really isn't the case and has people looking at the US in a bad light.

One of many examples was the recent Olympics in Sydney where the US athletes were regularly booed. International crowds sick of the rude, arrogant, prima donna attitides showed their disapprovals at almost all sports at one time or another. Unfortunately also, US teams don't accept this has anything to do with their attitudes but rather the naive belief that the rest of the world is jealous of them and wants to be like them. That is the saddest part of all this.

The Dream Team who were once legends to basketball fans globally were consistently booed. I don't think anything would have stopped the party the night Lithuania almost beat them.

Whilst I admit that US athletes are not the only culprits, and not all US athletes at that, they far and away leave any other nations for dead in bad sportmanship, attitude and overall lack of true spirit of sportsmanship. It is now a standard custom to carry on like this. It will be a sad day for all sport if these practices take global hold.

Rock Ape.

Fire away guys but just an honest, learned opinion.

[Redneck]

I think people are over reacting about this.
At no stage did it look like Tanners life was in danger.
There is a film clip of the fight at UFC.TV and it doesnt even look as bad as the slam Frank Shamrock did to Igor Z. I think Tito knew Tanner was going to be OK when he started doing the grave digging stuff.

Maybe it is in bad taste but who said fighting was in good taste to start with? In the 1980's when Mike Tyson said he tried to punch the nose so the bone would penetrate the brain it helped give boxing a much needed boost because everyone started to talk about it.
Tito has done the same for the UFC by putting on this performance. Its good for the sport in so many ways.

[edro]

7418529630