Former UFC light heavyweight champion and UFC Hall of Famer Tito Ortiz has retired from competing in MMA. He doesn’t plan to disappear from the sport as he has now thrown his hat into the fighter management side of things.
He manages former Strikeforce featherweight women’s champion Cyborg Santos and is trying to work with the UFC to put together the biggest women’s super fight of all time in Cyborg Santos and Ronda Rousey.
The problem is that Santos was the Strikeforce featherweight champion at 145 pounds and tested positive for steroids after her last fight in December 2011 She’s served a year suspension and is currently a free agent. Rousey began her MMA career in the featherweight division. However, Rousey switched to the bantamweight division (135 pounds) and now wants Santos to make the cut down in weight although she’s never fought in that weight class. It looks like the fight could be on the verge of not happening as Ortiz voiced his opinion on “The MMA Hour” with Ariel Helwani earlier today. Transcription courtesy of MMAFighting:
“Working with Cyborg is challenging. The girl wants to fight, of course, but it’s just a question with her getting down to 145 [pounds]. She really feels it’s impossible. She walks around 160, 165, and to make 145 for all the years she’s done it, she’s like, ‘Tito, it really takes the last energy just for me to make 145. Now they want me to cut down to 135? It’s going to be really, really, almost impossible.’ I battle back and forth with her, telling her how the UFC is going to take care of her, this and that. We’re still just … we’re at the end of the rope, I think. I’m not sure if she wants to do it. Me and my partner, George Prajin, we just sit there and we just try to talk to her over and over again.
“Will she make 135? As a person who has cut weight for 22 years: no, I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s hard for women to cut that much weight. For a woman to be three-percent body fat, it’s not healthy. She talks about that she wants to have kids some day. Things like that can damage her [in that regard], and a lot of people don’t understand that. This is not a man we’re talking about. This is a woman we’re talking about. For Ronda to cut down the weight, yeah, she had a lot of extra weight on her.
“[Cyborg] doesn’t have much on her. She used to walk around at 170 and she lost some muscle mass just to try to see if she can get lower in this weight to do it. So far, so good. Like I said, she’s 160, 165. She bounces back around there. She says she stopped lifting weights the way she does and really just [been] focusing on her jiu-jitsu. She’s been training, putting in the time.
“I hope I can put this fight together, man. I’m trying my hardest. I hope Dana [White] understands. I hope Dana is listening to this and understands. I’m trying to get this thing together.”
It’s a tough position for Ortiz and Santos because they don’t really have any leverage. Santos was stripped of her Strikeforce title after testing positive for steroids, and has been out of action since December 2011 while also being a free agent. However, it is THE fight that people want to see in the women’s division. I proposed a catchweight bout of 140 pounds in August which I’m sure Ortiz and camp would be willing to do.
Rousey is scheduled to face Liz Carmouche in the main event at UFC 157 and will be the first female fight in UFC history. All of this depends on Rousey getting past Carmouche, and it’s a fight that she’s the heavy betting favorite. If Rousey is successful in defending her title, I expect things to heat up regarding the proposed Santos/Rousey fight.
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