A light heavyweight bout between Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Hall of Famers is set to happen at the Bellator 131 event on November 15 (November 16 in PH) at the Valley View Casino Center in San Diego, California as former UFC champion Tito Ortiz squares off with fellow Octagon veteran Stephan Bonnar.
Newly-minted company president Scott Coker publicly confirmed the fight booking on Saturday, September 6 (PH Time) during Bellator 123’s broadcast.
The announcement felt more like a professional wrestling promo as Bonnar entered the cage alongside a masked man, who turned out to be Ortiz’s former training partner Justin McCully, and hastily threw verbal jabs at his opponent, which included a mention of Ortiz’s ex-wife and adult film star Jenna Jameson.
“Everyone says the same thing. He’s the most selfish, self-absorbed, arrogant sack of crap they have ever met. The only thing bigger than his head is his inflated ego,” Bonnar mentioned. “All I got to say to you is poor Jenna. I don’t know how she put up with you all those years.”
An incensed Ortiz fired back with exasperated remarks before charging and pushing Bonnar, leading to an minor skirmish that was quickly defused.
“You can talk all the smack you want. When you talk about my family and you talk about my friends, this s–t gets personal,” Ortiz said.
Both men had engaged in a war of words on social media that began immediately after Bonnar inked a multi-fight deal with Bellator last August 27.
Ortiz (17-11-1) snapped a three-fight losing skid in his promotional debut under the Bellator banner this past May when he choked out the organization’s middleweight king Alexander Shlemenko in a 205-pound contest.
The 39-year-old “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” decided to hang his gloves after fulfilling his last fight on his UFC contract in July 2012, but was penciled to end a year-plus retirement in November 2013 by headlining Bellator’s first pay-per-view event versus Quinton “Rampage” Jackson before a neck injury forced him to withdraw from the marquee match-up.
On the other hand, Bonnar (15-8) comes out of retirement and competes for the first time since viciously yielding to then-middleweight champion Anderson Silva at UFC 153 in October 2012.
The aforementioned setback was followed by a failed drug test for an anabolic steroid, which prompted Bonnar to leave the sport of mixed martial arts.
The 37-year-old “American Psycho” was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame nine months later, courtesy of his epic battle against Forrest Griffin in the season finale of the first The Ultimate Fighter.
The Bellator 131 affair will go head-to-head with UFC 180, a pay-per-view fight card headlined by heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez’s title defense against Fabricio Werdum in the promotion’s first visit to Mexico. – Rappler.com
There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.