Tito Ortiz has no idea he boxed Anderson Silva last year and not in 1999

UFC veteran Tito Ortiz is the gift that keeps on giving. And while with many fighters, the speech and memory gaffes seem indicative of the toll the sport takes on the body – Ortiz wasn’t that bright to begin with.

Which is possibly why it’s mildly amusing that Ortiz no longer recollects last year’s boxing match with Anderson Silva.

Tito Ortiz is one of the pioneers of the UFC. At the age of 22, ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ had his first two bouts in the promotion at UFC 13 event way back in 1997. In 2000 he won the vacant light heavyweight championship against Wanderlei Silva and defended it 5 times. Ortiz had a brief retirement in 2012 and returned two years later to compete in Bellator MMA.

The 47-year-old had a professional boxing match against fellow UFC veteran Anderson Silva in 2021. It was his first and only boxing match. Silva had it easy and knocked out Ortiz within two minutes of the first round. However, Ortiz recently thinks the match happened in 1999.

Recently, Tito Ortiz had a quick interview with The Schmo at Punishment HQ in Huntington Beach, California. He was asked about his boxing match with Silva in 2021. At first, Ortiz was explaining the reason why he gave such a bad performance against Silva.

“His[Silva] boxing career has been amazing. You know, when I took the fight against Anderson, I had a month before the fight to prepare for it. And the whole month was literally a cut weight. And Anderson was a smart guy trying to get me down to 195 pounds.” Ortiz said.

“I’ve never been down to 195 pounds since my freshman year in college. But, making that weight to 200, it was really really hard. If you can understand, I’ve never made 200 pounds since uhh 1999 when I fought Anderson Silva.” Ortiz said.

He continued, “I think my whole camp was strictly just cutting weight, hitting mitts and sparring. That’s all I did. I wish I had more time to prepare for it.”

In reality Ortiz failed to make weight for the clash in 2021 – he tipped the scale at 200 pounds on Friday morning, a full five pounds over the contracted catchweight limit of 195 pounds.

Ortiz was apologetic at the time and explained:
“It’s challenging. You have to understand, five weeks ago I was 240. I was comfortable and I didn’t realize what I was gonna be doing. I’m willing to give a little bit of money not to kill myself. I want to make sure I’ll be able to fight, I want to make sure I can perform at the capacity I’m able to do.”