More background:
[quote]Tito Ortiz looks to make things hot for The Iceman
NEIL DAVIDSON, Canadian Press
Big Bear Lake, Calif. — High above Los Angeles, Tito Ortiz is planning his next takeover.
And this move is decidedly hostile and very personal.
The mixed martial arts fighter from Huntington Beach, Calif., always looking to expand his empire inside and outside the ring, wants his UFC light-heavyweight title back from Chuck (The Iceman) Liddell when the two meet Dec. 30 in Las Vegas.
Ortiz, knocked out the first time they met, doesn’t like Liddell and it shows.
“I’m going to take him down, I’m going to punch him in his face . . . I’m just going to try to just brutalize Liddell and see what type of person he really is when he gets a beatdown,” Ortiz told The Canadian Press.
The Huntington Beach Bad Boy is honing his skills in an isolated gym housed in a red barn-like structure in Big Bear. The rustic resort is only 125 kilometres northeast of Tinseltown but seems more like a million miles away.
The windy road to Big Bear crawls up the side of a mountain, literally seeming to take you into the clouds. The road is so challenging that signs instruct drivers to turn off their air conditioning so their vehicles don’t overheat. A four-wheel drive truck or SUV is advisable, although a car with chains on its wheels will do the trick.
When you reach the top, more than 2,100 metres above sea level passing the Big Bear Lake dam en route, it’s as if you’ve stumbled into a Colorado ski resort, population 6,200. It’s hard to believe Los Angeles is so close.
Big Bear feels like the end of the road, but you have to go a bit further to get to the gym where Ortiz trains, hoping the gruelling workouts at high altitude will give him the edge.
It’s nothing fancy — dominated by a boxing ring and a cage, brought in specially by Ortiz who owns a house in town which he shares with his sparring partners.
During training, the day starts at noon for Ortiz as he builds his schedule to peak around 9:30 p.m., the time he usually fights. After a short drive in his boxy white Cadillac Escalade, Ortiz strolls through the door.
The first thing you notice about Ortiz — listed at 6-2 and 204 pounds — is he looks smaller in person. You expect more bulk given the way he threw Ken Shamrock around the cage like a rag doll.
The second is how elegant he is. Ortiz moves like a dancer, his muscular inverted torso screwed into an impossibly small waist. He is the exact opposite of the long and lean Liddell, who lopes as if feeling the effects of a long night driving cross-country in a tractor-trailer.
Ortiz politely takes time to greet a pair of reporters and photographer after walking in the gym door. Then he falls into a time-worn training routine that pulls him into his own world, once a 50 Cent CD is inserted in a battered boombox.
The elegance continues as Ortiz effortlessly jumps rope in front of a mirror. Then he slowly straps on protective head and leg gear and returns to the mirror to apply Vaseline over his eyes.
Ortiz looks good — and surely must know it after spending that much time in front of the mirror.
Inside the cage, Ortiz bangs Ultimate Fighter reality TV show alumnus Kendall Grove and his other sparring partners. A good right to Grove’s head has the six-foot-six Hawaiian spewing a trail of spittle. Grove absorbs a left kick to the head and smiles appreciatively.
The 24-year-old Grove also connects, however. Not a good sign when you are about to face the real deal when it comes to blunt force trauma in Liddell.
By the time the session is over, Ortiz, Grove and another fighter are all sporting minor welts and abrasions.
“It’s Monday banging,” a happy Ortiz yells.
Ortiz says he is healthy for the first time in years, having put behind him a nagging back injury that first surfaced weeks before his devastating 2003 loss to Randy Couture. He is madly in love with Jenna Jameson, the former porn princess who sold her Club Jenna company to Playboy in June. Forbes estimates Club Jenna had revenues of $30 million (U.S.) last year.
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