A decade since his last fight in the UFC, the now 47-year-old Tito Ortiz has revealed that he wants to make a return to the Octagon for one last fight against Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua.
“It’s never over and I think I made that mistake with the UFC when I said I’ll never fight for the UFC ever again. And now I think about it, that’ll be an amazing last fight for myself and for Shogun Rua,” Ortiz told Helen Yee.
“Shogun has his last fight with the UFC, we’re in kind of the same era, so it would be nice to see a Tito Ortiz vs. Shogun. I would like that.
“I have a lot of respect for Shogun, I think he’s an amazing former champion, an amazing fighter. I watched his last fight. I thought he won the fight, but they ended up giving it to OSP. Let’s see what happens in the future.”
Ortiz has actually put together a solid run since his UFC departure in 2012, having won five out of six fights in the 10 years since, defeating other aging, past-their-prime veterans like Chuck Liddell, Chael Sonnen, Stephan Bonnar and Alexander Shlemenko along the way.
Ortiz didn’t fare so well in his boxing debut last year however, suffering a KO loss to fellow UFC legend Anderson Silva in just 82 seconds.
As for the 40-year-old Shogun, he’s signalled that his next fight will be his last after tapping out due to strikes against Paul Craig and then losing out by split decision to Ovince Saint-Preux.
Ortiz has always had a notoriously volatile relationship with his former boss / manager Dana White, so it seems unlikely that the UFC president would be eager to bring him back at this stage, but stranger things have happened.
