A curious decision to amend Tito Ortiz’s recent win over Alberto El Patron in the Combate Americas promotion to a no-contest has now been scratched and his victory reinstated.
The Texas Commission had changed the result pending “further investigation” earlier in the week, but hadn’t explained why they’d done so, while Ortiz was adamant that he hadn’t done anything wrong and that has now proven to be the case.
““A urine sample provided by Jacob ‘Tito’ Christopher Ortiz on Dec. 7, 2019, at the Combate Americas MMA event showed a potentially disqualifying substance that Ortiz claimed was prescribed by a physician,” A statement from the Texas Commission said. “Pending the outcome of the TDLR inquiry into whether the substance was indeed prescribed by a physician, TDLR marked the fight results as ‘No Contest.’ TDLR confirmed with the physician that the item was prescribed to Ortiz. TDLR has reinstated Ortiz’s victory in the Dec. 7 bout.”
It has since been confirmed via ESPN that the substance Ortiz tested for was not a performance enhancer.
“[A fighter will] say, ‘Hey, I’ve been prescribed this, FYI,’” TDLR spokesperson Tela Mange told ESPN. “We say, ‘Great.’ And then when it actually comes up, oftentimes we’ll take a second look at it just to make sure. That’s what happened in this case.”
In the end it seems this matter was clumsily handled by the Texas Commission, temporarily damaging Ortiz’s reputation with the ‘no-contest’ announcement rather than waiting just a couple of days more to find out the results of the inquiry first.
“Like @NateDiaz209 said, “I’m not surprised MF’s” #TitovsAlberto #HuntingtonBeachBadBoy #thetruthwillsetyoufree,” Ortiz wrote on Instagram after yesterday’s news broke.
