**CORRECTION AT END OF POST**
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Poor Tito Ortiz. The “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” does not even fight Antonio Rogerio Nogueira until March 26, but an army of UFC pundits have predicted an Ortiz loss ever since the “UFC Fight Night Live” card was announced. And when UFC President Dana White is not spouting off about women never fighting in his sport, he's spouting off about dropping Ortiz if he loses that bout in Seattle. The bad Bad Boy vibes even extend to the event's poster.
]
The 5thround.com said this about the placard for the light-heavyweight scrap to be broadcast on Spike TV:
“After plastering the Huntington Beach Bad Boy's mug across countless billboards throughout the years, this may be the last time the Octagon's graphics department works with the living legend.”
Ouch!
Ortiz has gone 0-4-1 over his past five fights, the most recent defeat being a unanimous decision in favor of the 36-year-old's opponent Matt Hamill at UFC 121 at the Honda Center in October.
Nogueira knows the feeling: He'd lost two of his previous three heading into September's UFC 119, which he had to pull out of due to a knee surgery.
Writer's note — As reader Noah Roberts of Huntsville, Texas, correctly points out, light-heavyweight
Antonio Rogerio Nogueira had been scheduled to fight Tito Ortiz. His twin brother, heavyweight Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, is the fighter who lost
two of this last three and suffered a knee injury in UFC 119. I regret
the error . . . and please don't hit me.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.