Issue 208
August 2024
September 24, 1999
Lake Charles, Louisiana
UFC 22: Only One Can Be Champion
By Brad Wharton
It’s not often in MMA that we’re lucky enough to see the two absolute bests of an era go one-on-one for all the marbles. With many organizations splitting the world’s top fighters between them, those days may be largely gone for good. In 1999, though, things were different. PRIDE was on the rise, poaching top US talent, and a smattering of regional promotions had begun to take root. The world’s two preeminent men around the 200lb mark resided in the UFC. The middleweight champion Frank Juarez-Shamrock, arguably the most complete fighter on the planet, and Jacob ‘Tito’ Ortiz, a man who would drag the sport kicking and screaming into a new era.
LITTLE BROTHER SYNDROME
Being Ken Shamrock’s little brother was a shadow Frank couldn’t shake. Not only were the pair not blood-related, but Frank was, by almost every metric, the better athlete and fighter. Still, Ken was the American poster child of 1990s MMA. The known quantity in a world where perception is reality.
Ever so slowly, times were changing. Ken’s run in the World Wrestling Federation had left him absent from his Lion’s Den gym, which needed a Shamrock at the helm. Frank’s ambitions were those of a fighter rather than a figurehead, and while leading the team was one thing, inheriting his brother’s beefs was another.
THE VILLAIN THEY NEEDED
When Tito Ortiz made his UFC debut, it was not a company needing heroes. The promotion had already had its Shamrocks, Gracies, Severns, and Colemans. It needed a bad guy. A personification of the brash counterculture underpinned by Nu-Metal, Jackass, and South Park. A living middle finger to tradition. In the late 90s the Lion’s Den was tradition, and Ortiz took it upon himself to poke the bear following wins over Guy Mezger and Jerry Bohlander.
Ortiz was a brute accustomed to weight cutting. Thanks to his collegiate wrestling background, he could easily make the sub-200lb weight category before packing on close to 20 pounds before bell time. With his size, wrestling credentials, and a mean streak when dishing out damage from top position, he may not have been the Godfather of Ground ‘n’ Pound, but he definitely was its Bastard Son.
THE FIGHT OF THE DECADE
Somebody must have been listening to Bob Dylan because the times were a ’changin’. Five-minute rounds had been instituted at the previous event, as had the ‘10-point must’ judging system. This appeased athletic commissions, but there were financial considerations, too. The promotion was desperate to get back on cable PPV, and word on the street was that they needed to ‘be more like boxing’ to do so. Still, an impressive 50,000+ tuned in via satellite PPV to see Shamrock defend what was then the middleweight title against the man many believed to be his heir apparent in Ortiz.
As the pair entered the cage, the size difference was pronounced. The challenger tipped the scales bang on the 199lb limit and stood about four inches taller. Frank had ‘officially’ weighed in at 198, but he’d done so fully clothed before comically stepping off the scales and removing several heavy items from his pockets. It was a different time.
OPENING ROUND TACTICS
Shamrock opened the bout kicking, a risky tactic with Ortiz’s takedown acumen. Sure enough, the challenger was able to collapse his man to the mat following an aborted suplex. The trademark ground ‘n’ pound soon followed. Ortiz would score multiple takedowns in the first period, and outside of a brief armbar attempt, he didn’t look to be in trouble from his opponent’s notorious submission game. Tito had done the damage, and three judges jotted down a confident 10-9.
The second round featured more of the same. Shamrock came out kicking but soon found himself on his back. Here is where the final part of the triumvirate came into play. As Ortiz clubbed away with punches and elbows, Frank stayed active. He wasn’t scoring, but as the clock ticked down, analyst Jeff Blatnik had figured it out. he was playing a long game. This became 20-18 Ortiz.
THIRD ROUND SLYNESS
In the third, the future ‘Huntingdon Beach Bad Boy’ appeared visibly slower. Shamrock landed some big kicks, looking half a step ahead before the inevitable takedown came. Tito dropped some heavy hammers, but Frank was sneaking punches and elbows from the bottom. He gave his back, using the transition to slip up to his feet the second time he asked. The champ connected with a punch. Ortiz clattered forward to clinch up, but a violent dirty boxing combo snapped the challenger’s head around. The hammer was slowly finding out how it felt to be the nail. A desperation takedown followed. Shamrock was cut, and Ortiz jammed a finger into it to rake open the wound.
“That was dirty, Tito,” he said, matter-of-factly after the fight, and a rule banning the practice would be brought in for the next event. The round was the closest of the battle so far, but Ortiz was up 30-27 in the eyes of most. With the new rounds and scoring system, Shamrock was behind and would need a finish.
ROUND 4 FOR GLORY
As the fighters came out for the first ‘championship round’ in UFC history, their body language told a different story. Ortiz was a spent force, fighting on instinct. For Shamrock, everything was going according to plan. The champion stuck to the script, chopping away at the legs and body of an increasingly immobile challenger to set up his punches. He scored almost at will, and it was close to two minutes before Ortiz found the takedown. Sensing a momentum shift, the crowd booed the move, but it wouldn’t be long before they had something to cheer about. Ortiz remained on top, but the only blows landing were Shamrock’s punches and palm strikes, as his active guard sapped Tito’s energy.
With a minute to go, the champ exploded, elevating Ortiz into a standing position and battering him with a flurry of strikes against the cage. Tito speared his man with a takedown out of muscle memory, but Frank was wise to it, latching on an arm-in guillotine that he used to sweep out to a standing position, with Ortiz on all fours grasping his leg for dear life. A thunderous downward elbow landed, followed by a series of hammer fists. Ortiz had had enough, furiously tapping the mat.
THE WRAP-UP
Mike Goldberg recounted a pre-fight conversation where Shamrock had told him, “My best submission is my endurance.” It was prophetic and generally considered a tipping point for strength and conditioning regimens becoming as crucial a part of MMA as striking and submissions. And just like that, an era had ended. Shamrock relinquished the title in the cage and departed the UFC for semi-retirement. Unable to mend the burned bridge, he remains mostly erased from the promotion’s history. Ortiz, who also had a turbulent relationship with the organization at times, captured the vacant title in his next bout and became the talisman for the promotion in the pre-TUF years, his bouts with Ken Shamrock and Chuck Liddell doing some of the UFC’s best business. Tito vs. Frank may not stack up to the Lawler vs MacDonalds or any number of Justin Gaethje bouts in sheer action.
By the dawning of the new millennium, it was undoubtedly the greatest fight in UFC history.
