Bellator 170 headliner Chael Sonnen: ‘I got brought to Bellator to replace Tito Ortiz'

Chael Sonnen’s pitch for sending off Tito Ortiz at Bellator 170 is to prove he’s the man by beating the former man.

Beating Ortiz (18-12-1 MMA, 2-1 BMMA), a UFC Hall of Famer scheduled to retire after the fight, isn’t just a stop on the “Legends Ass-Kicking Tour” he announced upon defecting from the UFC to Bellator. It’s a changing of the guard as the face of a promotion. And it’s a way to reverse-engineer his status as an all-time great – not that he was ever in doubt.

Beat a former titan, and you’ll join him in the history books.

“Tito’s always been on my list,” Sonnen (29-14-1 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) recently told our partners at Champions.co. “Tito had a great career. (He was a UFC) champion, a (UFC) Hall of Famer, and frankly, he deserved both. He was the best fighter in the world. What he did for the industry, and the amount of attention he brought in, the cards he headlined, and the media he was able to get – he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

“My contention was, not only was I the best fighter of my time, I would’ve been the champion of the world 10 years earlier had I only gotten the opportunity. Tito Ortiz, as good as he was, never would have been champion had I been given the shot. And it’s not just Tito – it’s all the guys from that era. I could’ve whipped them all, and I have made that claim for a long time. When I finally did get my shot, I did whip them all.”

Complete accuracy isn’t essential to Sonnen’s point, of course. Paulo Filho, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones kept him from winning titles in the now-defunct WEC and UFC on four separate occasions. They still benefitted handsomely from the attention he brought them. And if the fights were measured by microphone time, he never lost.

“From a personal standpoint, I told my friends, I told my family, I told my coaches, I’m the best fighter in the world – and I have been for a meaningful period of time,” he said. “And if I’ve got to go back and run the clock back and show everybody now that I was the best back then, too, then that’s what I’m going to do. That’s really my motivation for Tito. I don’t disparage his skills or his standing in the sport. He’s very good … but he is not me.”

No one will argue Sonnen is a pound-for-pound great in getting fans to tune in. And that’s exactly what Bellator needs when the two meet in the Spike-televised headliner on Jan. 21 at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Ortiz would’ve loved to have had Sonnen’s success as a promoter, but he has always better in the cage. Time has been his biggest opponent, which is why he’s calling it quits after two decades of fighting and a litany of surgeries.

Sonnen plans to send him into the sunset with his head hanging low.

“He says this is his retirement fight like there’s some kind of choice,” Sonnen said. “He acts like he’s the first Hall of Famer that I’ve retired. He acts like he’s the first guy I haven’t sent out on their shield because they had no other options. I didn’t get brought into Bellator to fight Tito Ortiz. I got brought to Bellator to replace Tito Ortiz.”

Neither fighter can be replaced, though. In this often-bizarre world, they’re both one of a kind. For more on Bellator 170, check out the UFC Rumors section of MMAjunkie.

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