The List: Our all-time favorite MMA excuses

For too long, our writers’ hyper-specific arguments have been confined to the private corridors of the Internet. Welcome to The List, where we take their instant message bickerings, add a little polish, and make them public. Today, in the wake of Conor McGregor’s lost to Nate Diaz (and some subsequent justifications for the defeat), we look at the best post-loss excuses in MMA history.

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Tito Ortiz, because he’s pretty much written the book on MMA excuses

Tito Ortiz and Forrest Griffin

Steven Marrocco: If we’re even going to talk about excuses, we have to go to the very source of dubious explanations post-fight and otherwise, the reason we cringe and sharpen our Internet pitchforks when a fighter begins a sentence with, “I don’t want to make excuses.”

At this point, I don’t think Tito Ortiz even attempts to use that softener when, after just about every single fight, he details the injuries he sustained before he stepped into the cage.

If not for the syntactic surprises, an Ortiz press conference is easily scriptable. It goes a little something like this: “I came into this camp with a broken (insert malady here), but I overcame it with my heart and will and determination, and I doubt you all could do the same if you’d been through as many surgeries as me, my back, I do this for the fans, Punishment Athletics, out.”

We’ve seen these over the past six or seven years of Ortiz’s career, to the point where we can’t begin to take them seriously. But there’s one that still stands out to me as the Mt. Everest of Ortiz excuses, and I think you know where I’m going with this.

Yeah, the cracked skull.

After a split-decision loss to Forrest Griffin at UFC 106, Ortiz claimed to suffer this ghastly injury in training camp and “that’s why I had a black eye the whole time.” In a surprising display of solidarity, Griffin even stepped to his defense, which was nice, but didn’t quite put things to bed.

We might have cut Ortiz a little slack if he’d simply said he wasn’t 100 percent coming into the fight – no one is. But to imply his brains were one step from spilling onto the canvas, and shame on us for not applauding? That was probably the moment we gave up on the co-existence of Ortiz and credibility.

To be fair, I don’t have access to Ortiz’s medical records, and he’s not a medical professional, so I can’t be 100 percent sure he was full of it. I do know, however, that nowhere on the list of medical suspensions released post-event was a directive advising the commission, “Ortiz suspended 180 days or until cleared for cranium fracture.” So I’m pretty sure.

‘Rampage’ Jackson, because he was poisoned … and he also didn’t eat … and he probably shouldn’t have even fought … but he doesn’t want to make excuses

Ben Fowlkes: I’ll see your Tito and raise you a “Rampage,” Steven. As in, Quinton Jackson, the man who weaves excuses like a master craftsman of shifting the blame.

To give you a sense of how wily a veteran Jackson is in the excuse-making business, consider his second professional loss, which also happened to come in his PRIDE debut back in 2001. He fought MMA legend Kazushi Sakuraba, got himself submitted in the first round, yet rather than accepting the fact that he’d been beaten by a superior grappler who would go on to become one of the all-time greats, Jackson reached for an explanation straight out of a James Bond movie: poison.

“I remember my stomach feeling like I swallowed a brick,” Jackson said in 2007. “I still, to this day, think that somebody poisoned my room service or something like that. I was happy that it was my biggest paycheck to date, but I know they brought me there to lose. They made me lose all this weight when PRIDE didn’t even have weight classes. I knew there was no way I could win. But I knew I couldn’t turn back and not fight.”

(Pro tip: When you find yourself using verbiage like “I still, to this day, think [fill in the blank],” stop and consider the possibility that you may be lying to yourself.)

Jackson’s food-related excuses didn’t stop there, however. He blamed a 2004 loss to Wanderlei Silva on his decision to fast for religious reasons prior to the bout, and then famously ran afoul of the law when, after subsisting on no food, no sleep and a bunch of energy drinks, he ran wild through the streets of Southern California in a monster truck with his picture on the side. If only there were some middle ground between eating poisoned food and eating nothing at all.

But you know what I think you have to respect about Jackson? At least he knows that this is a thing he does. Consider what he told Ariel Helwani prior to his UFC 123 bout with Lyoto Machida. When asked about cryptic comments he’d made following his decision loss to Rashad Evans – comments that, not surprisingly, sounded a lot like non-specific excuses – “Rampage” replied:

“I kind of learned something from watching Randy Couture. I noticed that he don’t make excuses and I do. I do make excuses for all my losses. Because I got excuses for all my losses. But I just really choose not to talk about it this time. … When things happen in camp and stuff like that, and I was thinking that maybe I should pull out of the fight, but I didn’t. I just did it for the fans, and I tried my best, and I almost won. You know, I’m happy with that.”

See what he just did there? Do you see what excuse-making magic this wizard of words hath wrought? He made an excuse, or at least assured us that he had one, even while insisting that he wasn’t going to make excuses. I’m not necessarily saying you should make excuses for all the times you’ve tried and failed in your life, but man, if you’re going to do it, you can’t do it much better than this man.

Diego Sanchez, because his steak-tartare excuse is unique, if nothing else

Diego Sancez

Dann Stupp: So, you’ve spent the better part of a week surviving your very restrictive diet, winding down what was surely a brutal fight camp, sucking out as much water as your body’s organs can handle, wobbled up to the scale to make weight, and now you’re just one day away from a high-profile slot on a UFC pay-per-view card. So, what’s for dinner?

Steak tartare (not Sanchez’s)

If you’re Diego Sanchez, you decide now is the time for a culinary adventure – the chance to sample some new fare and treat your tastebuds as your weakened body craves some real nutrition.

Now apparently, on the eve of hand-to-hand combat on MMA’s biggest stage, is the ideal time for steak tartare – raw beef with a quail egg plopped on top.

The morning after his unanimous-decision loss to Myles Jury at UFC 171 in 2014, Sanchez published a series of tweets discussing his poor performance. He ultimately blamed the lackluster effort on food poisoning, the result of a baffling meal choice on the eve of the event.

Let Sanchez explain it:

According to Sanchez, he wanted some red meat, “but raw was the wrong choice.” Ya think? He said vomiting began soon after his meal, and he never fully recovered before the fight. (Hell, he said steak tartare was merely his appetizer; just imagine what might’ve been the main course.)

I mean, we have no reason to doubt Sanchez’s account of the situation. Do we believe he would order a meal without knowing precisely what it was, and could that specific meal result in a queasy stomach, especially after a tough weight cut? Yes, and yes.

And let’s give Sanchez some credit. Sure, he laid an egg (proverbial, not fowl) against Jury, who didn’t fall for his opponent’s baiting for a slugfest. But heading into the bout, Sanchez had won six “Fight of the Night” bonuses in a nine-fight span. Win or lose (he went 5-4 during that stretch), he was at least usually entertaining.

Again, Sanchez’s excuse was believable, though it’s also believable Fury would have won that fight, food poisoning or not. But like most things with “The Nightmare,” he gets points for creativity.

Tiki Ghosn, because he was cut – totally not knocked out, you guys

Tiki Ghosn

Matt Erickson: George Washington once said, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

When it comes to excuses, that’s a great philosophy. But his 18th century message apparently didn’t make it to the ears of a whole slew of MMA fighters.

We’ve heard some doozies through the years after fighters lose. Hell, we’ve even heard some great ones after some wins, with fighters wanting the world to know just why they didn’t get a finish, or why their fight was less exciting than watching paint dry.

Typically, the excuses involve some kind of injury or ailment. But it’s a rare and magnificent day when a fighter offers an excuse for losing that flies so strongly in the face of unassailable facts that your first instinct is to roll your eyes, and your second reaction is to just stand up and applaud the outlandishness.

That was the case for Tiki Ghosn way back at UFC 40 in November 2002. Ghosn was riding a three-fight winning streak after the first two losses of his pro career, both of which came in the UFC. After picking up some wins elsewhere, he got another shot in the promotion and took on Robbie Lawler.

You might know Lawler as the man who would go on to win titles for SuperBrawl, and ICON Sport, and EliteXC, and, ultimately, a little promotion called the UFC – where he’s now the welterweight champ and still regarded, as he was more than 13 years ago against Ghosn, as one of the hardest hitters in the game.

Lawler was 6-0 when he fought Ghosn – with five wins courtesy of his hands. With Ghosn coming forward on him in the first round, Lawler planted his opponent with a right hand, and then landed another big one on the canvas to put Ghosn out.

Before the fight, Ghosn said Lawler was overrated. After the fight – again, in the face of unassailable facts – he didn’t back down. Either denying completely he had been knocked out, or just not remembering because of the power of Lawler’s right hand, Ghosn took a page from Will Smith’s character in “Focus”: “You die with the lie.”

“Would I take it back (that he was overrated)?” he said. “No. I got a cut. They stopped it because of a cut.”

He was cut, all right. He also was out cold. All the crowd could do was boo what would become a legendary excuse for the all-timers list. All Lawler could do was smile when he was, no doubt, thinking Seth Meyers-style: “Really?!”

Ghosn (10-7-1) never did win in the UFC, going 0-4. He went 0-3 during his WEC tenure. In fact, all seven of his career losses came from stoppages.

And at least one of them was only because of a cut.