Tito had good wrestling. Jones is better.
Tito had good ground-and-pound. Jones is better.
Tito's striking was middling at best. Jones shows new tricks every time he fights.
The only area Tito might be better at is submissions. I feel he had an underrated submission game, while Jones is really only good at the guillotine. But I don't think Tito would find himself in a position where tapping Jones would be possible.
Jones is just a better fighter who's beaten better opponents. Tito fought blown-up middleweights and guys who were never top-10. Not ALL the time, mind you, but he didn't have killers like Shogun and Rampage gunning for him.
I honestly never even rated Tito Ortiz as that special. I think his wrestling was good. but i think he was no where near in the class as other genuine champions. He seemed to have a saloon passage most of the way and never really dominated any of his major threat opponents. He was blatantly scared of Chuck Liddell.
Ortiz had a fantastic start to his career.
His only unavenged loss was to Frank Shamrock who is a top level fighter.
He avenged his loss to Guy Mezger via KO. Mezger was a very game competitor with many strong wins under his belt.
However, his "championship years" were never quite that. He was a gate keeper at best. With losses to both Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell he was clearly not going to retake the belt.
However, he was still better than the rest. You can't put Tito as better than the #3 LHW in his prime.
Jon Jones has 20 wins with one very questionable disqualification loss. Regardless of it's questionability it's still not being defeated. Jones has 20 wins and is undefeated.
Although maybe past the primes, Jones had wins over both Rampage and Shogun who were at one point #1s. He has continued to clean out all the up and comers in the LHW division.
Summary:
Tito was never the best during his career (unavenged losses to both Chuck and Randy)
Jon Jones is indisputably the leader and best of anyone fighting within the span of Jones' own career in the LHW division.
Tito Ortiz was a good fighter with very good wrestling, but if Jones could stay up high with Ortiz then i think he may be able to dominate with his reach and speed.
Both are ****, but Ortiz was slightly more ****.
what if Jones, who's in his prime right now, faced off with Tito Ortiz when he was reigning champion. who would win???? man too bad time travel is impossible.
