Free This Is Gonna Hurt by Tito Ortiz Page B

anything really heavy. All I would do was sleep it off for a couple of days and I would be fine.
    When I finished my second year at Golden West in 1996, I was looking to transfer to a four-year school for my junior year. The University of Bakersfield was looking at me. Arizona State was looking at me. Nebraska was looking at me. Nebraska was too cold. Arizona was too hot. And Bakersfield was only a couple of hours away. It was out in the middle of the desert and kind of isolated, but I would be able to wrestle.
    Kristin and I discussed my going to Bakersfield. She was working, and so we decided that I would go by myself and that she would join me at the beginning of the second semester.
    KRISTIN ORTIZ
    I was always paranoid that Tito was probably cheating on me. I began to catch him in lies. He finally did cheat on me and we broke up. We were basically apart for two months. It was horrible. I was devastated. So was Tito. He would write me letters and call my family and friends. He was trying real hard to patch things up with us. So of course, eventually, I forgave him.
    Well, the second semester came around and Kristin still wasn’t sure about coming up. Bakersfield was okay. I had some friends up there. I was doing okay in my classes and, of course, there was wrestling. But I was missing Kristin and I was kind of lonely.
    That’s when I cheated on her for the first time.
    The girl was a fitness chick. She trained, so we had something in common. This went on for a while. Then Kristin found out. She was pissed. All I could think of to say was it happened because she was never around. Finally she said, “I’m going to move up there with you or you’re going to lose me.” I didn’t want to lose her, so finally in the third semester, she joined me.
    KRISTIN ORTIZ
    I went back with him even after I found out he had cheated with somebody at Bakersfield. It was rough and it took a while to heal the relationship, but we got through it.
    That was the first time I cheated, but I was tempted all the time. For a long time I just could not bring myself to do it. I was very persuasive and persistent in trying to convince Kristin that it would never happen again. I knew I had made a mistake.
    I was continuing to make a name for myself at Bakersfield, and word of my two UFC fights was getting around. One day this guy named Saul Garcia came to one of our practices. Saul was one of those guys who had been around the business a while and claimed to know people. I know, you hear that all the time. But what did I know?
    Anyway, he came up to me after practice and introduced himself. He was real encouraging. He had heard about my fights and said that I could probably still beat a lot of those UFC guys. He said if I moved back to Los Angeles to fight, he would help me out. He was basically offering to manage me.
    I was more interested in continuing my education than becoming a professional fighter. But I told him I would keep it in mind. Saul had this gym in Bakersfield, and I would go down there sometimes to work out and check out the other fighters.
    I would also occasionally go back to Huntington Beach to party or hang out. And on one of those occasions I landed in deep shit.
    I had gone to a house party in Huntington Beach with a few of my friends. Things started getting rowdy, and at one point one of my friends got hit in the face with a beer bottle by some skinhead guy. I stepped in the middle of it to defend my friend, and the skinhead tried to take me down. I got him in a choke hold while three of his friends were trying to hit me in the head with beer bottles. I kept choking the guy until he was pretty much out.
    Finally, I let him go and he was unconscious. I stomped him a couple of times and then I turned around and everybody was yelling at me to leave, so I took off out the door. Then somebody called the cops. I was hiding in a bush near the house and I thought I was going to get away with it. But then a