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. * * * * 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.
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