UFC 140: Tito Ortiz Will Turn Back the Clock vs. Antonio Rogerio Nogueira

If you're asking a fan of Tito Ortiz, you're likely to hear that he will turn back the clock against Antonio Rogerio Nogueira tomorrow night, but given Ortiz's most recent track record, it'll be a bit hard to do.

Nogueira has a mean BJJ game and is decorated in boxing, so to say the deck is stacked in Nogueira's favor is an understatement, but it's not impossible to see Ortiz winning here.

If there's only one negative that Nogueira has in his game that Tito can expose, its his takedown defense, which has not looked all that great in two of Nogueira's past three bouts, and against a ground-and-pound artist like Tito, that's a few steps over the line of "a bad thing."

Tito will want to definitely take the fight to the ground, neutralize the BJJ of Nogueira from the top, and perhaps even look for a submission, but there are some intangibles that don't always show up on paper.

What if we see a leg-kick-heavy offense from Ortiz?

What is Ortiz lays Nogueira down with a vicious right hand shot in the clinch?

How good is Nogueira's gas tank when he's pushed the way Ortiz will likely want to push him?

Ortiz might need this win to keep the hopes up for a third encounter with Forrest Griffin, but there's a difference between talking about what one man wants to do to the other in a fight, and actually putting the plan in motion during the fight.

Ortiz knows that few are still giving him much of a shot to win outside of three crooked judges, but if there's one thing we had to have learned in 2011, it's that Tito Ortiz loves no situation more than the one where his back is up against the wall.