It seems that father issues drive many of today’s most popular fighters. Chuck Liddell didn’t have a father; his left him to be raised by his mom and grandfather. Matt Hughes and his brother Mark hated their dad so much that they once gave him a beating for having the temerity to tell Mark he had no business riding a motorcycle with no training or license. Tito Ortiz had it worst of all.

In his new book This is Gonna Hurt, Ortiz details a childhood that is startling and more than a little sad.

Ortiz’s parents were junkies, and Tito was left essentially on his own to survive the streets of Huntington Beach, California. By the age of five Ortiz was drinking and smoking pot. By eight his mom was a lady of the evening to support her habit. By 12 he was running with a gang, the infamous F-Troop. It was only wrestling that saved him from an unadulterated life of crime and debauchery. He had to be straight to wrestle, but as soon as the season was over, it was back to drugs and crime.

Tito was good at wrestling, but after high school he drifted along without a goal or any guidance from his admittedly poor sphere of influence. He was in jail several times, for fighting and stealing. He was good at stealing but not good enough to pay the bills-that required dealing drugs. It was only a chance encounter with former wrestling coach Paul Herrera that pulled Tito from the lure of the streets. Herrera helped get him into Golden State College where he won a California State Junior College championship. Herrera also got Ortiz hooked up with Tank Abbott, the Ultimate Fighting star who needed a training partner that could challenge him on the mats. Eventually, Ortiz got his own shot at the Octagon and the rest of the story is well documented. He would go on to become the UFC Light Heavyweight champion and one of the most important stars in the sport’s short history.

Along the way, Ortiz wasn’t a very good person. He was still getting high and he was cheating on his wife at every opportunity. The fights that made him a megastar get short shrift here. Ortiz is more interested in talking about his conquests and the drugs he did than he is in talking about the fights that probably inspired most readers to pick up the book in the first place. He barely touches at all on the feud with Ken Shamrock’s Lion’s Den that made him one of the hottest properties in the sport. Tito makes it seem his sudden celebrity was more organic and a result of some innate charm. A lot of fighters ran off three wins in a row, but few reached Tito’s level of fame so quickly and it is because his wins were against the famed Den.

As is common with most MMA fighter’s books and interviews, all losses are due to his injuries or personal problems. Wins, of course, are a credit to his skill and superiority. Ortiz credits his second manager, Dana White, for being a tenacious negotiator, but details how their relationship soured when White became President of the UFC (stealing the job from fighter John Lewis according to Ortiz). White was just as tenacious negotiating for the other side and Ortiz, who often represented himself, was thin-skinned and offended by what were probably very common negotiation tactics.

Ortiz loses track of the facts a little when discussing White and Zuffa. He talks about the shift in management occurring before his fight with Yuki Kondo in 2000 when Zuffa didn’t buy the UFC until 2001. He also casually talks about how UFC shows in the early years routinely did more than 500,000 buys and how his own fights sell more than a million buys. These are exaggerations, but the errors don’t seem as egregious as Chuck Liddell (or his ghostwriter) simply repeating the Zuffa myth and propaganda verbatim in his book.

Liddell takes some hits in this book as well. Ortiz paints the picture of an unsophisticated Iceman who is just happy to have a nice home and fancy car and isn’t interested in maximizing his revenue. Ortiz was sensitive about having grown up poor and wanted to make sure his family had everything he didn’t. He saw Liddell as a company man, someone who was a willing stooge for White and the Fertittas. Although the deteriorating relationship with Zuffa gets plenty of attention, it is really his deteriorating body that ended up dimming Ortiz’s bright star. Serious back and knee injuries have forever altered his athletic potential. This is fine. Ortiz has been preparing for years for life after MMA. His acting career has real possibility and he was one of the first MMA stars to take control of his own image and likeness rights and to promote his own clothing line.

His look back at his life is harsh and he doesn’t protect himself from the bright light of introspection. The personal details are maybe a bit too much. It may have been cathartic, but it’s hard to like the Tito Ortiz in this book. But it is clear it was hard for Tito to like himself. His new girlfriend, porn star Jenna Jameson, seems to be a kindred spirit. Hopefully when the third act of the Ortiz story is written it is a happier tale than the first two. Surely someone who has come from so little deserves any happiness he can find.