UFC Hall of Famer backs FBI director Kash Patel’s training plan

While agents reportedly believe newly appointed FBI director Kash Patel’s plan to have a UFC-led training program is “surreal” and “wacky,” one former champion describes it in a different light.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” UFC Hall of Famer Tito Ortiz said Friday on “Fox & Friends.” “But make sure you get the right fighters.”

Earlier this week on his first video conference call with the FBI’s 55 field office supervisors, Patel expressed his desire for the bureau to form a partnership with the UFC to have fighter-trainers beef up agents’ martial arts and self-defense skills. The move shouldn’t come as a surprise given UFC CEO Dana White’s close friendship with Donald Trump, who put Patel in charge of the FBI, and the promotion’s role in getting the president re-elected last year.

Ortiz, 50, has experience training law enforcement and military officers how to handle closed-quarter combat. Ortiz said from 2000 to 2005, he helped train California Highway Patrol officers and from 2005 to 2011, he trained special forces in Iraq during the summer. Ortiz said these days, he works with Homeland Security and Lee County (Fla.) Sheriff’s office.

Ortiz explained what the type of training officers would receive should be all about.

“It’s not really supposed to be as a fight, as if you’re gonna punch and kick anybody,” Ortiz said, “but to subdue a person down to the ground to put handcuffs on them the safe way for both persons.”

Ortiz said if the FBI enlists the UFC as a partner, the training from the promotion’s fighters “has to be continuous” to be effective.

“It’s just repetition,” Ortiz said. “Doing it over and over becomes muscle memory. Having muscle memory, you don’t even have to think about it. You don’t even have to act on it. It just becomes a reaction. That’s when you’re able to protect yourself and subdue somebody in that type of incident.”