Ortiz vs. Sonnen took place on January 21, 2017 at the The Forum in Inglewood, California. The event aired live in prime time on Spike TV. On October 18, 2016, it was announced that former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Tito Ortiz and UFC veteran Chael Sonnen would headline this event. Sonnen owns career wins over the likes of Yushin Okami, Nate Marquardt, Brian Stann, former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Maurício Rua and the current UFC Middleweight Champion Michael Bisping. Ortiz is a UFC Hall of Famer and one of the most decorated champions in UFC history. "The Huntington Beach Bad Boy" signed with Bellator in 2013 and has gone 2-1 with the promotion. He has wins over the likes of Alexander Shlemenko, Stephan Bonnar, Wanderlei Silva, Ken Shamrock and Forrest Griffin. A women's bout between Rebecca Ruth and Colleen Schneider was initially announced for this card. However, the bout never came to fruition for undisclosed reasons and Ruth was replaced by Chrissie Daniels

DREAM.14 event took place on May 29, 2010, at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan, featuring Nick Diaz against Hayato "Mach" Sakurai in a welterweight non-title main event. Diaz enters on a seven-fight win streak, fresh off a TKO victory over Marius Žaromskis to claim the Strikeforce Welterweight Championship in January 2010. Sakurai, the DREAM Welterweight Champion, aims to rebound from a submission loss to Akihiro Gono in December 2009, following his 2009 Welterweight Grand Prix win. The card also includes Ralek Gracie vs. Kazushi Sakuraba and Hiroyuki Takaya vs. Joachim Hansen.