"I definitely feel like, hey, you know what? This journey's over for me," the welterweight champ told PEOPLE backstage after his dismissal. "I'm going to focus on what I do again, which is boxing. The world championships are waiting, and I'm coming."
While he joked that he would "miss the fact that [Lindsay] can tolerate me and put up with me," one thing he's happy about is not having to put in daily effort to win the competition.
"I'm not going to sit back and think, 'Oh, my god, I miss rehearsing,' " he told reporters with a laugh. "No."
Arnold, whose first season as a pro also comes to an end, says she's learned so much from her experience with Ortiz.
"I don't take back anything," she told PEOPLE. "We've done so well and we've improved so much and grown so much. The show is a very hard thing and I don't think I realized. Emotionally it's a really hard thing. You have to help them and you have to be understanding. They're not dancers. You have to be encouraging the whole time and make sure they feel comfortable
Moving forward, Arnold will continue to appear with the rest of her troupe on upcoming episodes of ABC's hit show. And aside from boxing, Ortiz plans to make his way around the world.
"I'll travel for probably a month or two," he says. "I'll grab a map or a little globe and spin it. Wherever my hand lands, [I'll go]. I think either Australia or China."
source: people.com
