« Roy Jones, meet Kermit Cintron | Home | Video interview: Antonio Rogerio Nogueira »
Dana White or John Hackleman, who will Chuck Liddell side with?
By Zach Arnold | May 8, 2009
One has a lot of money and wants to force his friend into retirement, offering a cozy post-retirement PR job. The other man is a long-time trainer who has been there for the ups-and-downs.
Chuck Liddell hasn’t publicly declared 100% that he is retired, and for a fighter who has one fight left on his UFC deal, he sure doesn’t seem ready to give up just yet. Sherdog is reporting that the feud between UFC boss Dana White and Liddell’s long-time trainer, John Hackleman, is heating up. Hackleman says Liddell hasn’t made a decision yet on his career, to which Dana White characterizes Hackleman’s position this way:
“Obviously, John Hackleman didn’t pay his house off yet. John Hackleman needs some money, because anybody who claims they care about Chuck Liddell even a little bit would not be making these f–king statements,” White told Sherdog.com Thursday.
—
“How many great, talented guys do you see coming out of John Hackleman’s place?” White asked. “He’s no Greg Jackson. He’s no Mark DellaGrotte. He’s no American Top Team. He’s not one of the great camps. Chuck Liddell made him.”
Even more fascinating than White’s comments on Hackleman is the fact that he gave comments to Sherdog. This business makes strange bedfellows, sometimes.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 27 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
John Hackleman is coming off as being a bad trainer / friend.
I know it’s a free country, and people should be able to do what they want. But there comes a time when the people around them need to talk some sense into them. John should be that guy, and he is not.
It’s almost like he has these delusions that Liddell is going to come back to form and be a World Champion again. And right now he is only going through bad luck. Reminds be of a mild case of The Holyfield.
“How many great, talented guys do you see coming out of John Hackleman’s place?” White asked. “He’s no Greg Jackson. He’s no Mark DellaGrotte. He’s no American Top Team. He’s not one of the great camps. Chuck Liddell made him.”
I’ve been saying that for years.
Also I’m not sure whats so strange about him giving this statement to sherdog?
Truth is a lot of guys at Heavyweight are tailor made for Chuck. You have a bunch of grapplers who keep their chin up, their head down and move straight forward. If Chuck fights at 225-230 his natural weight who knows he could be champ again. The guys at 205 are too fast and athletic for him. Chuck has no answer for lateral movement.
For real, Chuck should have left Hackleman a while ago. When it was clear that his training wasn’t evolving and he had the loss to Jardine he should have looked for a new trainer. He didn’t.
I thought for sure after the Rashad fight he’d look somewhere else, he didn’t. He is now looking at being forced into retirement.
“If Chuck fights at 225-230 his natural weight who knows he could be champ again. ”
Does anybody outside or hackleman really want to see chuck carrying 20 more pounds of keg belly into the cage.
🙂
“of”
I wonder how it is when a “friend” controls if you can work or not. Even at Chucks level, he’s still working for the man.
I’d like to see Chuck go to Strikeforce. It sucks when someone tells you what you can or can’t do — no matter who it is.
I found the fact that Dana actually spoke on the record to Sherdog a little suspect myself
Dana is correct about Hackleman. To find his 2nd biggest star you have to look all the way down to Gan McGee.
Chuck at heavyweight would be a disaster. Because of his star power, they’re not going to put him against the guys Mr. Roadblock is talking about. He’d get a low-level HW at first like Jake O’Brien or Eddie Sanchez, who he could probably beat at first. But then he’d be thrown to wolves of Lesnar, Mir, Nogueira, Kongo, Herring, Velasquez, and others. I don’t even know if he could beat Couture again. It would be bad for all parties involved.
Can Dana White disagree with someone without painting himself as a total jackoff in the process?
Is Dana supposed to be giving sherdog the silent treatment or something?
I guess I never noticed.
If he was he may be trying to reach out an play nice a little bit to fade the memory of the Loretta incident.
As far as Chuck, personally I would think its better to bow out losing to the best then getting a couple more wins against jobbers.
Especially if he’s not starving for money like the boxing examples that hacklemans talking about who’ve beaten themselves brain damaged just to pay delinquent taxes.
But I can also see how that should be Chucks final decision. And even Dana said that he’s not his father.
But I swear that Hackleman hasn’t been doing chuck any good recently (or ever?) to keep sending him out there obviously unprepared for all the world to see, with the same old shtick and non-gameplan to keep getting his head beat in.
If chuck does want to come back for one last round, he needs a major remake first. Which will necessarily require him to get as far from Hackleman as possible.
MAn, Dana is a DOUCHE! I agree with him but he could try a little tact. Now his “friend” Chuck is in the position of having to choose between Dana and Hackleman and Dana has just made the whole situation worse. Seriously, by going public he did not add one positive to the situation.
As for Chucks future. I could see him testing the waters at HW but I really don’t see him having much future. He has just looked BAD for a while now, maybe a new camp but he is old and worn out. We’ll see though, maybe a year off and one last “masters class” fight. The belt is gone forever though.
Hackleman is what is referred to in drug rehab as an enabler.
Hackleman’s a suitcase pimp
Liddell is being forced to retire yet they have Mark Coleman fighting on an upcoming card? lol
Should Mark Coleman still be fighting?
Yeah, that appears like a contradiction.
But 1. Mark Coleman isn’t Dana’s personal friend. He’s not getting a guaranteed cush job with the UFC outside of the cage. So letting Coleman take a few lumps for some money is kind of a favor to Coleman.
2. Mark Coleman’s value is his Icon status, especially in japan. He’s not intended to be in the race for any belts and hasn’t been considered a serious contender since 1997.
I dont think Dana wants Chuck to become what Mark Coleman or Ken Shamrock does for a living these these days.
People need to get off of Hackleman’s ass. And on the other hand, people need to get off of Dana White’s cock. As Zack mentioned, why is Dana so concerned with Liddell’s (and in the past, Shamrock’s) well being by forcing them into retirement, but Mark Coleman is still taking unneeded beatings?
You know what Liddell will do? What he damn well pleases. If he wants to retire, then fantastic. if he wants to continue to fight, then that is his right at this point, as long as he is still licensed to fight and he passes all of his medicals and physicals. it’s highly selfish of everyone to try to force retirement on someone, or to force someone to continue to fight.
My personal opinion? Yeah, I think Liddell should retire. But what I and everyone else wants and what is are two completely different things. But if he doesn’t want to, then good for him. Hey, if Liddell “retires” then I am sure Scott Coker is more than happy to take Liddell from those loveable teddy bears that people call Zuffa.
I suppose that you would let a friend play russian roulette because they want to right.
Your a real pal.
I think Dana doesn’t want a PR disaster on his hand with the old timers when they eventually start to show the mental wear and tear fighters show. If he can say he did everything to stop them from hurting themselves he has his ass covered.
It is a shitty thing for him to do this on such a public forum. He knows the internet and knows it gets around, so he put Chuck in a shitty position.
As for the whole Chuck to HW thing, Chuck isn’t as big as he used to be. His cut to 205 used to be a bigger one, while for the last fight it was only a matter of a few pounds. He has one fight on his contract, let him have a retirement fight of his choosing and go out trying to give it his all. He is their biggest star and should at least get that honor of picking a last opponent, having the show heavily hyped and let him go out in a blaze of glory.
UFC has had a policy for a while that they wouldn’t credential blogs and websites that weren’t part of larger news entities, and they weren’t talking to non-credentialed reporters and editorialists.
Sherdog has an affiliate deal of some sort with ESPN as basically an MMA stringer, but it’s a big step for Zuffa to be offering quotes or responding to requests from Sherdog.
Sherdog’s had a long road to separate it’s editorial from the forums.
Chuck could get killed or crippled at heavyweight. The striking power up there is absolutely brutal right now.
The only marquee fight that I could see at heavyweight for him would be Couture, and that’s another one of those fights that there are legitimate questions about whether anyone would want to see it, another Shamrock vs Gracie, two old guys whose better days are well behind them. A rivalry that’s no longer particularly compelling.
I think that the superfight in UFC is having it’s last trot out over the last nine months. They aren’t calling it that, but these farewell tours really are superfights, and for the most part they aren’t particularly rewarding so far.
I’m a little interested in whether Dana or other people at Zuffa have previously attempted to separate Chuck from his camp and move him to another camp. I could see a lot of reasons to try to move Chuck to New Mexico, and Jackson was the first name out of Dana’s mouth (for good reasons right now).
Jeremy, that did already happen before (prior to the 03 GP I believe.) Chuck lost and aftewards went back to his roots at the Pit.
“Jeremy, that did already happen before (prior to the 03 GP I believe.) Chuck lost and aftewards went back to his roots at the Pit.”
I remember dana claiming to be involved or at least closely monitoring his camp, but I dont remember that he wasn’t at the pit.
Where was he training at?
“He has one fight on his contract, let him have a retirement fight of his choosing and go out trying to give it his all. He is their biggest star and should at least get that honor of picking a last opponent, having the show heavily hyped and let him go out in a blaze of glory.”
That seems fair. I think people would like that.
Either that or I’d like to see him take a break first, to get his head straight and get his training GENUINELY reconfigured, and then have his last fight maybe a year from now.
That would be his best chance to find out whether he’s really gonna be able to pull a randy and outsmart time IMO.
Plus imagine the buildup and enthusiasm there would be if he came back after a year for one last fight.
I think it would be a tremendous seller.
Much more so than if he headed right back out now.
I dont see why he couldn’t “retire”, get into a new cush position that I’m sure would keep his name still out there, and then unretire for his last fight.
If he still even wanted to by then.
I can’t find anything about that online, Zack, more information about the exact camp and timeline would be interesting.
That was the same tournament where he fought Overeem though, and I seem to recall that being considered one of Chuck’s “must see” fights.
Jeremy, I don’t remember specifically but I remember after the loss to Rampage talk of Chuck going “back to basics” and returning to the Pit. If you haven’t seen the Overeem fight, you should, not just for that fight but the two 2003 GP events are probably my fav MMA events of all time.
The Overeem fight is notable cuz prior to the Wanderlei fight, that’s one of the rare fights where Chuck actually goes for a takedown.
Jeremy…here you go, Dana talks about Chuck having a special training camp set up in Vegas for Final Conflict 03:
http://sherdog.com/news/interviews/dana-white-takes-on-pride-1267
Thanks for the interview Zack. It’s really interesting to hear Dana talk about building up Rich, and just generally being so open with the reporter. I guess Dana had his eye on rampage and Wand for quite some time.
Mike Sloan: Who all is on the dream team?
Dana White: Well, we’ve got Hackleman overseeing it.