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Increasing number of MMA writers who believe Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz III will happen
By Zach Arnold | June 16, 2010
I got a couple of passages for you from this week’s Pro MMA radio show with Larry Pepe and Canadian Press sports honcho Neil Davidson, whose articles are impossible to miss online.
The first passage deals with Rich Franklin’s position in the UFC Light Heavyweight division.
LARRY PEPE: “Where do you see Rich (Franklin) in this 205 division? Because after the fight, Dana was asked and he said, look, he’s right there with Rashad (Evans) and (Lyoto) Machida and (Mauricio) Shogun, etc. the upper echelon of the division. I’m not sure about that. I’m not taking anything away from him, but I’d have to see him fight one of the top five guys in the division before I could really feel like he was on his way to contender status.”
NEIL DAVIDSON: “Yeah, I think when Rich is on and he has a good game plan, he’s a very difficult fighter to go up against. I think he had a very smart plan against (Chuck) Liddell, he was kind of in-and-out trying to stay out of Liddell’s wheelhouse and certainly what you said about his character and his guts is totally accurate. I mean this is a fellow who’s gone through more broken bones and cuts and he’s looked up at himself at the big board between rounds and said, oh boy, that looks ugly, and he keeps on fighting so… You can’t… I think you can’t question his work ethic or his character, but I think there were some you know he showed in the Vitor Belfort fight, he said that his game plan there didn’t work, he hasn’t too sure what to do and he paid for it in that fight. But if you look at his career recently, you know, really the only blemishes on it apart from the Anderson Silva ones was the Dan Henderson fight, which was a very close fight at UFC 93 and the Belfort loss where his game plan kind of left him flat and he got tagged. So I think this win over Liddell really has put him in a situation where you want to see him up against the top Light Heavyweights to see exactly where he fits in and one thing that struck me on Saturday night was a perfect match to see might be a Franklin/Lyoto Machida rematch.”
I decided to put that passage up front because Rich isn’t getting a lot of press, so I figured let’s at least discuss a little bit where he stands right now in the organization.
Now, as far as the prospects of Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz in a third match, I continue to be surprised by just how many UFC fans (the casual and semi-hardcore ones) want to see this fight still. I know The Ultimate Fighter has proven to be a great platform for building up big fights and we certainly saw that with Rashad Evans vs. Quinton Jackson, but that fight meant something for determining the upper echelon of the 205-pound division. A third match between Chuck and Tito doesn’t mean much other than Chuck’s fans want to see him kick ass one more time and have a feel good moment. We saw that Tito alone isn’t moving the needle when he fought Forrest Griffin, but how much would the needle move for a third fight with Chuck in say, December or January?
LARRY PEPE: “Should Chuck be done? Is he done in your mind? Did you see enough from him before the knockout that you would say, yeah, I would like to see the guy fight again?”
NEIL DAVIDSON: “I think he should be done because while I saw enough from him showing some good things in that fight before the knockout, I think when he goes up against elite opposition he does not, he might be able to take a second-tier person but I’m not confident that he’s going to do much damage against an A-tier contender unless he hits them immediately with a punch. I think he’s lost to the top guys and I think that he can’t beat the top guys, there’s no sense of him hanging around so he can beat the second-tier people.”
LARRY PEPE: “Well, let me ask the obvious question and as a side note, let me say that Dana has said that he guarantees that Chuck will not fight again. Of course we’ve seen things like that get reversed. We know that Dana wanted Chuck to stop fighting against the Shogun loss 14 months ago. But, let me not talk about top tier, because I don’t he’s in the top tier, but Chuck was supposed to fight Tito Ortiz. I don’t think Tito’s a top five Light Heavyweight, in fact I don’t think he’s a Top 10 Light Heavyweight. That was the fight we were supposed to get. That was the fight that Chuck said would not happen because Tito was afraid of him and he was the one saying Tito should not be allowed to fight in the UFC unless he has to go through Chuck first. If you’re Dana White and Chuck Liddell, your friend of 15 or 20 years, comes to you a month from now and says, ‘I want the Tito fight, it’s my last fight, I don’t want any other fights after that, I agree win, lose, or draw, that’s it,’ do you give him that fight or not?”
NEIL DAVIDSON: “I think it’s really, it’s an interesting scenario you raise and I think it’s really the one fight that perhaps you do give him because you can make the case that this is a fight that they had a big build-up for, even though Tito is definitely not the fighter, not an A-list fighter any more in terms of the top five or whatever. This fight still commands some attention, some interest from the fans and I think you could, Dana White who sometimes reinvents his arguments you know remember after the Rua fight he was pretty definite that it was over for Liddell. He said so at the press conference and then that changed, so I think that you’ve kind of painted a middle case scenario where Liddell could get one more fight and perhaps retire with one more win and there would be enough conditions that might make it palatable for everyone and I think it’s a fight that would sell. It doesn’t really interest me that much because I think that one’s been done but I could see that one happening, yes.”
LARRY PEPE: “Yes, see Neil, I totally agree with you and this is why you know when everybody has eulogizing Chuck and like he’s done, he’s done, he’s done, he can’t fight any more, he shouldn’t be in there any more, I kind of took a step back from it and I was like, he won the first round. I mean, if you’re going to say that Rich Franklin is a top five 205 guy or he’s in the mix, no shame in losing to Rich Franklin. Certainly no shame in winning the round up until you get caught and I understand that Chuck’s button has become pretty easy to push. I also understand that Tito is not a power puncher. He’s never been a big puncher. He’s a ground ‘n pound guy and I think this reinvigorated a more diverse Mixed Martial Artist that I saw step in the cage named Chuck Liddell this time. I think he beats Tito. I think for a guy with his pedigree and his history, I don’t know if he wants to go out with these knockouts and if he loses to Tito, then clearly he’s done. But in my mind, it is a marketable fight. Would I make it the main event on a PPV? Probably not. Would I make it the co-main event on a PPV that say has a title shot connected to it? I think it sells. I think like in other sports where someone like a Michael Jordan or somebody like that who’s you know Chuck’s stature in MMA is certainly at that superstar level, when a guy like that’s going to retire and it’s known that he’s going to retire, there’s a huge buildup, every arena he goes to usually does a ceremony, thanking him for the memories, and I could see this being Chuck’s swan song. And I think it makes sense and if you told me tomorrow that they were going to fight five months from now, for me Chuck is a mild favorite. What about you?”
NEIL DAVIDSON: “Yes, I think so. I think that I would like his chances in it but when saw Ortiz against (Forrest) Griffin, it wasn’t… he ran out of steam in that fight. I think this is a fight that Liddell does want because he does have a personal interest in it and I think that you know I think whatever Dana White says, sometimes when he can sell a fight it might change his opinion, you know, he’s a businessman first and if he sees this as being marketable, it could happen so you know I think people should maybe learn from that first round of retirement after the Rua fight. We’ve already gone through one round of tributes for Chuck and he came back so you know I’ll believe it when it happens.”
LARRY PEPE: “Right. Let’s not eulogize him just yet, especially when no one’s heard from Chuck yet. Right?”
NEIL DAVIDSON: “Exactly.”
LARRY PEPE: “And you know, I’ll bet you dinner at the next event that some time in the next 72 hours we’re going to get multiple quotes from Tito Ortiz about Chuck being done and being a shot fighter and I think that’s only going to motivate Chuck more to want to go in and prove him wrong.”
NEIL DAVIDSON: “And nothing I’ve heard from Liddell in his time off has really convinced me that he does not to want to keep fighting. This is what he does and he showed you he was in great shape for this fight and he clearly, unless his attitude has changed since Saturday night, he clearly did not want to hang it up.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 2 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Problem is that Chuck will lose against Tito because all Tito has to do is land one punch, and it doesn’t have to be that hard and he will knock Chuck out. The punches that Shogun and Rich threw were not power punches and Rich’s punch (the weakest of the two) put Chuck out cold. It’s time to hang it up, Chuck will be extremely pi@@ed if in his last fight he gets knocked out by Tito, he will never hear the end of it. Is that how you want to finish your career?
Tito punches real slow, and real soft. I think Chuck could get away with his chin vs. Tito.
Vs. Rich, the problem was that he dove straight into that punch, making it effectively much harder than what was thrown.