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Chuck Liddell remains adamant about continuing his fighting career in the UFC
By Zach Arnold | June 29, 2010
“I’m going to have a talk with Dana coming up in a week or two and see where I’m at, see where he’s at with everything and see what my options are and lay it all out…”
I didn’t do a full transcript of this interview because it was very hard to understand some of the words he was saying. So, I would encourage you to watch the interview to get a feel for his demeanor.
Simply put, he’s not going to stop until he gets seriously maimed or injured. Even for Dana White, I don’t think there’s a price tag he can put on “one more fight” regarding Chuck Liddell.
It should be noted that Chuck is not too high on spending any more time thinking about Tito Ortiz. The irony there, of course, is that Ortiz would be the only guy that I think Dana White would ever consider allowing Liddell to fight in his career.
Liddell also stated that he will not fight outside of the UFC and that he will always stick around in the fight game in one capacity or another after retiring from active competition.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 22 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Where the f#ck is Hackleman in all of this? His “friend” should be extremely vocal about him not fighting again. Seems like he only cares about Liddell’s next paycheck.
It’s bad when a promoter is saying “no more” before his friend/coach.
Liddell needs to retire. Nobody wants to see him get more brain damage.
Hackleman has already weighed in on the subject.
He said he doesn’t want to see him fight anymore, but that Chuck is an adult and the final decision is his. He also said that if Chuck insists on fighting, he will continue to train him because he’d rather have someone who gives a damn about Chuck in his corner rather than some mercenary who just sees Chuck as a financial opportunity.
But he won’t give up that financial opportunity to give Chuck a better chance at not getting his block knocked off.
He can’t FORCE Chuck to retire. He already said he would prefer NOT to reap the financial rewards of Chuck continuing to fight. What more can the guy do?
I suppose he could kick him out of The Pit, but if Chuck really wants to continue he’ll just go train somewhere else with a trainer who is just looking to make a buck off him. How does kicking Chuck out of the gym and making him train with a new camp help matters?
i would’ve liked to see more of the Chuck we saw against Rich Franklin, sans absent chin. But not now. The guy is seriously done. When you go from having one of the best chins in MMA to the worst in the space of a few fights, i don’t care how much you still want to fight, your body is telling you to jack this shit in and get out.
Chuck hadn’t had his chin tested for quite some time. He was fighting Randy, Babalu, Tito and Horn during the peak of his career and none of them are exactly feared strikers. But as soon as he fought Rampage, who does have KO power he gets KOed. So I think most people confused being protected fighting grapplers with having a good chin, much like with Wanderlei.
You’re overlooking Chuck’s GP run in PRIDE, in his fights against Guy Metzger and Overeem he took some seriously hard shots and was barely dazed. There’s definitely been a decline.
Chuck vs Tito would be a double KO.
Chuck would knock Tito unconscious on the first punch, but Chuck’s chin would be no match for the force of the sound Tito’s huge head makes when bouncing off canvas.
“Liddell also stated that he will not fight outside of the UFC”
I actually think he would fight outside the UFC if his options were limited to that. He’s like Roy Jones, Jr. In fact, they’ll probably fight in the next couple of years.
Chuck is not accepting the fact that he’s older now and doesn’t have it anymore. Look, we all have some degree of trouble accepting the aging process in general. Unfortunately for Chuck (and other fighters), his trouble is also tied in with a desire to continue in combative sports.
He needs some really good help (professional help) to help him make the transition, if his long-term well-being is any consideration. You could say that he’s a grown man and he’s entitled to whatever, but I think he will ultimately appreciate it if he gets some good input about the big picture that he may not be seeing right now.
Oh, and that slur-talk of his is not good at all.
Well, if he just wont stop it at least give him fluff fights so he wont hurt himself.
Let him fight Chris Leben and a few KOTC champs a few times a he may be so embarrassed about it that he decides he’d rather retire after all.
Actually Chris Leben might hurt him, maybe wrestlers and grapplers would be better.
Chuck was always fighting grapplers. Nobody in the UFC outside of maybe Michael Bisping was as protected with their match ups as Chuck Liddell was from 2003-07. Nearly every single person he fought had zero KO power and combined with his takedown defense was a no brainer he’d win. But even if Gray Maynard gained 50 pounds and fought him even he’d just throw bombs at his chin to end it quick. There’s nobody for him to beat unless you start working fights.
I think Dana needs to send him to Japan to hang out with Sakuraba for a week to see if this is really the life he wants to lead.
Gotta love the Pride fanboys and their delusions, truly the ignorance and hate that comes from people like you would be funny if it wasn’t so full of crap.
The fact is those grapplers with zero knock out power exposed some of your so called great strikers when they fought. But hey why bring up facts when you can just spew garbage instead, I know it must hurt you to see how big a star and legend Chuck is but that’s no reason to lie.
If this was a PRIDE fanboy statement why would I have said Wanderlei was protected more in PRIDE in a previous post here?
I like Chuck. But it’s true: they were giving him easy opponents when he was their big draw to keep him that way. He wasn’t fighting the stiff competition Hughes was as champ, that’s for sure.
But I wouldn’t expect anything less than forced rage when someone mentions Japan from you so the cycle of life continues.
“Gotta love the Pride fanboys and their delusions, truly the ignorance and hate that comes from people like you would be funny if it wasn’t so full of crap.”
I’m honestly surprised almost daily you can even type. Not to mention the skill it must take to touch yourself while looking at UFC magazine while typing.
Hats off!
Vitor?
Overeem?
Mezger?
Suloev?
Chuck fought his fair share of strikers. Just who are the guys you think the UFC was protecting him from? The UFC didn’t protect him. It just so happened that most of their best LHW in that time frame were grapplers. There is no shame in beating guys like Babalu, Tito, & Randy.
If you would read what people wrote before just blindly commenting like you’re on Sherdog you’d have all the answers to your questions, Steve.
You’re just trading one guy’s dumbness for another.
This got edited, it seems. My point that I had made when I said “retardation” is that if you give Liddell someone like a Mark Coleman type legend or a longtime journeyman (Bonner?) instead of people who might beat him, all you’re doing is let him inflict damage on them and their brains. You’re trading Liddell taking the beating that “pushes him over the edge” to give it to someone else. Either way its no good.
It’s easy to say that Chuck was spoonfed, but that’s not how it was.
Here is who he fought as a champ:
Couture, Horn, Couture, Babalu, Ortiz
He avenged a loss to champion Couture, avenged vs. Horn, won a rubber match with Couture, stopped Babalu’s 10 fight win streak, and stopped former champ Tito Ortiz’s 5 fight win streak (probably undeserving of a title shot though).
You’re looking at their names and not remembering the details, dude.
He took Randy lightly in their first match. Most people didn’t think Randy had Chuck’s number. I know in hindsight it’s easy to think “Captain America, the Comeback Geezer, blah blah blah”, but remember this was Randy’s first comeback fight so Chuck thought he’d waltz in and get a easy KO. He destroyed him in the other two fights when he did take him seriously.
Jeremy Horn had fallen way off by the time the rematch with Chuck happened so that fight was not impressive.
Babalu had the very impressive 2003 tournament wins over Shogun and Horn, but he did not face any top UFC LHWs to deserve that title shot. Why didn’t he fight Tito or Griffin, or even Ken Shamrock first? He got a title shot by beating Van Arsdale, come on.
And of course Tito got a title shot by getting a very controversial JD over Forrest and beating Shamrock twice. That was a fight made purely because those two were the top two names in the sport, not because Tito deserved it or anybody believed Tito could win this time.
I know the LHW division wasn’t anywhere near as good as it is today, but those are still very weak opponents. And it’s not Chuck’s fault, he doesn’t make the bookings and would have fought anybody. But they very clearly did want to protect their investment. And it ended up hiding his chin. Which honestly always should have been in doubt since he was dropped by freakin’ Guy Mezger and stopped by Couture.
Have him fight Arona. Easy style matchup for Chack and then Team UFC can have another Pride sucks party.