Iceman Page 22

  I was totally relaxed before the fight. The guys from Sherdog, one of the leading MMA fan sites, came up to my room before the fight and did an interview with me. Of course, Dana was calling me every couple of hours to make sure I was ready for the fight. He finally stopped at around six o’clock that night, a few hours before the fight. That’s because I told him on the phone, “Dana, can’t talk right now. Got two girls waiting for me in the shower. Gotta go. Bye.” Either he thought I was so confident he didn’t need to build me up or so far gone that not even his incessant calls were going to save me.

  I connected with some good punches before the final blow that knocked Babalu off his feet.

  For the first few seconds of the fight we danced around. Babalu seemed hyper; I couldn’t tell if he was anxious or amped. There is a difference. The guy who’s anxious moves quickly but he’s jittery, as if he’s ready to defend against an opponent’s slightest move. A guy who is amped isn’t worried about defending himself. He’s looking for an opening to take you down. During the first thirty seconds of the fight, I wasn’t sure which one Babalu was. He came at me with a straight kick and then a side kick, neither of which hurt. I didn’t even throw a punch for the first forty seconds of the fight.

  A minute in, he took a leap and threw a big overhand right, the kind that looks a lot scarier than it actually feels. It scores points, but doesn’t inflict any damage. Then he threw a left and a right and his arms started flailing. One of his strengths is how fast he is, and his fists were moving like pistons. So fast and furious, in fact, that he left himself completely defenseless.

  That’s when I nailed him with an uppercut. It was the fishhook move that I’d practiced before the Randy fight and never got to use, and it worked exactly as planned. He was moving forward almost blindly, so I threw the punch at a bit of an angle and got him on his chin. It stunned him—no doubt it hurt, too—and stopped his progress. Now I was throwing everything in my arsenal. As his back was against the cage, I squared up and threw a straight right that caught him smack in the face. Perfect punch, like hitting that baseball through the middle of the infield. His head snapped back and soon he was on the mat, where I was just pummeling him. Big John was circling, looking to see if Babalu could protect himself or make any aggressive moves. He was, but barely. I got up, moved to his side and past his guard, then leaned over to give him another big sweeping right to the side of the head.

  Now it was over. Big John jumped in. The fight was barely ninety seconds old, and I had just made another $250,000. Not a bad payday.

  Poor Babalu was in such bad shape he had no idea where he was or who was around him. He actually started trying to fight Big John, unaware the match had been called and I wasn’t on top of him anymore. Renato made $21,000 for that fight, but this is how much the Fertittas look out for their fighters: Before he was driven away in an ambulance, they handed him a bonus check. That helped him feel a little bit better.

  Meanwhile, back in the cage, I saw Tito sitting in the crowd and invited him to come inside. Nothing like a postfight show. He started out classy, congratulating me on the win, then had to come after me, too. I’ve never had rock-hard abs, so Tito pointed out that if we were going to fight, we should wait until December, so I could drop some weight first. Then Joe Rogan asked if I’d be more interested in a rematch with Tito or a first go-around with Silva. “I don’t care,” I said. “No matter who my opponent is, they’re going to last less than one round.”

  I had just proven I was a man of my word.

  CHAPTER 44

  IT’S A PRETTY GREAT LIFE WHEN YOU MAKE IT DOING WHAT YOU LOVE

  SOON AFTER THE BABALU FIGHT, ANTONIO AND I moved into my new house in San Luis Obispo. This place is sweet. Outside it has a pool with rocks the size of boulders at one end, which lead to a deck fifteen feet high. It has great views of the mountains, a hot tub, a gourmet-caliber grill. Inside, a spiral staircase connects the living room downstairs to another living room upstairs. It even has a stripper pole, which always comes in handy. The house isn’t a mansion, but it’s got more bedrooms and bathrooms than I had growing up and is definitely Cribs-worthy. It’s even made an appearance on the show. I put in a massive TV with a sound system that makes the walls shake in the living room. The guy who set up my remote put a picture of me knocking someone out on the controller’s screen, which I tap whenever I want to turn everything off. I even have the video trivia games that people play when they’re in bars on top of the bar that surrounds my kitchen. The list of high scorers is a combination of me, Trista, and Cade.

  This life is a long way from the $500 I was getting for kickboxing. I had the new house, plus I had kept the other house as an investment. I was managing fighters with Hack and still had a piece of SLO Kickboxing. Somehow I had morphed from a guy who liked to fight into a freaking Iceman brand. This was proof I had made it as a fighter, what I had wanted to do from the day I realized I had to get a job. And now I was even setting my family up for the future. It’s a pretty great life when you make it doing what you love. My garage has enough room for the Hummer II I won after one of my UFC fights and the $330,000 Ferrari that Dana gave me just for being a guy the UFC counts on. It was a pretty sweet gift and came as a total surprise. Dana asked me to meet him in LA for lunch one day. I was out all night, barely made it down to eat, was exhausted, and sat through a pretty boring meeting. We could have done it on the phone, and I wasn’t quite sure why we had to meet face-to-face. Then, we were waiting for our cars at the valet, and this silver Ferrari pulls up. Dana hands me the keys and says, “Enjoy.” I hit 130 miles per hour driving the three hours back to San Luis Obispo that afternoon. And despite how tired I was, I had no problem staying awake.

  Dana began working on setting up a rematch between Tito and me as soon as the Babalu fight was over in August. By the end of September 2006, just before UFC 63, we had a deal. It was set for December 30, 2006, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Naturally, Tito couldn’t just sign the deal, have some class, and quietly get himself ready for the fight. He had to create a spectacle and put himself at the center of it.

  At the weigh-ins for UFC 63 he walked out onto the stage, waving the contract for our fight. He said, “Liddell, so you know I am not afraid of you. I know you are champion, but I am coming back to get my belt around my waist. I did sign it, it’s completely signed. So come December thirtieth you are going to come and see Tito Ortiz, the new light heavyweight champion of the world. Then come on down to my after party because Chuck Liddell is going to have a shitty one.”

  A few weeks after his little show, Tito beat up on his old buddy Ken Shamrock. I may be the only guy he wanted to beat more. The Shamrock bout was Tito’s third that year, I’d be his fourth, which meant by the time we faced off he’d basically been in peak shape for twelve months. He’d also won five straight fights. He was always talking about what good shape he was in, about how working out in Big Bear was making his cardio so good. Clearly he was building toward making the fight with me last as long as possible. That’s how most guys fight me: They avoid the big knockout punch early, make it last, wear me down, and hope I’ll tire out on the mat.

  I might have had to wait twice as long as Tito between fights, but I was working hard, too. There was little difference between how I trained when I first started out and how I did it as a champion. Sure, now Hack had a $15,000 stopwatch and I drove up to his house in a Ferrari—as opposed to the beat-up Ford Ranger I had and the $2 stopwatch he had—but the sessions were just as intense. If not more. Now we knew what being the champ was like and didn’t want it to go away. I did a lot of running on the beach. I did the wrestling and the rowing and the wheelbarrow and the sledgehammer. I did the heavy bag and sparring and the medicine ball. My guys, such as Eric, came out to work with me. I swear some of them might never hit the gym if they weren’t coming out to help me train.

  Hack and I knew that Tito was going to shoot for my legs to take me down. So my strategy was to be patient and not get too c
lose. I’m always looking for the big knockout punch, even when Hack and John Lewis are telling me not to. But this time that was the best game plan. I wouldn’t throw a combination—allowing him to move in underneath the punches—until he was hurt and vulnerable. Then I’d set up the knockout with a few jabs.

  It seemed that new gate and viewer records were set with every big UFC fight, and mine and Tito’s was no different. Tickets were going for as much as $1,000. Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf were there. Kid Rock flew in from doing a show in Iraq. They were part of the crowd that paid a total of $5.4 million to see the fight. And on pay-per-view? More than 1 million buys. Here’s a little perspective on what that means: In April 2006, WWE held WrestleMania 22, and 925,000 fans bought it on pay-per-view. A month later, boxing’s golden boy, Oscar De La Hoya, fought Ricardo Mayorga, and again, 925,000 people bought the fight on pay-per-view. I saw a story in The New York Times that reported the UFC made $205 million from pay-per-view buys in 2006, while HBO made only $177 million. I was going to make $250,000 that night no matter what, plus a lot more for getting a piece of the pay-per-view money. But for Tito, I’d have fought for a six-pack in the back of a bar.

  I’d knocked Tito out the first time, and I was ready to knock him out again.

  I could hear the cheering of the crowd when I was halfway through the bowels of the stadium from my dressing room. I couldn’t help but start smiling and dancing a little bit as I neared the tunnel. “Intro” from DMX’s It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot was blasting; the bass sounded like firecrackers popping. It was the perfect song for walking out—because the arena was dark and hot. And I felt that I owned it.

  Tito had been so scared in our first fight, I could see it in his stance, that I didn’t know what to expect when we threw down this time. To his credit, he looked less intimidated, as if he had more of a plan. Maybe he was confident because he had fought so much that year and had been training so hard. After the fight, Dana would comment that Tito appeared more comfortable than he had the first time we fought. He threw some kicks. He tried to shoot for my legs but was too far away, and I forced him down and then back up. He clearly wanted to take it to the ground if he was shooting from that far out. But he also wanted to prove he was comfortable standing and striking with me. About three minutes into the fight he threw a big right that connected and backed me up a bit. But, for me, those hits usually knock sense into me before they knock me out. I responded with a right hand that just glanced off his head, but it was enough to get him bleeding badly over his left eye.

  Tito needed something to go his way early to build his confidence even more. His trainers had been saying as much in the week leading up to the fight. It’s one thing to train hard and watch tape and feel that you can win. It’s another to get in the cage and prove it. So far, Tito hadn’t got what he needed. As he stood wiping the blood off his face, I stepped back and even dropped my hands to my waist a bit. I wasn’t doing it to show him up, I don’t even think I did it consciously. But it clearly showed how little I respected his punching power.

  With a little more than a minute left in the round we both squared off and I nailed him with a right-left-right combination. He staggered for a moment, then did a face-plant onto the mat. He was awake, but hurt, and he landed headfirst at my feet before rolling over into a defensive position. It was an eerily similar position to that of the first time we fought. I had him against the side of the cage and just went off on his head. I was pummeling him as hard as I could, so badly that the ref looked as if he was about to stop it. I could hear him yelling, “Change your position. You better change your position or I’m going to stop this fight.” Finally Tito got himself into a better defensive position. Once he did that, I didn’t want to waste my energy. He wasn’t going to tap now, and the ref wasn’t going to call it. So I backed up. As I’ve said, I’m not going to win a fight hitting someone on the ground. I’ve got a lot more power standing up.

  The beating I gave Tito near the end gave me the round as far as the judges were concerned. And probably the fans, too, because a minute into the second round they started chanting my name, “Chuck, Chuck.” Tito knew he had to make up some ground. He threw a big right that missed, then went for a takedown that I snuck out of. He was shooting from way back, desperate to get me on the ground. But from the distances he tried getting to my legs, there was no way he’d make it. I’d immediately sprawl and deflect his move. When he did finally reach me, it was at the end of the round, too late to find a way to make me submit.

  In the third round I lowered my stance a bit and started aiming a lot more for Tito’s body. I wanted to draw him in and set him up for a big overhand right. I was less concerned about his takedown moves now because I felt I had done a good job of setting him up for the knockout. It was time to take a chance and throw some combinations in advance of that big punch. At one point, while throwing fists at his body, I got so low my knee actually scraped the mat. He responded with a left and a right, and really, it just pissed me off. I should have knocked this chump out already and he was still coming at me. I responded with a left that knocked him off balance. He was down again and this time I wanted to end it. I got on his side and buried his head in punches. He had his arms up, but his back was to me and I had his leg locked. He couldn’t fight back, and he couldn’t slither away. The ref was yelling, “Change your position, change your position.” But he didn’t even try. I thought he was beat.

  Tito took the loss like a man. I’m not the type to hold a grudge, and besides, he was pretty hurt and looked like he could use a hug.

  So did the ref. At 3:59 of the third round, it was called. I had taken Tito down. Again.

  To his credit, Tito handled the loss like a man. At the press conference after the fight he said, “I have no excuses right now. He fought the best Tito Ortiz there is. He may be the best fighter pound for pound in the world right now.”

  Maybe he is maturing as a fighter, but plenty of people would still like to see us fight again. At the postfight party that night I could barely walk without people grabbing at me. I’d be taking a picture with someone and someone else would be pulling me away before the photo had been snapped. I can’t even count how many of those people told me how much they’d like to see me kick Tito’s ass a third time. Hey, I’d like to see that, too. But first, I was finally going to get a chance to avenge my loss to Rampage Jackson.

  CHAPTER 45

  NEVER CHOKE ANYONE OUT UNLESS YOU’RE GETTING PAID FOR IT

  THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS WERE INSANE. I’D met a girl, Erin Wilson, in the fall of 2006. She was from Bakersfield, and things were going well enough between the two of us that she decided to move to San Luis Obispo.

  I was also on the road for all but four of the next seventy days. And one of those days I was at home for less than twenty-four hours. And here’s something I learned while I was traveling: There are people with bigger balls than me. I went down to San Antonio for a tour of the veterans’ hospital that specializes in treating burn victims and amputees. The guys I saw were mangled from IEDs and had burns all over their bodies. I met one guy who had a picture in his room from before he went to Iraq. In it he was doing squats with three of his buddies sitting on his arms. Now he could barely speak and had bars coming out of his legs to help keep them stable. When I leaned in close, I could hear him say that he wanted “to get better and go back.”

  I couldn’t believe it, and honestly, I’d never do it. That’s the kind of fight I don’t want any part of. It was devastating seeing the effect of all these injuries on these guys’ families. For the rest of their lives some of these men will have tubes attached to their waists so they can go to the bathroom. Some will have to be connected to machines to stay alive. Many will constantly need surgeries. It will, obviously, impact how they play with their kids. The sacrifice is unimaginable, and meeting people like that makes the shit that happens to me seem laughable.

  Some people in Hawaii like to relax at the beach. I’d rather take a g
uy down.

  A couple of weeks after my trip to San Antonio, I went to Hawaii, where I hung out with my good buddy Lorenzo Neal and his teammate Shawne Merriman. After Hawaii, I kept on going. New York, Toronto, Boston. That’s how it’s been for me after fights ever since the UFC took off. I don’t like to say no, but I can’t accept many appearances when I am training. So I put everything off until after a fight. Then I realize I am committed to something in a different city every night for two straight months. I don’t think I’m living that hard, but when you’re on planes, making appearances at clubs, going out a lot and having a good time, it catches up with you.

  For me, that happened in Texas in early March 2007. If you follow the UFC, you’ve seen the video of me passing out during a TV interview on a Dallas morning show called Good Morning Texas. If you haven’t, go to YouTube, you won’t be disappointed. I was on the road, doing promo work for the movie 300. I had pneumonia and a hacking cough. I couldn’t have sex without stopping to have a coughing attack. So I was struggling. But when you’re on the road and get a chance to see buddies you haven’t seen in a while, you want to take advantage. The problem is, a lot of times you’re going out late and have to get up early to do stuff while they can kick back and recover.

  The night before the Good Morning Texas interview I went to the W Hotel and had a few drinks with a friend. I got home around 2:00 A.M. and had this appearance planned for eight that morning, which meant I had to be at the studio around seven thirty. I was having a hard time sleeping and took a sleeping pill. But I woke up coughing and decided to down some NyQuil, too. After that I don’t remember a thing. Not getting up, not going to the show, not the interview, and not getting on a plane to go back to California. The first thing I remember is walking into my doctor’s office.