Iceman Page 23
* * *
MY FAVORITE PLACES:
Hawaii—I went there for the first time to hang with John Lewis, stayed for ten days and loved it. How could you not?
Boston—I started going there with Dana and it’s a fun place. We stay in the harbor area and people there are great to us because that’s where Dana used to be a bellman.
New York—One of the first big vacations I ever took was to New York with my grandpa.
Vegas—Great place to train and fight and, um, it’s Vegas.
San Luis Obispo—Nice place to come home to.
Santa Barbara—Because it’s beautiful and my friends would be pissed if it weren’t on the list.
* * *
Of course, I still know what happened on that show. How could I not? The video has been watched nearly four hundred thousand times on YouTube. The host asked me about fighting, and I slurred together an answer. You can’t really understand it all. Then he asked me about the movie and there was nothing. No response. I looked to be sleeping. The host said to me, “Are you okay, Chuck?” That snapped me out of it, and I said, “Yeah, I’m all right.” And I rallied to talk about the movie for a few seconds and answered another question about how you have to be a warrior to fight. But then he asked me whom I wanted to fight next, and all I could think to say was “Tommy Morrison.” I was freaking joking, although it didn’t look like it when I was stammering and my eyes were closed. But Morrison, who retired from boxing in 1996 because he tested positive for HIV, had just come back the week before and knocked a guy out in West Virginia. I thought it would be funny. The host of the show, who later said he couldn’t understand a thing I was saying, pretty much ended the interview. He actually seemed genuinely concerned that I was in trouble. He kept telling me to hang in there.
Dana, however, was just pissed. He was in Columbus getting ready for a UFC card that weekend, and, well, I’ll let him explain how he found out about it: “Someone called me and said, ‘Did you see the Liddell video?’ I hear this stuff all the time, so I called Lorenzo Fertitta and asked him to find it and watch it before I decided to rip my best fighter’s head off. Lorenzo called me back and said, ‘Did you see this?’ I said, ‘No, is it bad?’ He said, ‘Dana, I can’t even explain it to you.’ I was thinking, oh my God.”
Dana claims he called me and told me to “Get the fuck back on a plane to San Luis Obispo. No more promotions. No more parties. No coming to the fights this weekend. Get the fuck home and don’t leave until me and Lorenzo talk to you.” But I don’t remember a thing. I did get on the plane, got home, and spent the next eight days in bed.
When Dana and Lorenzo came out to see me, they were pretty worried. The Nevada State Athletic Commission wanted me to take a drug test. I didn’t give a crap. I wasn’t on drugs and I’d pass the test. But the commission had never asked a fighter with a clean record to take a test between fights. Right before and right after, sure, but never randomly between fights. The two of them put me on lockdown and basically asked me, “What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to blow what you’ve got?”
I didn’t think I was blowing anything, although after seeing the interview I could see where they were coming from, especially with the play it was getting. They both live in Vegas, and a couple of the radio stations there were replaying my rambling answers constantly as part of a running gag. But, whether they thought I was partying too hard or I thought I was fine didn’t matter. I was glad they pulled me off the road. The Rampage fight was set for the end of May. Now I could rest, get healthy, and start training for that. But I was still pissed about the drug test, and I came back clean. But I’ll never live down the Good Morning Texas interview. Not only do radio stations in Vegas still run the tape, but every once in a while Dana will look at me and say, “Blah blah blah blah Tommy Morrison blah blah blah blah.”
Of course, every time I watch it, I laugh, too.
CHAPTER 46
YOU HAVE TO STAY CHILL WHEN THE LIGHTS ARE BRIGHTEST
BETWEEN BEING SICK AND BEING BANNED FROM THE road, I got to rest and recuperate for two weeks before I started training for Rampage. This was the upside to nearly passing out on morning television. Plus, my being home made Hack happy. He knows I’ve got to be on the road promoting the sport and making appearances on my behalf, but he doesn’t love it. When I’m out there, he can’t be training me and keeping me in shape. A lot of the pomp and circumstance of all this bugs him. He wants to be about the fighting, and stuff that gets in the way of that is a nuisance.
The workouts for Rampage were great. Even Hack says they were perfect. I had been in such a rhythm since earning the title, winning seven straight fights over three years and defending my belt four times. And I wasn’t fighting poseurs, either. I had taken on the best the UFC had to offer. It didn’t matter if they were grapplers, submission experts, or strikers; people who hated me or people who respected me. When Dana said it was time to fight, I fought whoever was on the card. Just as I never ducked a fight on the way up, I wouldn’t duck any when I had made it there, either. This was the fun part, what I had been fighting for all these years to begin with.
I really wanted to avenge that loss to Rampage, especially having done the same with Jeremy Horn and Randy Couture. I’m a competitive guy, and just knowing someone out there had one up on me made me irritable.
Rampage was also the biggest fight out there for me, presenting a bigger challenge than anyone else in the UFC. I had fought and beaten all the top contenders. This had been a fight that was a long time coming. Only after Dana and the Fertittas bought Pride, and Rampage’s contract, did he finally even fight in the UFC. His first battle in the Octagon was in February 2007, a second-round knockout against Marvin Eastman. Rampage looked nervous that night, suffering from some cage jitters. Even he admitted it. But I expected that to change when we faced off. He’d made his debut and gotten that out of the way. Now he was going to fight for the light heavyweight championship of the world. Big-time fighters love as big a stage as possible to prove how great they are. They seem to get calmer the greater the expectations. At least that’s how I feel. You have to stay chill when the lights are brightest. I had to assume Rampage would feel the same way.
The sellout crowd at the MGM Grand Garden Arena stood as soon as Rampage walked out of his tunnel. This was as star-studded a crowd as there’d been for a UFC fight. Kevin James, Adam Sandler, Mandy Moore, Andre Agassi, Eli Roth, and David Spade were all there. The whole sport seemed to be achieving critical mass. My appearance on Entourage had aired at the end of April. A couple weeks later Cade and I were on the cover of ESPN the Magazine. Another UFC fighter was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. SportsCenter was airing highlights and ESPN.com was running a mixed martial arts page that featured news and stories from Sherdog. This was no cult sport anymore.
Rampage didn’t notice any of this as he made his way from his dressing room. He just kept looking straight ahead. He had his signature heavy chain hanging around his neck, and an electronic belt buckle that had his name—RAMPAGE—scrolling through it, like some sports ticker in a bar that delivered the scores. When he walked out of the tunnel he howled, in time with the wolves howling and dogs barking on his intro music. Halfway to the cage, he howled again. Rampage had a new trainer, who had been sharpening his boxing skills. And he had been working out and sparring with professional fighters in Big Bear during his training camp. He was cut and as strong as he had ever been when he walked into the cage that night. And he didn’t smile once, he just looked mad.
Rampage tried to stare me down, but I wasn’t intimidated. I’m never afraid to get in the ring, and my fight with Rampage was no different.
I was feeling good, and maybe a little too relaxed. As I wound through the tunnel toward the arena, a guy jumped out and started walking with my group. No one knew who he was—he didn’t have a ticket—but I didn’t even stress. I just laughed. The closer I got to the mouth of the tunnel and the louder the music for my intro got, the lo
oser I felt. I started to dance while walking in rhythm to the music. I smiled. The arena went dark for a few seconds before some blue lights above the cage lit up and bright white spotlights began crisscrossing around the stands. As I walked toward the cage, I slapped hands with as many people as I could. The boos that filled the stadium moments earlier were now cheers. Even when we were face-to-face while Big John gave us our instructions, I almost smiled while Rampage gave me the most intimidating look he could. Finally, Big John told us, “Let’s get it on.”
Rampage had been saying during interviews that he was going to knock me out in the third round. Like everyone who’d trained in Big Bear and then fought me, he wanted to make the fight last and try to get me tired so my punches would get weaker. I didn’t expect the bout to last that long. When journalists told me Rampage had been saying he’d take me down in the third, I said, “That will be interesting, since I’m going to take him down in the first.” My plan was to punch him in the face as much and as frequently as possible. But I still had to be disciplined. The one punch I had a hard time resisting was a blow to the body. That brings my hands down, and when you are close enough to hit the body, you’re close enough to get hit in the chin if you miss. John told me over and over, “Don’t go to the body unless it follows a combination.” Otherwise you are just too vulnerable.
We came out and the pace was fast. We weren’t throwing punches, but moving around a lot. Neither of us was going to wait for the other guy. I threw a low leg kick. I tried a jab. He threw a right to my face that made me stumble a bit. But mostly, I was dancing around the perimeter of the cage while he pivoted in the middle of it. He seemed to get frustrated that I wasn’t just rushing in and throwing punches, so he dropped his hands as if to say, “Come on, man, let’s fight.”
Rampage did a good job of cutting off the cage. It was making it hard for me to come in at him in a straight line. Finally, a little less than two minutes into the first round, I thought I saw an opening. I did exactly what Hack is always telling me not to do: I went for my opponent’s body, but didn’t lead with any kind of combination to protect myself. That was not smart. Rampage coiled to protect himself and, in a textbook move, uncoiled as soon as he felt my blow. My hands were down, my chin exposed. I was defenseless as his hooking right hand landed smack on my cheek. I collapsed to the mat. He pounced, threw one shot that missed, then connected on another right directly on my head. Now I was out cold. My body went limp and Big John had no choice but to jump in and stop it. Just like that, no more than ten seconds after I threw the punch that started it all, I was no longer the UFC’s light heavyweight champ.
When I got to my corner, I looked up at Hack and said, “What happened?”
“You went to the fucking body,” he said.
I’ve got no excuse. I made a mistake and the guy caught me. He’s a great fighter and deserves to be champ. As Hack told the guys at Sherdog after the fight, “The risk highly outweighed the benefit of that technique and he paid the price.”
CHAPTER 47
GET THE F**K BACK UP
IWASN’T THE CHAMP ANYMORE. AT LEAST FOR THE moment. While it killed me, it didn’t seem to matter to a lot of people. I still went on Letterman a couple weeks after the fight. I was still voted The Most Dangerous Man at the Spike TV Guys’ Choice Awards. I was getting invites to club openings in Denver and to toss the coin at arena football games and play the heavy in big-time Hollywood movies. Someone still wanted me to write a book, too. That, to me, is all proof that the UFC continues to be one of the world’s fastest-growing sports, with kids signing up in towns all over the country to learn how to do mixed martial arts. It’s not wrestling, which is just pure entertainment. New fans are connecting with the athletes, and they recognize how competitive ultimate fighting is. I was a part of building that foundation, and it will last long after I’m done fighting.
Not that I’m done. Quitting didn’t cross my mind even after I suffered another setback in September, just three months after the Rampage fight, losing a split decision to Keith Jardine in UFC 76. It was the first time I went the distance in a fight in over five years. To Jardine’s credit, it was too close a fight for me to complain about the outcome. I connected on a lot of hard punches in the first round of that fight, so many that even Jardine said afterward that he was seeing stars. But he didn’t back down. He scored a lot of points by consistently kicking me in the leg and in the side. My ribs looked as if they had been treated with a meat tenderizer, but I don’t think it affected me during the fight. The only thing that still bothered me even days later were a couple of my fingers.
When I heard the Jardine decision, I immediately walked over to a side of the cage, squatted, and put my hands over my head. I thought to myself that it should never have been that close. I wanted to go for the knockdown but never found a chance to throw that punch. I just couldn’t pull the trigger on anything. That night I went to the after party and drank a lot of apple cider. The fight had been in Anaheim and I had plans to go to Disneyland with my kids the next day. And that’s what we did. A guide took us around the park, let us skip all the lines, and got us into all the rides. We had a blast. When I got back to San Luis Obispo, I immediately started thinking about what was next: I was back in the gym less than a week after the fight. I started breaking down my losses, trying to figure out what I have to do to string some wins together again. You always have to get the fuck back up. In fact, this is how I know I’m not done: The only thing I wanted to do as soon as the cobwebs cleared after Rampage was start fighting again. Same with Jardine.
It’s not about the money. I made $500,000 for UFC 71. And six months after my fight with Tito I was still getting checks in the mid–six figures from my share of the pay-per-view. In June 2007 I spent $1 million buying my mom some property and a house and fixing it up. And I still had plenty of money left over. Remember, I was an accounting major who used to make $500 for a fight. I know things can always be worse. And I know the fight game can only last for so long, and nothing I do afterward will ever pay as well. I could retire, and as long as Dana is running the UFC, I’ll have a job with him that keeps me comfortable. He’s told me that. But I’m still smart with my money. It’s a long life, I’ve got two kids, and I’m not going to blow everything I’ve earned. But I still love to fight. That feeling will never go away. So as long as I can throw a punch, I’m going to get in the cage.
This is what I’ve been doing since I was three years old and Pops taught me how to punch. It’s why I took up karate and played football and wrestled and had more interest in beating the crap out of people during high school than in getting drunk. There was no such thing as the UFC when I was growing up. I couldn’t possibly have known what was in store for me. But, it turns out, my entire life was geared toward becoming one of the best mixed martial artists alive. The street fighting, the grappling, the karate, those were all things that I’d become an expert at. Who knew that I could spend my entire life training in obscure disciplines such as those, and suddenly, combined, they would become one of the most popular professional sports in the world?
No one knew. Least of all me. But sometimes you just get lucky.
I don’t know what’s next, but here’s what I do know: I’m a born fighter and I love to fight. As long as I can throw a punch, I’m going to get in the ring.
APPENDIX
CHUCK LIDDELL’S MMA RECORD (20-5 AS OF SEPTEMBER 27, 2007)
UFC RULES
Fouls:
1. Butting with the head.
2. Eye gouging of any kind.
3. Biting.
4. Hair pulling.
5. Fishhooking.
6. Groin attacks of any kind.
7. Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent.
8. Small-joint manipulation.
9. Striking to the spine or the back of the head.
10. Striking downward using the point of the elbow.
11. Throat strikes of any kind,
including, without limitation, grabbing the trachea.
12. Clawing, pinching, or twisting the flesh.
13. Grabbing the clavicle.
14. Kicking the head of a grounded opponent.
15. Kneeing the head of a grounded opponent.
16. Stomping a grounded opponent.
17. Kicking to the kidney with the heel.
18. Spiking an opponent to the canvas on his head or neck.
19. Throwing an opponent out of the ring or fenced area.
20. Holding the shorts or gloves of an opponent.
21. Spitting at an opponent.
22. Engaging in an unsportsmanlike conduct that causes an injury to an opponent.
23. Holding the ropes or the fence.
24. Using abusive language in the ring or fenced area.
25. Attacking an opponent on or during the break.
26. Attacking an opponent who is under the care of the referee.
27. Attacking an opponent after the bell has sounded the end of the period of unarmed combat.
28. Flagrantly disregarding the instructions of the referee.
29. Timidity, including, without limitation, avoiding contact with an opponent, intentionally or consistently dropping the mouthpiece, or faking an injury.
30. Interference by the corner.
31. Throwing in the towel during competition.
UFC MANDATORY EQUIPMENT (FROM UFC.COM)
1. Competitors may only use UFC and commission approved 4–6 oz gloves, designed to protect the hand but not large enough to improve the striking surface or weight of the punch.
2. Commission-approved MMA shorts and kickboxing trunks are the only uniforms allowed. Shirts, gis, and shoes, and the problems they present for grabbing, are not allowed.