Iceman: My Fighting Life Read online

  In 1989, Rorion opened the first Gracie Jujitsu Academy—finally getting out of his garage—in Torrance, California. And within twenty years there would be Gracie academys in nearly every major town in the country. The Pentagon would hire Rorion’s jujitsu experts as consultants to teach hand-to-hand combat. (Thanks to Black Belt magazine for letting me crib Rorion’s history from one of its stories. As I said, I’ve been reading that magazine since I took my first karate class.)

  Rorion produced Gracie jujitsu videos that developed a cult following among martial arts and combat sports fanatics. And to cement his rep and build his business, he brought the Gracie Challenges to the United States. Only now the winner didn’t just get bragging rights that his form of combat was the best. Rorion also threw in $100,000 to whoever beat a Gracie jujitsu expert. He never had to pay up.

  In 1991, Gracie met Art Davie, a Southern California ad exec, who was researching martial arts programs for a client. Davie eventually became a student and friend of Gracie’s. He saw the popularity of the Gracie videos and often heard about Gracie’s quest to constantly prove Brazilian jujitsu was the most dominant form of martial arts in the world. So in 1992 he proposed an idea to his teacher: an eight-man, single-elimination tournament in which any fighting style was allowed. They’d call it War of the Worlds. Gracie loved it, and he and Davie took it to John Milius, another student of Gracie’s, who wrote Apocalypse Now and directed Conan the Barbarian. He loved it, too, and within a year they had sold the idea and had a show on pay-per-view.

  Newly titled the Ultimate Fighting Championships, UFC 1 debuted on November 12, 1993, from McNichols Sports Arena in Denver. The show featured two kickboxers, a boxer, a karate expert, a shootfighter (the original term for mixed martial arts), a savate black belt (kickboxing with shoes), a sumo wrestler, and a small—by comparison—frail-looking jujitsu expert named Royce Gracie. Among all his brothers and students, Rorion actually chose Royce for UFC 1 because he was the least physically threatening. He was the pawn to prove, if he won, that Gracie jujitsu was the most dominant martial art in the world.

  The promoters knew how to create some drama. They billed the event as “no holds barred,” which was essentially true. They flew in João Alberto Barreto, the Brazilian jujitsu master whose breaking of an opponent’s arm in a 1959 fight got the sport thrown off Brazilian television. They had a Hollywood designer design the Octagon. And they offered prize money of $50,000. The first UFC fight attracted nearly one hundred thousand pay-per-view buys.

  It didn’t take long for Royce to prove Rorion right. His first fight that night was against Art Jimmerson, the lone traditional boxer in the competition. Jimmerson was so mismatched, he used a boxing glove on one hand only, unsure of what exactly he was getting himself into. Royce needed just a few kicks to Jimmerson’s lower body to take him down and mount him. Jimmerson didn’t even wait for Royce to put him in a choke hold or any other submission move before he tapped out.

  Royce needed even less time against Ken Shamrock in the semifinals of UFC 1. In this fight he proved how powerful the Gracie jujitsu style could be. Shamrock had an early advantage in the right, getting the dominant position. But with a few deft moves, Royce got the upper hand, literally. Fifty-seven seconds into the first round, he had Shamrock in a choke hold and forced him to tap out.

  In the finals that night, Royce left no doubts that he was the world’s ultimate fighter. He faced Gerard Gordeau, a boxer/kickboxer from Amsterdam. In his first match that night, Gordeau had hit his opponent, Teila Tuli, so hard that Tuli’s teeth were knocked not just out of his mouth, but out of the ring, winding up beneath the announcer’s table. The force was so strong it also broke Gordeau’s hand, but it didn’t matter. Gordeau won easily in the semifinals. But he was no match for Royce. Gordeau was at such a disadvantage at one point, the legend goes, he bit Royce on the left ear. Royce allegedly showed the bite mark to a camera crew covering the fight. One minute and forty-one seconds into the fight, Royce caught Gordeau in a rear-naked choke. He held on a little bit tighter and longer after Gordeau had submitted.

  The win was no fluke. Five months later, at UFC 2, in a sixteen-man tournament with a $60,000 purse, Royce earned the title again, winning four fights in a row one night. In the last one he was punching his opponent so often and with such ease, the guy submitted just seventy-seven seconds into the fight. Royce bowed out of UFC 3 after an injury, but proved the power of Gracie jujitsu all over again in UFC 4. Fighting for $64,000, Royce made it to the finals of the tournament against Dan Severn, a 275-pound wrestler. Severn had been a four-time all-American at Arizona State and once held the U.S. record for most victories by pins.

  That night he was clearly the stronger fighter. The match lasted a UFC title-fight record of 15:49, with Severn keeping Royce flat on the mat for most of it. But the ground moves the 180-pound Royce had been perfecting his entire life—the types of moves his grandfather insisted could be used no matter how small he was or how big his opponent—were eventually too much for Severn. From his back Royce maneuvered his legs so one of Severn’s arms and his head were caught between Royce’s thighs. It was a picture-perfect triangle choke. Slowly the blood flow to the hulking Severn’s head was constricted, until he was forced to submit. For the third time in less than two years, Royce Gracie had won a UFC tournament. He had proven once and for all that his family’s style of jujitsu was incomparable.

  CHAPTER 12

  TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

  ONE NIGHT BACK IN 1995, I WAS TENDING BAR ON A busy Saturday night in San Luis Obispo. The place was pretty crowded with regulars and college kids, but it was still early, so there was plenty of room for people to move around. Suddenly the bar’s doors flew open and this huge black guy burst through. He was built like a tank, legs practically bursting through his pants, chest the size of a beer keg, and shoulders that seemed to merge with his neck. Seriously, this is one of the few guys who would make me hesitate in a dark alley. There just aren’t a lot of African-Americans in SLO, so when someone as big as this guy throws open the doors, the crowd is going to part, just as this one did. Imagine their relief when he yelled out, “Where’s Chuck Liddell?”

  I felt everyone’s eyes turn toward me. I had been getting some good local coverage for my kickboxing fights. Between that and the occasional scuffles that I had to deal with when I was bouncing or working the bar, I had built my reputation around town as a tough guy. It was no different from my days in Santa Barbara. Still, if you just looked at the situation, you’d think, this couldn’t be good for me. My girlfriend at the time was working with me as a bartender, and she just gave me a look that seemed to say, do not jump over that bar. Out loud, however, all I could hear her say was “Oh, shit.”

  Of course I couldn’t stop myself from jumping over the bar and wading into what most people assumed was going to be a serious beat down. But I couldn’t let them think I was going to back down. So I answered the guy, letting him know I was the man he was looking for. Then I asked him, not too politely, “What the fuck do you want?”

  He didn’t talk back. Instead we slowly began walking toward each other, all the eyes in the bar watching us, waiting to see how badly I was going to get my ass kicked. It was like the shoot-out at the OK Corral. Then, just as it looked as if neither of us had any more room to walk, when it looked as if the next move we made would have to be one of us throwing a punch, we each threw open our arms and gave each other a huge hug. It was Lorenzo Neal, now a Pro Bowl fullback for the San Diego Chargers. He was also a good friend of mine from our days as college wrestlers, his at Fresno State. When we finally let go of each other, and when the crowd caught its breath, let out a sigh, and started laughing along with Lorenzo and me, I turned around toward the bar, told my boss I was done for the night, and took a seat with Lorenzo. Then we got seriously messed up.

  Lorenzo asked me if I had been watching these Ultimate Fighting Championship shows on pay-per-view. Of course I had, I told him. These fights had been
going on for two years, and in the world of combat sports that I lived in, they were impossible to ignore. Not to mention they were getting more and more viewers with every battle. Ken Shamrock, Royce Gracie, Dan Severen, they were revolutionizing the fight game. This seemed to be what boxing had stopped being a long time ago: a tough-guy sport that combined science and form and heart and, most important, pure ferociousness. In the end, that’s all that counted in these fights. They were no different from bare-knuckle brawls in Isla Vista in Santa Barbara—or any other town where kids who liked to fight were going at it. It was all about who was the best fighter—not who could score the most points or who could line up the best deal or who would make their promoter the most money.

  We talked about these fights at The Pit, mimicking their moves, trying to incorporate some of the moves we saw in UFC into what we did in kickboxing, making mixed martial arts training a regular part of our workout regimen. Not only was I watching, but I was wondering, “Should I be doing that instead of kickboxing?” Lorenzo was thinking the same thing and told me I was so right for the sport that he’d sponsor me if I decided to do it. And he wasn’t the only one pushing me. My brother Dan wanted me to do it, too, as did most of my friends who knew my background. They weren’t wrong. I knew more than one style of martial arts, and I had begun studying jujitsu. I had wrestled in college. I loved fighting, wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, and in every fight I had one purpose, and that was to knock people out. Nothing less. In a sport that usually only ended when one of the guys was either knocked unconscious or was forced to tap out because he was in so much agony, nothing mattered more than wanting to lay a guy flat on his back.

  Nick used to constantly tell me that I could thrive as a UFC fighter. He thought the combination of my grappling ability and that I was hard to take down and even harder to keep down would make me nearly impossible to stop. “No one can take you down, and if they try to stand up with you, they will be in trouble,” he used to tell me. Then Nick did something that, considering the way things turned out, was pretty selfless. Not to mention that he wound up looking as if he could see into the future.

  We were at a gym in Las Vegas working out. I was getting ready for my next kickboxing match, which he was promoting. I wasn’t Nick’s meal ticket by any means, but I was a good draw for his fights and didn’t cost much. I would wind up with a 10-2 record as a kickboxer. I’d win two national titles as well as championships in the USMPA (an American Thai boxing association) and the WKA (World Kickboxing Association). Even when I was the main attraction, I still wasn’t making more than $500 a fight. While there was more dough in the UFC—and trying to make it in that sport had been something I was thinking about—I wasn’t exactly pursuing it as a lifelong dream. I didn’t know anyone, and I certainly wasn’t the only person fighting—in the ring or in the alley—who thought he was the toughest guy in the world and deserved a shot in the cage. It wasn’t a fantasy. I just didn’t spend time scheming and worrying and planning how to make it happen. I’ve always let things like this come to me. If they work out, great, if not, I don’t worry about what I’m missing. I just wanted to fight—kickboxing, MMA, in the bar, it didn’t matter.

  Nick, however, was thinking more about the rest of my life than I was. And he laid out the scenario in pretty blunt terms. Nick was a great kickboxer, a champion, one of the best in the world at what he did. But he couldn’t make any real money. He had other jobs while he was training and competing. He started his own promotion company to get himself more publicity, only he became so busy trying to put together exciting cards and negotiating for venues and making sure he had the dough to pay out purses, he couldn’t keep up with his fighting career. Pretty soon he wasn’t kickboxing anymore. Instead he was just promoting.

  I thought his life looked pretty good. I was twenty-five, making money fighting, getting some publicity, teaching classes, and training at The Pit. But Nick thought I had potential to be bigger, to do more, to be a champion. That day at the gym in Vegas he told me that no matter how much of a badass I looked like with my Mohawk and the tattoo on the side of my head and a cold, hard stare in the ring, I’d never make any serious money kickboxing. There’d never be more than fifteen hundred people in the stands for my fights. I’d never be able to focus solely on training and not have to bartend or teach. It wasn’t the future. Don’t be like me, he said. Don’t be sitting around one day saying there isn’t enough money in this sport to be beat up this bad. It hurts too much for just $500 a pop. It was time, he said, to make a career move. Either move on with my life, get into accounting, and forget fighting, or make getting into the UFC a priority, improve my combat skills, and take it to the next level.

  Nick had been dispensing advice to me for a few years by this point. One lesson had always been that if I wanted to become a bigger name, I had to show more of a personality. But this was different. It wasn’t about me doing better so he could make more money. It was just about me. He thought I had a huge future in the UFC. “You could be a world champ,” he told me. “When opponents see how easily you get back up, if they are lucky enough to get you down, they will no longer be able to fight. They’ll get weaker. They’ll be worried about keeping you down, not your hands and your kicks. You will break their spirit.”

  That’s what I wanted to do. And Nick was going to help me.

  CHAPTER 13

  YOU’RE NEVER TOO TOUGH TO SHOW THE LADIES YOUR SENSITIVE SIDE

  IHAD OTHER REASONS I WAS A BIT ANXIOUS TO GET MY career going.

  During the summers my brother Dan and I used to work at the California midstate fair, which was held about half an hour outside San Luis Obispo. Most nights the fair put on a concert at which Dan and I worked security, while girls from groups such as the Future Farmers of America worked as ushers. One of the guys I trained with at The Pit was dating one of those girls, so she and I would carpool together from San Luis Obispo to the fair every day. She always brought along a friend of hers, Casey Noland.

  Casey was a cute blonde who lived in a tiny country house outside town. Since she was seventeen and between her junior and senior years in high school, she still lived with her parents. At first there was nothing between us; we were just two people with a mutual acquaintance sharing a ride to the fair. But after a few weeks, I became interested. I wasn’t thinking, oh, man, she’s seventeen and I’m twenty-five and this is a bad idea. I definitely did not think about the ribbing I would take from my mom, sister, brothers, and friends if I started dating a teenager. One night, I was supposed to go back to SLO after the fair because I had a date. Next thing I knew I had blown the date off and was spending two hours sitting in a car talking to Casey.

  All dolled up for the prom.

  Honestly, she thought I was a little nuts. I told her about growing up with my grandfather, about my mom, about getting in fights as a kid, about high school football and college wrestling and about training and kickboxing. I wasn’t thinking, why am I opening up to this kid? But she was definitely wondering, why is this twenty-five-year-old talking to me so much and telling me all this? Of course, the one thing I didn’t do that night was ask her for her number. I still don’t know why. Instead I asked my buddy’s girlfriend.

  Soon after that, we were dating. Or at least trying to. Her parents weren’t high on the idea. She was a nice girl living a conservative life in San Luis Obispo, and I was some Mohawk-wearing thug whom they saw as corrupting their daughter. One night her dad sat me down and said, “I don’t like you dating my daughter, but I’m not about to threaten you. So just be nice.” And I was. Half the time we got together we wound up watching movies with her parents in their house. Other times I’d drive my blue Ford Ranger—on the days it was actually working—to the school, pick her up when she got out for lunch, and we’d cruise around together or find a place to eat. Once I even surprised her with a romantic picnic. Because, really, you’re never too tough to show the ladies your sensitive side.

  We started dating in August of 1995
and were still together as she neared the end of her senior year. Her prom was approaching fast. Now, I had been getting made fun of because I was robbing the cradle for most of the year. And I had been able to handle it. But when Casey asked me to go to her prom, and I said yes, it took on a whole new dimension. My mom was particularly brutal, telling me, “Well, Charlie, I hope this is the last senior prom you’re planning on going to.”

  If I was going to go, I was going to embrace it. I even decided to grow out my hair on the sides and fill out my Mohawk. Then Casey saw what was happening and made me shave it down again. That night we took a horse-drawn carriage down the main drag in town that went past all the bars. I worked at a place called the Library with my brother Dan. And when the horse pulled Casey and me past it, we saw a sign that read CHUCK’S NOT WORKING TONIGHT, HE’S GOING TO THE PROM. Standing beneath it were my friends, the people I worked with, and Dan, who were waving at us. It was hysterical.