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Hackleman Keeps It Old School for Liddell |
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Written by By Elias Cepeda of UFC.com
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Monday, 25 December 2006 |
 Shawn Kemp. Randy Moss. James “Buster” Douglas. What do those three names have in common? For starters, each was an elite professional athlete. Amazing natural athletic talent and hard work elevated them to or near the top of their respective sport. Then, their athletic greatness was rewarded with a contract that amounted to what ESPN’s Tom Jackson likes to call “$%&#-you” money. You know, it is the kind of money that makes everything in life free—the kind of money where nobody can tell you a damn thing.
But there is one more common thread between Kemp, Moss and Douglas. Once each man got the ridiculously lucrative contract, they lost focus. Actually, it was more than that. They lost a taste for training hard and preparing themselves to perform at the peak of their abilities. And then they fell off the athletic map.
Kemp gained an untold amount of weight and morphed from a high-flying, dazzling rebounder and scorer to the NBA’s version of a “has been” over the course of one summer. Moss went from the NFL’s most dangerous receiver to a guy who can’t seem to catch a pass, and certainly a player that defenses hardly notice these days. Douglas followed up his thrilling knockout win over Mike Tyson, the then-regarded “Baddest Man on the Planet,” by becoming a fat, out-of-shape joke of a heavyweight that got summarily disposed of by Evander Holyfield in his next fight.
What does any of that have to do with the Ultimate Fighting Championship?
It’s pretty simple, actually. Over the past few years, the UFC has evolved from an underground cult sport into a true mainstream athletic competition, much like professional boxing. As such, the most highly compensated fighter no longer earns a couple hundred grand a year. He now makes a few million a year, enough to buy Ferraris, mansions and just about anything else that a man could want.
UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Chuck Liddell is that guy. He is the guy who no longer rolls around town in a white Lincoln Navigator. Instead, it is a silver Ferrari with a Hummer on the side. Liddell no longer needs to think about how he will earn money after his fighting career is over. If he is even semi-intelligent with his money, he will have enough to last for the rest of his life.
Liddell might be the first to earn that kind of coin in the cage, but he certainly won’t be the last. Tito Ortiz, Liddell’s opponent at UFC 66 on Saturday night, is right there with him, and more will certainly follow. The question, though, is which guy will let the money change them as fighters? Which guy will lose the hunger for the hardcore training that made him great in the first place?
An excess of money changes certain people. It makes them complacent, maybe even lazy. And if it is overnight money, as was the case with Buster Douglas, or money gained quickly after a life of modesty, as was the case with Moss and Kemp, then it seems even more likely that the hunger to be great, or the drive to be the best, would wane a little.
Sooner or later it will happen in the UFC. Someone will come along and earn a massive payday or a series of massive paydays that will erase any financial woes, and then he will forget all the things that made him great in the first place. The question, however, is whether Liddell, the first UFC financial megastar, will the first to fall victim to that trap.
“Chuck was never hungry in the sense of having to fight in order to buy the next can of spam,” Liddell’s head trainer, John Hackleman, explained. “Very few of the guys in the UFC are fighting their way out of extreme poverty. They aren’t hungry in the literal sense of the word. But Chuck is still very hungry as a fighter. He’s hungry to defend his title. He is hungry to win fights. None of that has changed.”
Fair enough. But the question still holds whether his evolution from a guy making a comfortable living inside the cage to a celebrity making millions have dampened his intensity in the gym.
“Absolutely not,” Hackleman said without hesitation. “We keep things old school at The Pit. None of that has changed. We have a new cage in my backyard, but it is still hardcore Pit in training.”
Oh yes, the infamous cage in Hackleman’s backyard. This writer witnessed Liddell training in that very cage prior to his first bout with Ortiz at UFC 47. The sessions were ultra intense in the fresh hillside environment. Nevertheless, that was a warm spring day where everyone was outside in tee shirts and shorts. The weather isn’t quite so friendly in December—yes, it gets cold in California in December.
“When it’s cold, he wears a sweatshirt,” Hackleman quipped. “We spar outside. Chuck runs up my hill carrying or pushing different things, like a wheelbarrow, all year. It’s no different for this fight. We stay old school. That’s how we like it at The Pit.”
Hackleman, who is one of the true gentlemen in the sport, knows about old school. “The Pit Master” isn’t just some classroom expert preaching things he learned from a book or light-contact sparring drills. The elite trainer was the real deal as a professional kickboxer and boxer. In fact, he was ranked as the No. 1 kickboxer in the world in his weight class back in the 90s. So, he knows a thing or two about preparing for a world title fight, and he insists that even though Liddell already owns a knockout win over his UFC 66 opponent—former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Tito Ortiz—that Team Liddell isn’t taking this fight lightly.
“Everything about Ortiz concerns me,” Hackleman admitted. “His wrestling, his conditioning, his experience, even his standup. Tito Ortiz is a great fighter. This is going to be a tough fight, but Chuck will be ready. He isn’t looking past Tito. Anytime you fight in front of a sold out crowd at the MGM Grand or millions of people on pay per view there is tremendous motivation. I don’t care who you are fighting or whether you beat the guy before. You never want to lose. Chuck is very, very motivated for this fight.”
That motivation, according to Hackleman, has led to one of the best training camps of Liddell’s career. In fact, Liddell is so focused for this fight that he spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Las Vegas, refusing to deviate from his normal routine of showing up on site one full week before his fight.
“This training camp was perfect,” Hackleman admitted. “Everything has gone perfectly—the sparring, the conditioning, the intensity in camp, all of the work has been perfect. This camp reminded me a lot of the camp we had before the second fight with Randy Couture. Everything is coming together at the right time.”
When Hackleman says that the camp unfolded perfectly, that means great training and no distractions.
“We don’t allow cameras in The Pit anymore,” he said. “Chuck didn’t take any time off to fly around for interviews. We cut out all the media distractions. The media isn’t very fond of me right now.”
Whether the media is fond of Hackleman or had enough access to Liddell aside from the normal phone interviews is immaterial. The Pit Master has a job to do—to get Liddell ready to face Ortiz at UFC 66.
“This isn’t about making the media happy,” he said. “It’s not about doing interviews. It’s not about cars or fame. It is about winning a fight, and that is what we are going to Las Vegas to do—win a fight.”
Sooner or later, someone in the UFC will be the next great athlete to wilt under the comfort that multi-millions provide. Win or lose on Saturday night, with an old-school fighter turned trainer like Hackleman in his corner, odds are that it won’t be Chuck Liddell.
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