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The Iceman Featured by Santa Barbara News |
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Written by Leeah Etling
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Saturday, 04 February 2006 |
 From newspress.com LEAH ETLING, NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
San Marcos High grad Chuck 'The Iceman' Liddell is the ULTIMATE dad, student ... and Fighting Champion
February 3, 2006 8:09 AM
If you have seen the Iceman on Pay Per View, perhaps watched him knock an opponent to the ground with a single punch in a mixed martial arts battle of submission, you might not see him the way Troy Brown does.
As a buddy whose real name is Charles Liddell. Somebody who had a 4.0
grade-point average back in high school and earned a degree in
accounting from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And as a devoted father of
two.
"He's a great dad," Brown said of the muscled, mohawked Iceman.
Liddell, who attended San Marcos High, is so named because he is cool
as ice before his fights.
As the marquee competitor of the Ultimate Fighting Championship series,
Liddell's rematch with Randy "the Natural" Couture will be the big draw
sports event in Las Vegas this weekend, second only to the Super Bowl.
Locally, fans will gather at O'Malley's to watch the fight. There is no
cover charge. Pre-main event begins at 7 p.m.
Brown, 34, assists his high school friend with his Web site and an
Iceman clothing line. He has followed his career from San Marcos High
wrestler and football player, to mixed martial arts competitor, and now
to Mandalay Bay.
Before fights, Brown gives the people around him a warning:
"I have to let them know that I won't be sitting down. I'll be on my feet for the entire fight."
Even though he knows Liddell cannot hear him in the octagon -- an
enclosed structure where he and Couture will battle it out for 25
minutes or until one of them succumbs -- he will be hoarse by the
fight's end from yelling his encouragement.
The third match between the Iceman and the Natural figures to set yet
another UFC sales and attendance record, and it has been sold out since
December. Ringside seats go for $700, with scalping prices in the
thousands.
Couture, 42, won the first fight between the two in June 2003, while
Liddell took their second meeting for the light heavyweight title by
first round knockout in April.
"I tactically made a mistake and created an opportunity for Chuck,"
said Couture, who just signed a three-fight contract with the UFC. "It
was the first time I was ever knocked out."
This time around, he plans to sit back and stick to his own game plan to avoid a similar result.
Meanwhile, the Iceman is planning to repeat his last performance. He is
under contract with the UFC for three more fights after Sunday.
"I should knock him out again," he said confidently.
Both fighters will weigh in at 205 pounds.
Liddell, 36, was a wrestler and football player at San Marcos High who
later joined the Cal Poly wrestling team. He actually met Couture
during that time, when the latter was coaching wrestling at Oregon
State University.
Both fighters say they respect each other and would even consider
themselves friends. They worked together on the first season of the
Spike reality TV show "The Ultimate Fighter." Each led a team of young
fighters competing to make the show.
"He is a very nice guy," Brown said of Couture. "But I think Chuck will win by knockout like he usually does."
For Liddell's friends, watching their buddy take on opponents inside
the octagon is an intense experience. Longtime friend Chris Dougherty
admits that in the early days of the Iceman's career, they did
something few guys would admit to -- worried.
"But Chuck's always been the toughest guy out of our whole group of
guys, and we have always had confidence that he'll do well," the Santa
Barbara contractor said.
He has attended almost every one of Liddell's fights, though he will not be able to make this one.
The UFC's popularity continues to increase, and with the recent
approval of sanctioned ultimate fighting contests in California, the
octagon will be coming to Los Angeles in April.
"It's going to be good to have smaller shows in California, which will
allow for up-and-coming guys to fight a lot more," Liddell said.
"And it'll be good to have the fights sanctioned."
In the expansion of his personal career, Liddell recently committed to
several major deals, including a spokesmanship for Xyience, a
nutritional supplement that helps athletes recover from workouts. And
he has speaking parts in a forthcoming movie, "The Life and Death of
Bobby Z," starring Paul Walker and Laurence Fishburne, and in a TV
series, "Blade," adapted from the movie of the same name. In both, his
characters get beat up or killed.
In "Blade," "I'm in a fight with Blade, and I didn't get killed and I'm
not a vampire, but he beats me up. There's a possibility they could
bring me back later," Liddell said.
The show's producers might want to take a note from Couture's file -- in a rematch, Liddell has been known to win.
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