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Chuck Liddell – Looking to Close the Chapter on Couture |
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Written by Thomas Gerbasi
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Saturday, 04 February 2006 |
 From UFC.tv By Thomas Gerbasi
The eyes have it. Back in the dressing room during January’s Ultimate
Fight Night show in Las Vegas, UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck
Liddell - in town to corner welterweight Jason Von Flue - made the
rounds after his charge’s victory over Alex Karalexis: shaking hands,
joking, and checking his cell phone for messages.
In the background, a television monitor began showing a preview of
Saturday’s bout between Liddell and Randy Couture. As highlights of his
victories over Couture, Tito Ortiz, and Jeremy Horn played, ‘The
Iceman’ barely paid attention to his moments of glory. But when
Couture’s 2003 stoppage win of Liddell came on the tube, suddenly
everything stopped and the champion fixed his eyes and attention on the
last time he tasted defeat in the Octagon.
It’s obviously something that still sticks in his head, something that
can only truly be resolved by a second consecutive victory over ‘The
Natural’. So if you’re under the impression that Liddell will be
entering his fight with Couture overconfident, think again.
“I know Randy’s a tough guy, and you can’t overlook Randy ever – he’s
one of the best guys in the world,” said Liddell. “There’s no question
about it, so you can’t get overconfident going against a guy like that.
He makes it easy not to get overconfident.”
You could excuse Liddell if he entered this weekend’s bout with a hint
of cockiness. He did send Couture crashing down to the first knockout
defeat of his career last April courtesy of a single right hand, and
with four straight wins against world-class competition all coming
before the final bell, he’s earned the distinction of being the best
205-pound fighter in the world. But it’s never been about that for the
36-year-old. It’s all about the battle.
“I love fighting and I’ll never get burned out on that,” he said.
“Sometimes the business side of it gets to you a little bit, but I
can’t complain about that right now either. I get paid to do what I
love for a living, so it’s kinda hard to get burned out on that.”
For a while, Liddell, who owns a college degree in Accounting, didn’t
know if he was going to be able to get paid to do what he loved. As he
recalls, “I’ve always been super competitive, and fighting was the one
thing I was always good at. I used to say, ‘I wish I was good at
something else, so I could make a living at it.’”
It’s a concern for most fighters, some of whom can now devote their
entire lives to their sport and bettering themselves within it. Liddell
is one of them, and though he is now one of the highest paid mixed
martial artists, it wasn’t an easy road – it was one filled with a lot
of hours, a lot of sweat, and a lot of sacrifice. Through it all,
Liddell and longtime coach John Hackleman kept training, kept fighting,
and kept winning. It got to a point where Liddell couldn’t be ignored
anymore, and once he beat Couture to clean out the best in the division
(Couture, Ortiz, Babalu, Belfort), he was a bona fide superstar, the
face of mixed martial arts in this country. For the soft-spoken
Liddell, that took some getting used to.
“It’s been a hard adjustment, especially this year because it got a
little crazy as far as how many people know who you are,” he said.
“It’s a little different, but I’m a pretty open person anyway, so it’s
not that bad, it’s just different.”
A stint as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter reality series didn’t make
him any less visible, and as the fight with Couture grows near and the
PR machine kicks into high gear, it can get a little crazy.
“It’s more than I expected,” he said. “A lot of people knew who I was
at a lot of the places I went, but now it’s just different people.
Before, you could almost tell which guys are fight fans, and they would
know who I was. Now I can’t. You’ll get some old guy talking in the
mall, ‘hey, good luck next week.’ And I’m looking around. ‘What? Oh,
okay, thanks.’ (Laughs)”
Luckily for Liddell, he – like Couture – knows that all the fame and
fortune doesn’t mean anything (and could disappear) if he doesn’t win.
So he keeps working, keeps trying to refine his game for fight night.
And he does it where he began, at The Pit in San Luis Obispo with
Hackleman. It’s a union that has lasted in a sport where alliances are
quickly broken or changed from fight to fight.
“That’s just the way I am, and everybody who knows me knows that,” said
Liddell when asked about the loyalty between him and Hackleman. “And it
also comes from the fact that John’s a great coach. He sticks with me
and I stick with him. We work together well, and over at The Pit, we’re
more of a family than anything else.”
And even though it’s said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,
Liddell insists that he is still learning everyday in the gym.
“Always. If you’re not learning in this sport, you’re dying. You’ve got
to keep evolving with the sport. It’s evolving quickly and there’s
always so many ways you can lose a fight or win a fight, and so many
ways a guy can come at you that you have to keep learning all the time.”
This no-nonsense attitude makes his fight with Couture this weekend not
one of bad blood between two fighters who hate each other, but one that
pits two of the sport’s best
Against each other in a war of wills to see who truly is the superior
fighter. For Liddell, it’s just another fight, and that attitude has
endeared him not only to fans, but also to his peers.
“I think the reason people like me is because I’ll fight anybody,
anywhere, I don’t talk bad about people that don’t deserve it, and I’m
not a guy who’s out there trying to trash talk and make a name for
myself,” he said. “I earned the name that I have – I went out and
fought for it. I’m not trying to make it off somebody else. And I go
out there, I fight hard, and I fight to win. I think other fighters
have respect for that because that’s what they’re doing.”
And if you think Chuck Liddell is satisfied with his place in the great
scheme of things in mixed martial arts – with a healthy bank account, a
ton of fame, the love of the fans and the respect of his peers – think
again. At 36, if he closes his own personal chapter on Randy Couture
Saturday night, he’s just getting started for the next phase of his
career.
That’s no surprise.
“I love fighting and I’ll just keep fighting,” he said. “There are a
lot of great guys coming up and I’m sure there are a lot of people that
I haven’t seen coming up too. There are a lot of tough guys out there
that I’d like to fight, and as long my body works, I’m gonna be here
fighting.”
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