Chuck Liddell reflects on 20-year anniversary of first UFC title win, names ‘real fighter’ from today’s MMA

UFC 52: Liddell vs. Couture 2 — Chuck Liddell finished Randy Couture at UFC 52 | Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Chuck Liddell retired from the sport almost seven years ago — and he still misses the game.

The former UFC light heavyweight was one of the sport’s biggest stars in the early 2000’s, reigning as the best 205-pounder in the United States in the pinnacle of the UFC vs. PRIDE era. “The Iceman” told MMA Fighting he “always will” miss being active in the sport and joked that “if father time hasn’t caught up to me, I’d still be doing it.”

“I love fighting,” Liddell said when discussing the 20-year anniversary of his first UFC title win, a first-round knockout over Randy Couture at UFC 52 in April 2005. “I’m always going to miss [fighting]. That was a great time.”

Liddell was 15-3 in the sport going into that event at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena, including a third-round stoppage to Couture the first time they met two years prior. Back from a 1-1 trip to PRIDE in 2003, Liddell stopped Tito Ortiz and Vernon White in back-to-back fights to earn a shot at the undisputed UFC gold.

“Everyone asks me all the time,” Liddell said when questioned if that was his favorite victory all-time. “If you put a gun in my head to pick, so many great things that happened — but if I had to pick one, that’s it. Avenging a loss, finally getting the title I was going after, winning the show. That was a pretty high moment.”

Liddell retired from the UFC after losing to Rich Franklin in 2010 but remained in the company as a vice president of business development. He was let go after the sale of the UFC to WME-IMG. “The Iceman” returned to competition years later, losing to Tito Ortiz at a MMA event produced by Golden Boy Promotions in 2018.

“I’ve never not been involved [in MMA]. I still go to do stuff,” Liddell said. “I go to some of the UFCs, some of the bigger ones I want to go to. I still follow fights. I have to be watching on my phone at dinner. I still watch a lot of the fights.”

A lot has changed in the combat sports landscape since 2005. The UFC is now the No. 1 MMA promotion and no other is even close to challenging its dominance, but athletes now have different avenues to pursue money and fame, including bare-knuckle events and boxing.

“I’m all for guys that have places to go fight and make money,” Liddell said. “If they like it, that’s great. I’ve always said, if I fought a boxer back in the day, I want to fight a bare knuckle, just because I’m used to hitting with my bare knuckles, they’re not. … I would have definitely been a lot busier in my career if they had more fights. I mean, I think I averaged about three fights every two years. I would have fought a lot more if there was more available. It just wasn’t. The UFC had like four or five, five or six [events] a year at that time.”

“Everything’s changing,” he continued. “There’s a lot more people out there fighting. And there’s what, 45 UFC events a year? And each one of those cards has 10 to 12 fights on it, so you’re talking about 60 to 100 fights rather than 450 fights. And that’s if you’re at UFC level. Obviously there’s more people, but there’s more people doing it now.

“When I started, it was usually came with a base of striking or jiu-jitsu or wrestling and you had to learn the other two. One of the advantages I had in the beginning was I was a striker and a wrestler, so I had two and had to learn one. And we were trying to figure out how to train it and put it together, to do all the stuff. Now that the guys are coming and growing up since they’re kids. Everyone’s kind of figured out somewhere along. You gotta be complete fighters, have to be decent at everything and then really good at something.”

The sport has evolved and mixed martial artists are more well-rounded than before, but Liddell sees fighters in general being different from those from past eras.

“When I started fighting, the home run was 150 grand a year,” Liddell said. “That’s if you fought probably three fights to get that. So there wasn’t any big thing. You got guys that liked fighting, and it’s a job where I can keep fighting. You had a lot more pure fighters. guys that are fighters.

“Today you still have both, trust me, but guys that are athletes that can fight. They’re good athletes, and they can fight. They know how to fight. And sometimes that’s a different mindset. I mean, there’s guys that do well, and that are really kind of not what I consider like real fighters. They’re not great tactically, but they can be intimidated, they can pushed to a point where it’s not a fight.”

Asked to name one he considers more of a pure fighter than overall athlete from today’s UFC roster, “The Iceman” picked Brazil’s Alex Pereira. A protege under his longtime friend Glover Teixeira in Danbury, “Poatan” won titles in two weight classes in the UFC after doing the same in kickboxing.

“Oh, there’s quite a few about that,” Liddell said. “Pereira is one of my favorites, but obviously he’s from Glover [Teixeira]. But I like his attitude about fighting. He’s a beast, man. So if I had to pick one, I guess [it’s Pereira].”

Chuck Liddell reflects on 20-year anniversary of first UFC title win, names ‘real fighter’ from today’s MMA

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