"I love fighting, I love being out there. I get paid to do what I love for a living."

They call it MMA or “Mixed Martial Arts” fighting which leads you to believe you are going to see some of the balletic moves of a Jet Li, a Van Damme or even a Jackie Chan, but that’s far from the reality. MMA isn’t movie fighting. There is no direction, no choreography to it. In fact, for the most part, there really aren’t many rules. As practiced by Chuck Liddell, for instance, it consists of hard hitting, explosive action and like as not, quick submission.

     For nearly two decades Liddell has been one of the top fighters in a sport where longevity is highly unusual. Being at the top means somebody is always gunning for you, hoping to put your lights out as fast as they can. That prospect doesn’t ever occur to Liddell. He doesn’t think about losing, or quitting or tapping-out. He has one purpose: the destruction of his opponent. He loves the sport, “It’s the pure competition of it,” he says. “I love fighting, I love being out there. I get paid to do what I love for a living.”

     Since he began studying kick-boxing at age 12, Liddell has been a warrior. “I’ve been doing martial arts since I was 12, wrestling since I was 14. I was a wrestler through high school and college.” Liddell augmented his talents with training in Kempo and Koei-Kan karate and earned a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu under John Lewis. While he did play some team sports, like football in high school, his first love has always been mano a mano in the ring.

     Raised by his single mother in Santa Barbara, California, Liddell has come a long way to the top. He did make it through college, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, collecting a degree in business and accounting which he has never used.

     Following graduation in 1995, Liddell looked for a way to make money while avoiding having to sit in an office every day. “In college I did landscaping, when I finished school I was bartending. I did all those jobs. It let me know why I was in school. It reminded me I didn’t want to do that my whole life.”

     About the same time, MMA was just starting to be established as a mainstream sport. He decided to give it a shot.

     “Yeah, I’ve been fighting since I was a kid, and I’ve been in more street fights than I can tell you about. I knew you could make some okay money fighting and I was trying to get to that,” he remembered, “but it wasn’t happening – it was taking longer than I thought it would. When I finally got my first big fight, it was only a thousand bucks but it led to a chance to get in a tournament where the winner of a bout could get $20,000 – so I was hoping somebody would get hurt and I could get in the tournament. I won the first fight then got into the tournament and won two more for $20,000. So for those two fights I got $40,000. Now I get paid that to go drink in a bar for the night.”

     In a way, Liddell has grown up with the sport. From the early days he has fought under the auspices of the UFC (the Ultimate Fighting Championship) which was one of the first MMA organizations to emerge – although he has fought under the Pride banner as well.

“MMA was big in Japan and Brazil before it was here,” says Liddell. “A lot of guys came from Brazil and they started in UFC as a way to prove their style was better than other styles. Now, with what we have now in MMA, there’s no style that’s better than any other one.”

     His UFC debut in 1998 resulted in a decision over Noe Hernandez. Over the next few years he defeated such outstanding fighters as Tito Ortiz, Renato Sobral and Wanderlei Silva. Eventually, he knocked out the estimable Randy Couture in two minutes, 6 seconds, to win the Light Heavyweight Championship title. He defended that title successfully many times before surrendering it in May of 2007 at UFC 71 to one Quinton “Rampage” Jackson – a loss that weighs heavily on his mind as one he must avenge.

     Losing a fight in the world of MMA can happen in a split second. A footwork mistake, a loss of concentration, and it can all be over fast. However, it doesn’t mean your career is all over. So, rather than think of an L as a devastating loss, it’s really more proper to think of it as one episode in a long struggle, one battle in a long-term war. Liddell thinks about it all the time, “I want a shot back at that title. I know what I did wrong but you know hindsight’s always 20-20. I want to get back in there and get another shot at it.”

     There are several ways for an MMA fight to end: knock-out, TKO, decision, or tap-out, where the fighter lets the referee know by tapping his hand on the mat that it’s time to quit.

     Such a thing would never occur to Liddell, “No, I never thought about tapping-out. If I can think well enough to think about tapping-out, I can think well enough to fight myself out of there. There are, of course, certain situations where you can bust an elbow or bust a knee and I know when to tap and when not to – what’s risky – but generally, if I can think to tap, I can think to fight.”

Early on, Liddell came to be known as “The Iceman,” probably for his cool, unemotional demeanor in the ring. He actually seems relaxed during a fight, “It’s all about confidence and knowing what you’re doing.” He explained, “I’m known as a kick-boxer and I like to strike. I stay on my feet throwing punches and I hit pretty hard. I’m not an emotional fighter. That can help in training – if you really don’t like the guy you’re fighting it can motivate you to train – but during a fight I don’t use emotion as a tool. I actually think it clouds your judgment.”

     His mission is clear, “For me, the most exciting thing is knocking somebody out. It’s proving you’re better than somebody at what you’ve been training for. That’s why I always like to fight the best guys out there. There’s a lot of tough guys I’ve fought. I’ve fought them all. I’ve fought a big list of tough guys.” Obviously, knocking out some patsy does nothing for your rep or your self esteem.

     Liddell trains hard, “Two or three times a day, five days a week. Training is a mix of everything: martial arts, running, swimming, weights, sparring, and wrestling.”

     All of those seemingly disparate disciplines come into play because a fight might just come down to who’s more versatile. A fight that starts with both men standing up often ends with both on the ground in a tight tension-filled ball. You have to be quick, strong, agile and a master of many fighting techniques.

     It takes constant study, “We work on our techniques all the time,” says Liddell. “It’s a very technical sport that’s always evolving so you have to always keep up on what people are doing that’s new so you know how to defend it. Or, you maybe can use it as one of your own techniques.”

     Even watching a fight takes some experience. There’s a lot going on usually in that tight little ball. “I think it’s getting better and better now, too. Fighters are getting more educated on the bottom and more on the top,” offers Liddell. “It’s a more aggressive game on the ground now. And the fans are more educated, they know what the fighters are trying to do now – If they’re just laying down there or if they’re actually trying to get somewhere. It’s more exciting for the fans if they know what the guys are trying to do.”

     Liddell is one of the most recognizable and vocal proponents of his sport. For a long time, MMA was viewed as a barbaric anomaly in sport. But over time, and with some education, it has come to be respected. It may be a generational thing with the recent generations being a little more accepting than the older ones. It also helped that MMA lovers put on a massive PR campaign to gain acceptance. Liddell sees it as his personal calling to educate and expand the audience. He is to a certain extent the face of MMA.

     Liddell thinks the real breakthrough was, “Free TV. That was the big thing we needed. It’s a great sport it’s just that people needed to be able to try it for free. I don’t care how much you’ve heard about it, it’s hard to go out and spend $40-$50 to go see something you haven’t seen before.”

     “I’ve been traveling lately and doing a bunch of PR,” he told us. “I was in Canada for a little bit and then we went to the Philippines, they’re crazy about MMA there. I would train in a mall and 4,000 people would show up to watch me work out. It’s huge there and it’s getting a lot bigger in Europe. It’s still kind of weird for me the way people get. I’m just me, I’m just a guy. It just gets weird when they put you at that different level.”

     The problem with MMA, of course, has been the perceived danger to the participants. How do you sanction a sport that is so brutal and potentially lethal? Imagine letting a grown man train for three or four months and then allowing him to hit or kick you as hard as he can, wherever he wants. Not a prospect to be relished. Liddell, though, never thinks about the downside. “I’ve been fighting my whole life.” He says of the danger, “If you start worrying about that, you can’t do it. Besides, it’s not as dangerous as a lot of things we do. It’s a lot less dangerous than football, for instance. And boxers. They take a lot more abuse than us with hard fights, long fights. I got hurt more in college wrestling than I have in 15 years of fighting. A hamstring pull was probably the worst thing I ever had. I tore my MCL (knee ligament) 5 times, I have tendinitis in both shoulders, but I’ve had that from a kid.”

     Now that the sport has evolved to a point where it’s pulling in big audiences, the advertisers are starting to take notice and that means more money in the form of purses and endorsements to the winners. That’s because the demographics are in that much desired 18-34 age group. And though it’s mostly a male audience, Liddell assures us, “There’s quite a few female fans.” They’re attracted to anything that attracts that large male audience. For proof, Liddell offers, “I know a woman whose daughter is having a Chuck Liddell-themed birthday party.”

     Liddell himself has two children from a previous marriage. He is currently engaged to marry his girlfriend of two years, Erin Wilson.

     Though he is now 39 years old, Liddell gives no thought to quitting the sport. And he still fights 2 or three times a year. “Randy Couture is 45 and he’s still fighting,” Liddell explains. “Still, I don’t want to be one of those guys that they question, ‘Why is that guy still in the ring?’ As long as I can be competitive, as long as I still love it, I’ll keep on doing it.”

     In the meantime he’s been training fighters himself. To carry on his legacy. There are never enough fighters in the sport for Liddell, “I’ve been training my own guys for some time. There’s never too many guys in the sport – it’s getting bigger and bigger and I like to see that.”

     Of course, one of the nice things about being a well-known fighter is you don’t have to put up with wannabes. He is never challenged anywhere he goes, “It’s nice to be able to walk into a bar and not have to worry about anyone in there. I wouldn’t know what that was like to even think about that. It never crosses my mind. I’ve never been afraid to fight anybody. I don’t want to fight anybody – but I’m not afraid to fight anybody.”

     Wouldn’t it be prudent to have a bodyguard, though, just in case? Liddell does employ one on occasion, “It depends on what the situation is – where we’re at. Usually I have one somewhere where it’s really busy and I have my girlfriend with me. It’s more someone to watch her.”

     He’d never allow himself to be goaded into a street fight anyway at this point in his life, “I’m a pretty laidback person – it would take a real asshole to get me to fight in a bar.”

     Asked if there were any changes Liddell would like to see in his chosen sport, he says matter-of-factly, “I’d like to put ‘knees to the head on the ground’ back in, but that’s just me. That was the last thing they took out when they fully sanctioned it.

     “When they finalized the rules in New Jersey, they were allowed – then at the first fight they had – actually it was my guy, he was 6’10”, 280 lbs. – he was kneeing this guy in the head and I was watching the fight with Larry Hazard, the commissioner, who was sitting right next to me and he said to me, ‘I don’t know about those knees to the head on the ground.’ And the next thing you know they pulled ‘em.”

     Despite the lack of knees to the head, the sport will survive and prosper however, as will Chuck Liddell. And, if you were wondering, yes – his mother does know what he does for a living.

               Not only that, says Liddell, “She’s proud of me.”