by Bruce Buffer
I went home with $27,500 that day. And about two weeks later, I won first place and another $75,000 in the main event of Larry Flynt’s Grand Slam of Poker at the Hustler Casino. The two events together made it my winningest month ever: $100,000-plus in a single thirty-day period.
It’s hard to feel bad about a loss when that happens.
There’s an old saying: where there’s a chip and a chair, you can win. As long as I have a few chips in front of me, I know I can win. As long as I have bullets in the gun, I know I can shoot. As long as I can stand, I know I can throw a punch.
One of these days, I’ll win that bracelet. And when I do, I will flaunt it.
You’ll see it in the Octagon.
It’ll be on my microphone arm.
16
THE ICEMAN
The funny thing about MMA guys is that in their street clothes they don’t always look like the monsters they are. At an event in the American South once, after the fights were over, a bunch of us hit the bars. I was standing at this divey watering hole having a drink with some of the fighters when it became obvious that the guys closest to us had probably been drinking since noon. The music was cranked. People were screaming and dancing, and someone shoved us. We told the guy to watch it, and he mouthed off to us.
Well, not to me, exactly.
To Chuck Liddell.
How crazy do you have to be, right? Now, granted, maybe if you’ve never watched an MMA bout in your life and you saw these guys in a bar, you might be thinking, hey, I can take them. Well, no, mincemeat, you can’t. I call you mincemeat because that’s what you’re about to become.
Some MMA fighters don’t look that big, but Chuck Liddell is actually much bigger in person than most people think. My father once said that Chuck was one of the most naturally tough-looking men in the UFC.
I’m looking at Chuck and there’s this look in his eyes like, Okay, I’m going to take one more sip of beer, and when I put this down, someone’s losing his head.
You’ll remember from my description of the London street brawl that I watched Chuck defending himself in an alley. We were definitely not feeling any pain that night, and he was still one of the most dangerous human bulldozers you could have encountered in that alley. Watching him work a public street brawl was like watching a movie without the flashy sound effects. He was just swatting people. Swat. Swat. Swipe.
So this night down south, B.J. Penn and I looked at each other and nodded, knowing that we had best back Chuck up, as something was about to blow up. B.J. stepped in right behind Chuck, glaring at these guys. I took Chuck’s right.
We just looked at these guys, and watched the threat evaporate from their eyes like sweet tea on Alabama asphalt in June.
And Chuck turned around and thanked us both.
There must have been something in the air that night, because as I left the club, a hellacious brawl broke out between two girls at the front entrance. There were so many swinging punches and so much hair-pulling that even the bouncers hung back, not wanting to get caught in the middle of it. They didn’t get involved until the blood started flowing; then they had to step in and shut it down. But still—that’s not a common sight in my neck of the woods on a Saturday night.
I think sometimes that the secret of Chuck’s success might be his disarming toughness. He worked as a bouncer in San Luis Obispo, where he’s from, and I’m sure he learned to defuse situations and always be ready to throw down. He’s not cut like a bodybuilder; that’s not his physique. But so what? He’s one of the most steel-muscled men you’d ever want to meet. With his iconic mohawk and the Hawaiian Kempo tattoo on his arm, he’s a true original. He’s created trends with his haircut, his partying style, his legendary prowess with the ladies. But he’s absolutely authentic. He doesn’t copy anyone; people copy him, down to the hair.
Early in the sport’s history, the bosses figured out that certain fighters captured the imagination of the fans. Guys like that were assets to the organization beyond their box-office appeal, if you will. You could trot them out to meet the press. You could put them in a suit and have them promote the sport. You could put them in gloves (or not) and put them on your next poster. They were very visible ambassadors. Early on, guys like Royce Gracie were the face of the sport. Tito Ortiz, when he showed up, was one of those poster boys. You could say that a guy like Tank Abbott was a controversial face in the early days. Chuck Liddell, who started fighting in 1998 with UFC 17, quickly became one of the sport’s biggest icons of all time. Not just for the UFC, but for the sport of MMA as a whole. Even today I’d argue that Chuck is still one of the most familiar, visible faces of the sport internationally, though he retired in 2010.
He’s a true fighter in the way that B.J. and Randy are. There are guys who fight because they have tremendous skill and they know it will earn them a good living. God bless ’em. There’s no shame in that. They fight the way most of us work to get a paycheck and provide for our families. But if you told Chuck, “We’re no longer paying fighters. Will you still fight?” in a heartbeat, Chuck would probably say, “Yes, because it’s fun!”
I know this because he was accepting fights in the old days when none of us were making much money from the UFC. He’s a fighter’s fighter. He will take on anything. I can’t say enough to compliment his toughness.
He’s a guy who shuts down other athletes. I first met Chuck’s wife, Heidi, the mother of their baby girl, when she was dating the baseball player Jose Canseco, as Jose and I played a number of poker tournaments together in L.A. Jose and Heidi remained friends after they stopped seeing each other, and Canseco would call from time to time. If she was with a new boyfriend, he’d always sort of mock them to her over the phone. Just joking, you understand. But, funny thing: Heidi told me that she noticed he stopped doing it when she began dating Chuck.
You can trace the origin of Chuck’s toughness by looking at his fight training bloodline. His trainer, John Hackleman, owner of a California dojo called The Pit, is one of the toughest men I have ever met. Hackleman was a professional boxer who happened to have a love for martial arts. His skill and life experience are amazing enough, but he somehow manages to infect his students with his spirit—if he sees that they have what it takes. John is one of the most sincere men I’ve ever met. A fighter never gets a compliment from him unless John means it.
Chuck was in hog heaven with the UFC, where he could indulge his love for fighting. In my opinion, the money was always an afterthought for him. Once when we were in London for an event, he invited me to a nightclub to meet after the UFC show—not the infamous Chinawhite—where he was making an “appearance.” I got there and where was Chuck? He was up on the balcony hanging out with some friends. I went up to join him, and there were crowds of MMA-loving Londoners shouting his name up from the street; some were even shouting mine. Here we were, far from home, and they knew this fighter by sight.
That doesn’t surprise me. I love our UK events. The UK fighters (and sometimes the fans) always come ready to fight. They are a naturally tough people, always ready to throw down, especially after a pint or two.
Looking out over this London street scene now, Chuck leaned over and said, “They paid me a lot of money to come here and drink tonight. But you know what? I’m having a good time!”
People love being around him in social settings because he puts them at ease. I remember spending a Sunday afternoon with him hanging out at the pool at the Vegas Hard Rock Hotel, site of the hotel’s famous Rehab party, which was even the basis of a reality show on TruTV. It was great fun, great girls in bikinis and thongs, and we’re checking everyone out. Chuck’s standing there with his four-pound Chihuahua and his jet-black-painted toenails. That’s Chuck: the world’s toughest man, petting a Chihuahua and showing off his painted toenails. He’s just himself. And who’s gonna tell him otherwise? He can do whatever he wants.
BUFFERISM NO. 11
“I’VE NEVER MARRIED, BUT I WAS ALMOST DIVORCED TWICE.”
His persona aside, I think Chuck will always be remembered as a formidable fighter. The skills come first, of course. He was a striker first and foremost, but also a top wrestler. His ability to get up after someone shot on him or went for a takedown was incredible. He was like the Terminator; he just kept getting up. It was amazing to watch him get pinned against the cage, and then see that leg of his just come up out of nowhere and propel him to his feet, where he could shrug off an opponent. I’ve seen very few fighters who can “sprawl” and evade the takedown so handily.
One of the first times I saw him fight, in 1999, he refused to tap against Jeremy Horn, who had more than a hundred MMA fights, more than anyone on the planet, probably. Horn got Chuck in an arm-triangle choke. And the fight ended only because the referee realized that Chuck had gone to sleep.
To sleep.
They pried away Horn’s arm and there was Chuck, out like a light on the Octagon floor. I wondered: Did it happen before he realized he should tap? Or did he refuse to tap? Probably the latter. Crazy, I know, but that’s Chuck.
He also had the ability to land devastating strikes from impossible angles. He knocked out Kevin Randleman with one punch in UFC 31. It happened in such a weird way that if you watch the tape, you’re left wondering, Wait—where did that punch come from? Chuck knew just how to turn his body, even when he was trapped in bizarre positions, to get the leverage he needed to deliver a punishing blow. He reminded me of guys like Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Robinson, who could throw punches even as they were stepping back from their opponents. Sometimes you have to both retreat and attack at the same time. That’s really hard to pull off. Most fighters get it confused and end up leaving themselves open to attack. Not the greats. Chuck once knocked down Vernon White with a straight right hand while walking backward, and his blow carried so much force that it cracked White’s orbital bone in the process.
So what happened? Chuck retired following UFC 115, after losing in a horrendous knockout. I look back on that night, and I still think he was winning that fight up until that final blow from Rich Franklin, who is a powerful striker.
Chuck was coming off a crushing number of fights. Of the last six bouts he’d been in, he’d been TKO’d three times, KO’d twice, and had won only once. Something happens to fighters when they start getting knocked out. They still have the confidence, they can study the fights objectively and see all the ways it could have gone the other way, but it’s still too much of a risk to get back in the Octagon. You can win and still get hurt. You can get hurt in that six-to-eight-week buildup to the fight. Guys like Chuck don’t spar lightly.
Some said he should have retired a while ago. But it was up to him to decide, and I’m glad he finally did.
As a rule, MMA people don’t get hit in the head as much as people think, because so many MMA fights are taken to the ground. But strikers get hit a lot because their style naturally forces their opponents to defend themselves on that level.
I was worried about him because he’s not just a fighter to me. He’s a friend. All it takes is one fight to mess things up for you forever. Many boxers suffer from pugilistic dementia, a condition of declining mental prowess found in those who have suffered concussions. I didn’t want to see that happen to Chuck. I want him to have a great life and go on to the bigger and better things that await him, especially after all the years of blood, sweat, and honor he displayed in the Octagon.
I was so happy when I heard Chuck was joining Zuffa as a vice president. It was a smart move by Dana and the Fertitta brothers. Chuck’s approachable and soft-spoken. He can speak intelligently to the press about the sport, he is loved and respected by all UFC fans, and he can educate fans because he knows the history cold. At the time of the announcement, everyone was asking, “Well, what’s he going to do?”
Listen: all he has to do is be Chuck Liddell. Like Tyson, like Ali, he’ll forever be an ambassador of the sport. And the best thing is, he doesn’t have to take anyone’s head off to do it.
17
FANS
One December, a young man wrote me from the UK hoping that I’d be able to help him give his girlfriend a Christmas gift that she wouldn’t be able to get in a store. She was a roller-derby skater who had chosen to roll under the nickname “Bruise Buffer.” Her number? One-eighty, of course. She had registered the nickname with the International Roller Derby Committee, so no other RD girl could use the name.
The boyfriend wondered if I’d be willing to write her a letter of endorsement. Nothing fancy. Just a note to say that I’d heard the story and was cool with her use of the nickname.
When I read the letter, I chuckled. I couldn’t resist sharing the accompanying photo of the young girl in her roller-derby jersey with a few friends. I liked the pun, and it made my day that a young athlete would want to honor me in such a way. I wrote back with my thumbs-up, and added, “Please wish her my best and to be safe, tough, and relentless on the track and to Skate Like a Warrior!”
Another time, I ran into a trio of brothers at a UFC event in Chicago who had driven through a snowstorm that dumped three feet of snow on their home in South Dakota. I heard them calling my name early in the show. When I looked up, I saw three guys walking down the steps from the upper tier of the stadium in camo-colored T-shirts, each emblazoned with the word BUFFER. We took some pictures together, and a few weeks later they were nice enough to send me one of the T-shirts in the mail, along with photos of the snowstorm they had braved to make the show. I cherish the photo of all of us because it was such a compliment.
If you’d told me thirty years ago that people would someday be selling T-shirts with my name on them, I would have laughed in your face. Even after I became an announcer, I figured the attention of the fans would be forever focused on the fighters, and rightly so. They’re the ones doing the hard work. But I was stunned to discover that some of the fan love has spilled over onto me.
Their attention honors me. Flatters me. Humbles me. And sometimes just plain cracks me up.
All of life is a pyramid, and the fans are the base of the UFC. Without fans, the pyramid crumbles. All of us are jobless without the fans. The fans keep the organization afloat. Dana and the Fertittas know this well, and their genius has been to help the fighters and the support staff understand it as well. When we’re on the road, there are these die-hard fans who literally camp out twenty-four hours a day in the lobbies of the hotels where we stay, hoping for a glimpse of their favorite UFC celebrities. It sometimes looks like the lines you’d see snaking out of a theater to see Stars Wars or some other giant movie premiere. I was once approached by some fans who’d been at our hotel all weekend long, who asked for my autograph, then asked if I knew when Dana was coming down. They hadn’t seen him all weekend. “I hate to tell you this, guys,” I said, “but Dana isn’t staying at this hotel.” They were crushed. No one in the group had considered that possibility.
The UFC is so smart that it actually holds training sessions to teach fighters how to use social media—free Internet applications such as Twitter and Facebook—to reach fans, excite them, interact with them, and grow the fighters’ followings. As an incentive, the UFC has even paid a bonus to the fighter who lands the largest number of new followers. Look at the six-figure Twitter numbers of guys like Randy Couture, B.J. Penn, Jon “Bones” Jones, Chuck Liddell, Rashad Evans, and Georges St-Pierre, and you begin to see how well they’re connecting with millions of fans with the flick of a button on their phone. I love Bones Jones’s Tweets in particular. He’ll ask people what their favorite motivational quotes are. Or, instead of treating his fans to an endless stream of his own thoughts, Jon will try to get fans engaged. “Wha
t can you tell me today, people?” he’ll ask. That’s generous of him, not to mention smart.
Beyond the realm of the digital, though, the UFC arranges autograph and meet-and-greet sessions with the fans on weigh-in days and before fight nights. It amazes me to watch how fighters who are dehydrated and have been cutting weight like crazy to drop twenty pounds will stop in a hallway on their way to and from a weigh-in to give a fan an autograph. How easy it would be to say, “Not right now. I’m busy.” But no. They do it selflessly every time.
We’re in a long-tail business. The payoff, for us, is way down the road. If a fan feels welcomed by the UFC, he or she will tell their friends. And so on, and so on. Good karma will always come around.
If someone writes me via e-mail, Twitter, or mail, I write them back. I usually take time after the UFC events to check my account. On a Sunday night after a show, it’s often brimming with the warm wishes that have poured in from the fans during the show. I always get a kick out of those days when I’m trending on Twitter. I have no idea what sets it off, but it’s nice to be noticed.
BUFFERISM NO. 12
“BE HONEST. WHY LIE? IT’S TOO HARD TO REMEMBER WHAT YOU SAID.”
I’ve always been scrupulously honest in business and dating. I’d rather date different women at once and be honest than tell each of them we’re exclusive and then find ways to lie about seeing someone else on Thursday. Lying takes work and saps your energy. Why not use that energy to get what you really want?