Iceman: My Fighting Life

by Chuck Liddell

  The show debuted on January 17, 2005, at 11:00 P.M. Immediately the headlines changed. “Ultimate Fighter Surprise Hit for Spike.” “Ultimate Fighter Knocks Out Competition.” Somehow, people found the show. Nearly 2 million people watched the premiere, almost half of them men between eighteen and forty-nine. In the eighteen-to-thirty-four age group, a little less than four hundred thousand guys watched the show. I don’t think anyone realized how starved the fans were for something like this. So many gyms—dojos, kickboxing schools, jujitsu academies—were buying UFC fights on pay-per-view, then inviting forty students to come and watch. Imagine if all those kids were now watching the fights for free. The numbers improved nearly every week. Mixed martial arts was breaking through on basic cable TV, just a few years after it had been declared dead and less palatable to broadcasters than porn. It wasn’t just the fights that drew people in. It was the fighters. They weren’t at all what people expected. Sure, they were aggressive and eager to fight. But they were college-educated. They spoke in complete sentences. They trained as hard as any other professional athletes. As Dana once told Playboy, “Suddenly people were watching mixed martial arts without realizing they were watching it, because they got caught up in the story lines. You also get to learn about the characters and see that these guys aren’t a bunch of fucking gorillas who just rolled in off a barstool. You can see how hard they train and that they have real lives and families.”

  Some people think UFC fighters are a bunch of street thugs, but many of us are highly skilled martial artists.

  Too bad we couldn’t sit back and enjoy it. Despite pulling such big numbers for the network the first couple weeks, Spike had yet to pick up Ultimate Fighter for a second season. Paying $10 million again to produce it themselves was out of the question for Dana and the Fertittas. They wanted a deal with a network that was going to pay them. This was the biggest hit Spike had had in its most recent incarnation, so it seemed like a no-brainer. Then, at the end of January, it became obvious why nothing had been done. The head of the network resigned because of “creative differences.” A new guy was coming in, and no one knew what he wanted to do. In fact, people were too worried about their own jobs to be negotiating rights deals. They were practically hiding under their cubicles, hoping to stay out of the way and not get canned. Meanwhile, Dana was flying to New York twice a week trying to make sure Doug Herzog, Spike’s new boss, had Ultimate Fighter on his radar.

  He did, of course. How could he not? The ratings were improving every week. In mid-March Herzog announced Spike wasn’t going to renew its deal with WWE, but was working toward a second season of Ultimate Fighter. Negotiations dragged on for weeks. The night of the finale, while Stephen Bonnar and Forrest Griffin fought, Dana was putting the finishing touches on a deal in the alley. He and Herzog’s rep from Spike actually agreed to air a second season from the fucking alley during the last fight of season one. We’d spent all this time trying to prove we weren’t just back-alley brawlers, and then that’s where the deal that finally proves it gets hammered out. Someone up there has a great fucking sense of humor.

  If Dana had held out a little big longer, who knows how much more money he could have made. Because the ratings for the finale weren’t just better than they had been for the season premiere. They were the highest ratings Spike had ever had. In every category that was important—overall viewers, eighteen-to-forty-nine-year-old males, eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old males—the numbers went up, peaking in the last show of the year. We wound up averaging 1.7 million viewers per night. The size of the audience grew nearly 20 percent during those first twelve weeks. In April, when the finale aired, Spike was ranked the number-one network overall among men eighteen to forty-nine and eighteen to thirty-four. That finale, which aired on a Saturday night in prime time and drew more than 3 million viewers, was not only Spike’s biggest show, but the most watched show among men that night. More people were watching UFC fighters on Spike than watched NBA games on ESPN.

  Not only had we got the exposure we wanted, we were a television phenomenon. And the timing couldn’t have been better. A week after the finale aired, with a bout that more people watched than any other in UFC history, Randy and I were going to have our rematch.

  This time I’d be ready.

  CHAPTER 39

  IF A GUY SAYS HE’S READY, HE’S READY. WHO AM I TO SHOW MERCY?

  IDIDN’T WATCH THE SHOW WHEN IT PREMIERED. IN FACT, I haven’t seen more than a handful of episodes. I hate seeing myself on television. I don’t like the way I sound or the way that I talk. I won’t even watch my fights when they are replayed, and I have a problem watching the highlights that flash on the screen.

  But obviously, plenty of people were tuning in. And not all of them were the type of people I expected. I knew my life was changing when I was walking through a mall in Florida after the first couple of episodes and a man in his sixties stopped me to tell me how much he liked the show. A few steps later a woman about the same age stopped and asked me if I was the guy from that fighter show. When I said yes, she told me how much she liked the show, too. I might have laughed at the notion of doing reality TV, but it was no joke. Whether I liked it or not, whether I thought it was good or bad, television gave me instant credibility. Before TV I was a fighter in a thug sport. Now I was a recognizable face on this cool new show. On that same trip to the mall I stopped at a nail salon to get a pedicure. I’d never put polish on my toes, but a bunch of the guys at The Pit were doing it for fun, painting their toes black. So when the lady asked if I wanted mine painted, I said sure. She was going to do all black, then I told her to make the big toe pink, just to mess with people and see what kind of reaction I got. It’s the same reason I like to dance when I’m ringside at one of my guy’s fights. At first people were staring at my feet—but I was used to that, given my haircut—and then I just sort of forgot about it. Then a week later I went to a Chargers game in flip-flops and one guy looked at my toes, looked up at me, and said, “Hey, if anyone can pull it off, you can.” Now I step into the cage with nicely painted toes and no one even thinks twice about it. But all of this—the elderly man and woman who stopped me, people staring at me and my toes and not making fun of me—just proved to me how powerful the show was, and that, when you need to sell, there’s no better pitchman than television.

  * * *

  I like to paint my toenails. So what? Here are my favorite toenail polish colors:

  Blue

  White

  Pink

  Black

  * * *

  I had to be careful now, too. I don’t like to say no to anybody. If you want to hang out with me, buy me a drink, take a picture, I’m all for it. For most of my life, nobody wanted anything from me. That was starting to change. I had more people hanging around me that people in my inner circle didn’t know. Dana called them the Klingons, and I was going to have to learn how to recognize those who wanted something from those who didn’t.

  One way to deal with my newfound celebrity was to seclude myself and just focus on training for the Couture fight. The reality was, as much fun as being famous was, if I lost the rematch with Randy, I was going to be just another guy who had once been on TV. With the show taking off and the sport going mainstream, I wanted to be on the ride for as long as possible. Which meant I had to leave the cage a champ, not a chump.

  I lost the first fight because I was out of shape. Part of the problem was my knee, which wasn’t an issue anymore, and part was that I just didn’t have any wind. Hack was going to make sure that didn’t happen again. I did almost all of my training at The Pit, which I hadn’t done for several years. The strength training was back-to-basics stuff such as pushing the wheelbarrow, not the circuit weight training I had done in the past. And I did the wrestling and rowing drills—in which I rowed eight hundred meters on a machine in two and a half minutes and then wrestled someone for two and a half minutes. I also did extra wrestling cardio with some buddies, including Eric Schwartz. For one
minute we sprinted around the cage as fast as possible; for the next minute we did takedowns, as many as we could in sixty seconds; for the next I’d have to work my way up from being on the bottom. We’d do five one-minute drills, then I’d get a one-minute rest; as always, we were trying to simulate the conditions in a typical UFC round.

  Also, for the first time, I watched the tape of my first fight with Randy. This was a revelation. I saw how I was just hanging in there, how low I was in my stance, how flat-footed I was, and how dead tired I was. I thought, if I am in shape, I got this, it’s over.

  The fight took place in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in front of more than 14,500 fans. It was the largest crowd ever to watch a mixed martial arts fight in the United States. The entire atmosphere felt more like a UFC bazaar than the usual card. The bottom of the MGM was so packed with vendors selling shit and fans buying it up that it would have been hard to slip a piece of paper through the crowd. By the early afternoon of the fight, there wasn’t even any parking left at the hotel. The impact of The Ultimate Fighter on UFC 52 was obvious, not just from the crowd, but from the media attention. Not only was every UFC credential accounted for, but nearly a hundred requests couldn’t be fulfilled. I couldn’t even answer my phone anymore. I finally left a message on my outgoing voice mail that said, “You’ve reached Chuck Liddell. I don’t have any more tickets, so quit bothering me.”

  I was in better shape for this bout, no doubt. But I also felt I had a better game plan. Even Randy had said that I only needed minor adjustments to beat him. I was pretty sure I knew what those were and couldn’t wait to prove it.

  As soon as Big John McCarthy yelled, “Let’s get it on,” Randy and I tapped gloves. We both came out looking to strike but danced around each other warily. After a lot of quick punches, we’d back out. Hack had me move, always moving. I thought that anytime I got flat-footed, I was risking getting taken down. So I was moving side to side and forward constantly. I ceded the center of the ring to Randy and probably did more moving. I might tire myself out just from the extra distance I was covering, but the risk was worth taking if it kept him from getting me on the mat.

  One of us would throw a low leg kick, then jump back out. I didn’t want to get so close that he could grab me and take me down, turning this into a grappling match. And he didn’t want to get so close that I could finish the fight with a single punch. My stance was more defensive in this fight and my hands were higher. Twenty seconds into the fight he came in fast with some punches. In previous fights I would have stayed still for an extra second or two, accepted a little bit of punishment, then looked for an opening to make a big knockout punch. But this time I countered quickly, just to make him aware that coming in close would cost him, then I jumped out of the way so he couldn’t take me down.

  Before the fight, Randy’s trainer had talked about his theory on “controlled aggression,” which meant being aggressive enough to lure an opponent into your strategy, but not so aggressive that you’re pulled out of yours. Early on, I didn’t think either of us was doing that. Randy, if anything, was a step slower than he had been in our last fight. He didn’t have the speed to close the distance on me that had led to all those takedowns. Even his punches seemed to be coming at half speed. Instead of the quick jabs he used to counter my looping punches in our first match, he tried looping hits himself. They were easy to see coming and relatively easy to avoid.

  He did connect with a nice left about ninety seconds into the fight, which helped him catch up with me against the side of the cage, where we clinched. He had his hand on the back of my head, which was leaning in toward his. Then we both threw several punches at each other’s face. One of the dangers of the type of gloves we use is that our fingers are exposed, unlike in boxing. As I was swinging, one of my thumbs caught Randy in the eye. Everyone in the crowd gasped. No one, least of all me, wanted the fight stopped and me declared the winner because of a doctor’s call. That’s just a cheap, unsatisfying way to win a fight. Besides, after all I’d gone through for a chance to win the light heavyweight title, I wanted a legit win.

  I got in some sweet punches before I caught Randy’s eye and he went down.

  For several seconds Randy stood against the opposite side of the cage from me as the fight doctor and Big John examined him. He blinked and rubbed his eye, trying to get it to stop stinging, willing it to be okay. He wasn’t about to lose his title because of a poke in the eye. Finally, he nodded he was okay. As he got back into his stance, he shrugged his shoulders loose and gave me a nod, too, letting me know all was well.

  Randy was down, but I still needed to get on top of him to win the fight.

  Good, because now I could go kick his ass. If a guy says he’s ready, he’s ready. Who am I to show mercy? Randy immediately moved in and I caught him with a left hook that looked as if it hurt him. He tried to counter with a hook of his own, but the force of his throw knocked him off balance. I countered with a compact right cross that got Randy square on the chin. Not many people can stand after that. He was out. Honestly, I didn’t even want to jump on him when he was down. Randy is such a class act and he was completely unconscious. It was the first time in my career I haven’t wanted to hit somebody when he went down. Normally I want to kill him. But I pounced anyway. Because that’s what you do in the cage. Two more punches connected, then Big John pushed me off him. A little more than two minutes into the fight, I had won the light heavyweight title.

  After that I was a blur of emotion. I did my trademark pose—back stiff, head back, arms by my side, full body flexing. Then I ran to the cage, straddled the top, and pointed to my buddies in the crowd. Finally I jumped into Hack’s arms. All the frustration of not being the champ the previous few years had been washed away. Tito ducking me, losing to Randy, having to fight my way back into contention. I had been vindicated in every sense. There wasn’t a bigger name in the sport at that moment. I made $140,000 ($70,000 for fighting and $70,000 for winning) when I beat Randy. But not for a minute did I think about that money when I was dancing around the cage. All I could think was, no one could question whether I was the best fighter in the world.

  I had the belt to prove it.

  CHAPTER 40

  A MOHAWK ENHANCES YOUR COMMERCIAL APPEAL

  Trista, Cade, and I got the royal treatment at Disney World after I took the title.

  NATURALLY, AFTER WINNING THE TITLE I WENT TO Disney World. Because of the show I was stopped a lot more often than I used to be, even when I was with my kids. Sometimes fans would ask Trista if it was okay for them to say hello to me. I’m not sure if they were being polite or wondering if I’d beat the crap out of them. As I walked out of the park at the end of the first day with Trista and Cade, a guy stopped me to tell me he was a big fan, which I always appreciate. Then he told me he was a bigwig at Disney World and would be happy to help us out with anything if we were coming back. Here’s where fame is fun: Not only did he hook us up at the park, but he made us grand marshals in the daily Disney World parade that marches down Main Street. Trista, Cade, and I rode in one of the fancy cars, and I even wore mouse ears on my head as we waved to the crowd. Later that night I’d get nods from dads as we were sitting at dinner, as if to say, nice job. I didn’t know if they were talking about the fight or the parade.

  Eventually, after the parties ended and my buddies left and I had a minute of peace to think about what had happened, it felt no less extraordinary. When I’d first started fighting as a mixed martial artist, I told Eric Schwartz that I was going to be a light heavyweight champ. Now I was. The funny thing was, considering how many near misses and obstacles I had overcome to finally win the title, my timing couldn’t have been better. If I had fought Tito a few years earlier and beaten him, or if I had outlasted Randy the first time we fought, my career might have turned out differently.

  * * *

  THE BEST PERKS OF BEING FAMOUS:

  Free stuff

  Restaurants stay open for you

  Bei
ng on Entourage

  * * *

  The Ultimate Fighter had helped change people’s minds about the sport. They didn’t just hear UFC and immediately think of unsanctioned, no-holds-barred violence. It had been obvious we trained hard, had backgrounds as athletes, and that most of us had even gone to college. We were guys with families who were struggling to take care of them or former accountants and teachers and firemen who had chucked it all to chase a dream. The show humanized us. Here’s the irony: The sport might have been less bloody before everyone started watching.

  It used to be that so many guys who wrestled in college were becoming UFC fighters that a lot of the bouts were fought on the mat. Submission holds dominated. The ex-wrestlers did a lot of lying and praying—getting a guy on the mat and lying on top of him, praying he’d stay there until the end of the fight—to neutralize how much they were going to be hit. But, in an evolution, the wrestlers learned to fight upright and became better strikers. They practiced more than good takedowns and good takedown defense. And it wasn’t just guys like Randy Couture, a former all-American wrestler, who can punch with anyone. Around 2005, kids who were fans and trying to become UFC fighters were more than just converted grapplers or kickboxers. They were bona fide mixed martial artists who had been studying all the moves since they were young. This was happening across the entire sport just as The Ultimate Fighter was gaining traction. Fights had more action. Now it was becoming a lot less ground and pound and a lot more sprawl and brawl. Fans were really beginning to understand what we were doing in there. I was at a fight in Sacramento where people went nuts when two guys were throwing punches nonstop for about twenty or thirty seconds. Then they booed when they took a rest. Then, in a later match, they cheered when a guy made a good move to pass a guard. In the early days, no one recognized that kind of thing as difficult. Now it drew applause.