Chuck Liddell wants to come back to MMA and fight in November, even if the fight isn’t a trilogy-maker with Tito Ortiz. In other words, it’s official — UFC Hall of Fame fighter and one of the best to ever do it Chuck Liddell is ending his retirement. He came right out and said it to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour: “I will fight again. Tito seems to want to fight me again, so we are talking about partnering up with Golden Boy and doing it that way. It’s an option and we are working on it, so we will see.”
The trilogy fight with Tito Ortiz, whom Liddell has already defeated twice, has been rumored to be under the banner of Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions. Liddell is hoping that the relationship with De la Hoya blossoms into his own promoter role, but for now, it’s just as a fighter. A fighter who is still considering talks with Bellator, who is not afraid of employing aging fighters. One fighter under Bellator contract Liddell wouldn’t mind getting his hands on is Chael Sonnen.
But for now, it looks like Ortiz is the goal, even if he has a history of pulling out of fights, Chuck has that covered:
“I miss it. I never stopped missing it. And I kinda hadn’t really thought about it much. And then when he brought it up and we started getting going, and I started training and I started doing stuff again, getting ready to try to take this on, it made me go, ‘You know what, what if he pulls out? Am I not going to fight? Am I going to do all of this and not fight?’ Oh no, we had to have somebody backing up, and if it doesn’t work out with him, I’m [still] going to give it a shot. It’ll be somebody else, one of the guys from my past probably, most likely, and we’ll see where I’m at.”
As someone who was violently knocked out multiple times in a row to end his career, for his own health, Liddell should keep his gloves firmly on his wall, but if he has to do some sort of legends tour, fighting Sonnen or Ortiz certainly would be fun. Jon Jones, however, would be not only an impossible-to-make matchup with Jones’ failed drug tests, but Liddell would likely be destroyed by the light heavyweight GOAT. Still, Chuck wants a piece:
“In my mind, I would like two good warm-up fights, and I’d like a shot at Jon Jones. I am serious, I’d like a shot at him. We will see. Just, match styles.”
Old Chuck has been calling me out for years! I get it, I hold pretty much every record in the division. I normally try to respect my elders but if you want it come get it. Id literally fly you out to Albuquerque this weekend.
— BONY (@JonnyBones) May 14, 2018
Please no, Chuck.
(Via Bloody Elbow / MMA Fighting)
