Yesterday, Chuck Liddell publicly announced that he was out of retirement, after a more than 10 year absence from the sport.
Liddell revealed that he’s working on a new fight against old rival Tito Ortiz, with Oscar De La Hoya as the promoter.
Now, in a new column from the highly respected Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports, Iole reveals the real reason “The Iceman” is dead set at returning to fighting at nearly 50 years of age.
Check it out:
There are three reasons why Chuck Liddell, one of the most popular fighters in mixed martial arts history, wants to make a comeback after more than a decade away and at nearly 49 years old.
One, he’s already said publicly. He loves to fight and he’s never stopped loving to fight. Liddell is the epitome of a fighter.
The other two reasons are related, and he’s not going to say them, and may even deny they’re reasons that he’s suddenly making the rounds and saying he’ll compete toward the end of this year.
First, he needs the money. He’s got a massive home with a huge mortgage and it takes a steady flow of income to keep that running. And that leads us to the second reason: He thought he had a job for life with the UFC. When UFC president Dana White was begging him to retire in 2010, he promised his close friend he’d give him a job for life if he did.
And White was true to his word. Liddell worked for the UFC for six years, and didn’t have much of anything to ever do. He was hired and he was paid because, well, he was Chuck.
That arrangement lasted until the UFC was sold in 2016 and the new owners didn’t have the personal connection to icons like Liddell and Matt Hughes that the previous ownership did.
Thus, without a no-show job that paid him handsomely and without a couple of massive checks for fights, paying that mortgage on that lavish home in Hidden Hills, California, where according to Zillow the median home price is about $3.2 million, became considerably more difficult.
