Iceman (27 page)

T
HE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS WERE INSANE. I'D
met a girl, Erin Wilson, in the fall of 2006. She was from Bakersfield, and things were going well enough between the two of us that she decided to move to San Luis Obispo.

I was also on the road for all but four of the next seventy days. And one of those days I was at home for less than twenty-four hours. And here's something I learned while I was traveling: There are people with bigger balls than me. I went down to San Antonio for a tour of the veterans' hospital that specializes in treating burn victims and amputees. The guys I saw were mangled from IEDs and had burns all over their bodies. I met one guy who had a picture in his room from before he went to Iraq. In it he was doing squats with three of his buddies sitting on his arms. Now he could barely speak and had bars coming out of his legs to help keep them stable. When I leaned in close, I could hear him say that he wanted “to get better and go back.”

I couldn't believe it, and honestly, I'd never do it. That's the kind of fight I don't want any part of. It was devastating seeing the effect of all these injuries on these guys' families. For the rest of their lives some of these men will have tubes attached to their waists so they can go to the bathroom. Some will have to be connected to machines to stay alive. Many will constantly need surgeries. It will, obviously, impact how they play with their kids. The sacrifice is unimaginable, and meeting people like that makes the shit that happens to me seem laughable.

Some people in Hawaii like to relax at the beach. I'd rather take a guy down.

A couple of weeks after my trip to San Antonio, I went to Hawaii, where I hung out with my good buddy Lorenzo Neal and his teammate Shawne Merriman. After Hawaii, I kept on going. New York, Toronto, Boston. That's how it's been for me after fights ever since the UFC took off. I don't like to say no, but I can't accept many appearances when I am training. So I put everything off until after a fight. Then I realize I am committed to something in a different city every night for two straight months. I don't think I'm living that hard, but when you're on planes, making appearances at clubs, going out a lot and having a good time, it catches up with you.

For me, that happened in Texas in early March 2007. If you follow the UFC, you've seen the video of me passing out during a TV interview on a Dallas morning show called
Good Morning Texas
. If you haven't, go to YouTube, you won't be disappointed. I was on the road, doing promo work for the movie
300
. I had pneumonia and a hacking cough. I couldn't have sex without stopping to have a coughing attack. So I was struggling. But when you're on the road and get a chance to see buddies you haven't seen in a while, you want to take advantage. The problem is, a lot of times you're going out late and have to get up early to do stuff while they can kick back and recover.

The night before the
Good Morning Texas
interview I went to the W Hotel and had a few drinks with a friend. I got home around 2:00
A.M.
and had this appearance planned for eight that morning, which meant I had to be at the studio around seven thirty. I was having a hard time sleeping and took a sleeping pill. But I woke up coughing and decided to down some NyQuil, too. After that I don't remember a thing. Not getting up, not going to the show, not the interview, and not getting on a plane to go back to California. The first thing I remember is walking into my doctor's office.

Of course, I still know what happened on that show. How could I not? The video has been watched nearly four hundred thousand times on YouTube. The host asked me about fighting, and I slurred together an answer. You can't really understand it all. Then he asked me about the movie and there was nothing. No response. I looked to be sleeping. The host said to me, “Are you okay, Chuck?” That snapped me out of it, and I said, “Yeah, I'm all right.” And I rallied to talk about the movie for a few seconds and answered another question about how you have to be a warrior to fight. But then he asked me whom I wanted to fight next, and all I could think to say was “Tommy Morrison.” I was freaking joking, although it didn't look like it when I was stammering and my eyes were closed. But Morrison, who retired from boxing in 1996 because he tested positive for HIV, had just come back the week before and knocked a guy out in West Virginia. I thought it would be funny. The host of the show, who later said he couldn't understand a thing I was saying, pretty much ended the interview. He actually seemed genuinely concerned that I was in trouble. He kept telling me to hang in there.

Dana, however, was just pissed. He was in Columbus getting ready for a UFC card that weekend, and, well, I'll let him explain how he found out about it: “Someone called me and said, ‘Did you see the Liddell video?' I hear this stuff all the time, so I called Lorenzo Fertitta and asked him to find it and watch it before I decided to rip my best fighter's head off. Lorenzo called me back and said, ‘Did you see this?' I said, ‘No, is it bad?' He said, ‘Dana, I can't even explain it to you.' I was thinking, oh my God.”

Dana claims he called me and told me to “Get the fuck back on a plane to San Luis Obispo. No more promotions. No more parties. No coming to the fights this weekend. Get the fuck home and don't leave until me and Lorenzo talk to you.” But I don't remember a thing. I did get on the plane, got home, and spent the next eight days in bed.

When Dana and Lorenzo came out to see me, they were pretty worried. The Nevada State Athletic Commission wanted me to take a drug test. I didn't give a crap. I wasn't on drugs and I'd pass the test. But the commission had never asked a fighter with a clean record to take a test between fights. Right before and right after, sure, but never randomly between fights. The two of them put me on lockdown and basically asked me, “What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to blow what you've got?”

I didn't think I was blowing anything, although after seeing the interview I could see where they were coming from, especially with the play it was getting. They both live in Vegas, and a couple of the radio stations there were replaying my rambling answers constantly as part of a running gag. But, whether they thought I was partying too hard or I thought I was fine didn't matter. I was glad they pulled me off the road. The Rampage fight was set for the end of May. Now I could rest, get healthy, and start training for that. But I was still pissed about the drug test, and I came back clean. But I'll never live down the
Good Morning Texas
interview. Not only do radio stations in Vegas still run the tape, but every once in a while Dana will look at me and say, “Blah blah blah blah Tommy Morrison blah blah blah blah.”

Of course, every time I watch it, I laugh, too.

B
ETWEEN BEING SICK AND BEING BANNED FROM THE
road, I got to rest and recuperate for two weeks before I started training for Rampage. This was the upside to nearly passing out on morning television. Plus, my being home made Hack happy. He knows I've got to be on the road promoting the sport and making appearances on my behalf, but he doesn't love it. When I'm out there, he can't be training me and keeping me in shape. A lot of the pomp and circumstance of all this bugs him. He wants to be about the fighting, and stuff that gets in the way of that is a nuisance.

The workouts for Rampage were great. Even Hack says they were perfect. I had been in such a rhythm since earning the title, winning seven straight fights over three years and defending my belt four times. And I wasn't fighting poseurs, either. I had taken on the best the UFC had to offer. It didn't matter if they were grapplers, submission experts, or strikers; people who hated me or people who respected me. When Dana said it was time to fight, I fought whoever was on the card. Just as I never ducked a fight on the way up, I wouldn't duck any when I had made it there, either. This was the fun part, what I had been fighting for all these years to begin with.

I really wanted to avenge that loss to Rampage, especially having done the same with Jeremy Horn and Randy Couture. I'm a competitive guy, and just knowing someone out there had one up on me made me irritable.

Rampage was also the biggest fight out there for me, presenting a bigger challenge than anyone else in the UFC. I had fought and beaten all the top contenders. This had been a fight that was a long time coming. Only after Dana and the Fertittas bought Pride, and Rampage's contract, did he finally even fight in the UFC. His first battle in the Octagon was in February 2007, a second-round knockout against Marvin Eastman. Rampage looked nervous that night, suffering from some cage jitters. Even he admitted it. But I expected that to change when we faced off. He'd made his debut and gotten that out of the way. Now he was going to fight for the light heavyweight championship of the world. Big-time fighters love as big a stage as possible to prove how great they are. They seem to get calmer the greater the expectations. At least that's how I feel. You have to stay chill when the lights are brightest. I had to assume Rampage would feel the same way.

The sellout crowd at the MGM Grand Garden Arena stood as soon as Rampage walked out of his tunnel. This was as star-studded a crowd as there'd been for a UFC fight. Kevin James, Adam Sandler, Mandy Moore, Andre Agassi, Eli Roth, and David Spade were all there. The whole sport seemed to be achieving critical mass. My appearance on
Entourage
had aired at the end of April. A couple weeks later Cade and I were on the cover of
ESPN the Magazine
. Another UFC fighter was on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
.
SportsCenter
was airing highlights and ESPN.com was running a mixed martial arts page that featured news and stories from Sherdog. This was no cult sport anymore.

Rampage didn't notice any of this as he made his way from his dressing room. He just kept looking straight ahead. He had his signature heavy chain hanging around his neck, and an electronic belt buckle that had his name—
RAMPAGE
—scrolling through it, like some sports ticker in a bar that delivered the scores. When he walked out of the tunnel he howled, in time with the wolves howling and dogs barking on his intro music. Halfway to the cage, he howled again. Rampage had a new trainer, who had been sharpening his boxing skills. And he had been working out and sparring with professional fighters in Big Bear during his training camp. He was cut and as strong as he had ever been when he walked into the cage that night. And he didn't smile once, he just looked mad.

Rampage tried to stare me down, but I wasn't intimidated. I'm never afraid to get in the ring, and my fight with Rampage was no different.

I was feeling good, and maybe a little too relaxed. As I wound through the tunnel toward the arena, a guy jumped out and started walking with my group. No one knew who he was—he didn't have a ticket—but I didn't even stress. I just laughed. The closer I got to the mouth of the tunnel and the louder the music for my intro got, the looser I felt. I started to dance while walking in rhythm to the music. I smiled. The arena went dark for a few seconds before some blue lights above the cage lit up and bright white spotlights began crisscrossing around the stands. As I walked toward the cage, I slapped hands with as many people as I could. The boos that filled the stadium moments earlier were now cheers. Even when we were face-to-face while Big John gave us our instructions, I almost smiled while Rampage gave me the most intimidating look he could. Finally, Big John told us, “Let's get it on.”

Rampage had been saying during interviews that he was going to knock me out in the third round. Like everyone who'd trained in Big Bear and then fought me, he wanted to make the fight last and try to get me tired so my punches would get weaker. I didn't expect the bout to last that long. When journalists told me Rampage had been saying he'd take me down in the third, I said, “That will be interesting, since I'm going to take him down in the first.” My plan was to punch him in the face as much and as frequently as possible. But I still had to be disciplined. The one punch I had a hard time resisting was a blow to the body. That brings my hands down, and when you are close enough to hit the body, you're close enough to get hit in the chin if you miss. John told me over and over, “Don't go to the body unless it follows a combination.” Otherwise you are just too vulnerable.

We came out and the pace was fast. We weren't throwing punches, but moving around a lot. Neither of us was going to wait for the other guy. I threw a low leg kick. I tried a jab. He threw a right to my face that made me stumble a bit. But mostly, I was dancing around the perimeter of the cage while he pivoted in the middle of it. He seemed to get frustrated that I wasn't just rushing in and throwing punches, so he dropped his hands as if to say, “Come on, man, let's fight.”

Rampage did a good job of cutting off the cage. It was making it hard for me to come in at him in a straight line. Finally, a little less than two minutes into the first round, I thought I saw an opening. I did exactly what Hack is always telling me not to do: I went for my opponent's body, but didn't lead with any kind of combination to protect myself. That was not smart. Rampage coiled to protect himself and, in a textbook move, uncoiled as soon as he felt my blow. My hands were down, my chin exposed. I was defenseless as his hooking right hand landed smack on my cheek. I collapsed to the mat. He pounced, threw one shot that missed, then connected on another right directly on my head. Now I was out cold. My body went limp and Big John had no choice but to jump in and stop it. Just like that, no more than ten seconds after I threw the punch that started it all, I was no longer the UFC's light heavyweight champ.

When I got to my corner, I looked up at Hack and said, “What happened?”

“You went to the fucking body,” he said.

I've got no excuse. I made a mistake and the guy caught me. He's a great fighter and deserves to be champ. As Hack told the guys at Sherdog after the fight, “The risk highly outweighed the benefit of that technique and he paid the price.”