Iceman (8 page)

O
NE NIGHT BACK IN
1995,
I WAS TENDING BAR ON A
busy Saturday night in San Luis Obispo. The place was pretty crowded with regulars and college kids, but it was still early, so there was plenty of room for people to move around. Suddenly the bar's doors flew open and this huge black guy burst through. He was built like a tank, legs practically bursting through his pants, chest the size of a beer keg, and shoulders that seemed to merge with his neck. Seriously, this is one of the few guys who would make me hesitate in a dark alley. There just aren't a lot of African-Americans in SLO, so when someone as big as this guy throws open the doors, the crowd is going to part, just as this one did. Imagine their relief when he yelled out, “Where's Chuck Liddell?”

I felt everyone's eyes turn toward me. I had been getting some good local coverage for my kickboxing fights. Between that and the occasional scuffles that I had to deal with when I was bouncing or working the bar, I had built my reputation around town as a tough guy. It was no different from my days in Santa Barbara. Still, if you just looked at the situation, you'd think, this couldn't be good for me. My girlfriend at the time was working with me as a bartender, and she just gave me a look that seemed to say, do not jump over that bar. Out loud, however, all I could hear her say was “Oh, shit.”

Of course I couldn't stop myself from jumping over the bar and wading into what most people assumed was going to be a serious beat down. But I couldn't let them think I was going to back down. So I answered the guy, letting him know I was the man he was looking for. Then I asked him, not too politely, “What the fuck do you want?”

He didn't talk back. Instead we slowly began walking toward each other, all the eyes in the bar watching us, waiting to see how badly I was going to get my ass kicked. It was like the shoot-out at the OK Corral. Then, just as it looked as if neither of us had any more room to walk, when it looked as if the next move we made would have to be one of us throwing a punch, we each threw open our arms and gave each other a huge hug. It was Lorenzo Neal, now a Pro Bowl fullback for the San Diego Chargers. He was also a good friend of mine from our days as college wrestlers, his at Fresno State. When we finally let go of each other, and when the crowd caught its breath, let out a sigh, and started laughing along with Lorenzo and me, I turned around toward the bar, told my boss I was done for the night, and took a seat with Lorenzo. Then we got seriously messed up.

Lorenzo asked me if I had been watching these Ultimate Fighting Championship shows on pay-per-view. Of course I had, I told him. These fights had been going on for two years, and in the world of combat sports that I lived in, they were impossible to ignore. Not to mention they were getting more and more viewers with every battle. Ken Shamrock, Royce Gracie, Dan Severen, they were revolutionizing the fight game. This seemed to be what boxing had stopped being a long time ago: a tough-guy sport that combined science and form and heart and, most important, pure ferociousness. In the end, that's all that counted in these fights. They were no different from bare-knuckle brawls in Isla Vista in Santa Barbara—or any other town where kids who liked to fight were going at it. It was all about who was the best fighter—not who could score the most points or who could line up the best deal or who would make their promoter the most money.

We talked about these fights at The Pit, mimicking their moves, trying to incorporate some of the moves we saw in UFC into what we did in kickboxing, making mixed martial arts training a regular part of our workout regimen. Not only was I watching, but I was wondering, “Should I be doing that instead of kickboxing?” Lorenzo was thinking the same thing and told me I was so right for the sport that he'd sponsor me if I decided to do it. And he wasn't the only one pushing me. My brother Dan wanted me to do it, too, as did most of my friends who knew my background. They weren't wrong. I knew more than one style of martial arts, and I had begun studying jujitsu. I had wrestled in college. I loved fighting, wasn't afraid of getting hurt, and in every fight I had one purpose, and that was to knock people out. Nothing less. In a sport that usually only ended when one of the guys was either knocked unconscious or was forced to tap out because he was in so much agony, nothing mattered more than wanting to lay a guy flat on his back.

Nick used to constantly tell me that I could thrive as a UFC fighter. He thought the combination of my grappling ability and that I was hard to take down and even harder to keep down would make me nearly impossible to stop. “No one can take you down, and if they try to stand up with you, they will be in trouble,” he used to tell me. Then Nick did something that, considering the way things turned out, was pretty selfless. Not to mention that he wound up looking as if he could see into the future.

We were at a gym in Las Vegas working out. I was getting ready for my next kickboxing match, which he was promoting. I wasn't Nick's meal ticket by any means, but I was a good draw for his fights and didn't cost much. I would wind up with a 10-2 record as a kickboxer. I'd win two national titles as well as championships in the USMPA (an American Thai boxing association) and the WKA (World Kickboxing Association). Even when I was the main attraction, I still wasn't making more than $500 a fight. While there was more dough in the UFC—and trying to make it in that sport had been something I was thinking about—I wasn't exactly pursuing it as a lifelong dream. I didn't know anyone, and I certainly wasn't the only person fighting—in the ring or in the alley—who thought he was the toughest guy in the world and deserved a shot in the cage. It wasn't a fantasy. I just didn't spend time scheming and worrying and planning how to make it happen. I've always let things like this come to me. If they work out, great, if not, I don't worry about what I'm missing. I just wanted to fight—kickboxing, MMA, in the bar, it didn't matter.

Nick, however, was thinking more about the rest of my life than I was. And he laid out the scenario in pretty blunt terms. Nick was a great kickboxer, a champion, one of the best in the world at what he did. But he couldn't make any real money. He had other jobs while he was training and competing. He started his own promotion company to get himself more publicity, only he became so busy trying to put together exciting cards and negotiating for venues and making sure he had the dough to pay out purses, he couldn't keep up with his fighting career. Pretty soon he wasn't kickboxing anymore. Instead he was just promoting.

I thought his life looked pretty good. I was twenty-five, making money fighting, getting some publicity, teaching classes, and training at The Pit. But Nick thought I had potential to be bigger, to do more, to be a champion. That day at the gym in Vegas he told me that no matter how much of a badass I looked like with my Mohawk and the tattoo on the side of my head and a cold, hard stare in the ring, I'd never make any serious money kickboxing. There'd never be more than fifteen hundred people in the stands for my fights. I'd never be able to focus solely on training and not have to bartend or teach. It wasn't the future. Don't be like me, he said. Don't be sitting around one day saying there isn't enough money in this sport to be beat up this bad. It hurts too much for just $500 a pop. It was time, he said, to make a career move. Either move on with my life, get into accounting, and forget fighting, or make getting into the UFC a priority, improve my combat skills, and take it to the next level.

Nick had been dispensing advice to me for a few years by this point. One lesson had always been that if I wanted to become a bigger name, I had to show more of a personality. But this was different. It wasn't about me doing better so he could make more money. It was just about me. He thought I had a huge future in the UFC. “You could be a world champ,” he told me. “When opponents see how easily you get back up, if they are lucky enough to get you down, they will no longer be able to fight. They'll get weaker. They'll be worried about keeping you down, not your hands and your kicks. You will break their spirit.”

That's what I wanted to do. And Nick was going to help me.

I
HAD OTHER REASONS I WAS A BIT ANXIOUS TO GET MY
career going.

During the summers my brother Dan and I used to work at the California midstate fair, which was held about half an hour outside San Luis Obispo. Most nights the fair put on a concert at which Dan and I worked security, while girls from groups such as the Future Farmers of America worked as ushers. One of the guys I trained with at The Pit was dating one of those girls, so she and I would carpool together from San Luis Obispo to the fair every day. She always brought along a friend of hers, Casey Noland.

Casey was a cute blonde who lived in a tiny country house outside town. Since she was seventeen and between her junior and senior years in high school, she still lived with her parents. At first there was nothing between us; we were just two people with a mutual acquaintance sharing a ride to the fair. But after a few weeks, I became interested. I wasn't thinking, oh, man, she's seventeen and I'm twenty-five and this is a bad idea. I definitely did not think about the ribbing I would take from my mom, sister, brothers, and friends if I started dating a teenager. One night, I was supposed to go back to SLO after the fair because I had a date. Next thing I knew I had blown the date off and was spending two hours sitting in a car talking to Casey.

All dolled up for the prom.

Honestly, she thought I was a little nuts. I told her about growing up with my grandfather, about my mom, about getting in fights as a kid, about high school football and college wrestling and about training and kickboxing. I wasn't thinking, why am I opening up to this kid? But she was definitely wondering, why is this twenty-five-year-old talking to me so much and telling me all this? Of course, the one thing I didn't do that night was ask her for her number. I still don't know why. Instead I asked my buddy's girlfriend.

Soon after that, we were dating. Or at least trying to. Her parents weren't high on the idea. She was a nice girl living a conservative life in San Luis Obispo, and I was some Mohawk-wearing thug whom they saw as corrupting their daughter. One night her dad sat me down and said, “I don't like you dating my daughter, but I'm not about to threaten you. So just be nice.” And I was. Half the time we got together we wound up watching movies with her parents in their house. Other times I'd drive my blue Ford Ranger—on the days it was actually working—to the school, pick her up when she got out for lunch, and we'd cruise around together or find a place to eat. Once I even surprised her with a romantic picnic. Because, really, you're never too tough to show the ladies your sensitive side.

We started dating in August of 1995 and were still together as she neared the end of her senior year. Her prom was approaching fast. Now, I had been getting made fun of because I was robbing the cradle for most of the year. And I had been able to handle it. But when Casey asked me to go to her prom, and I said yes, it took on a whole new dimension. My mom was particularly brutal, telling me, “Well, Charlie, I hope this is the last senior prom you're planning on going to.”

If I was going to go, I was going to embrace it. I even decided to grow out my hair on the sides and fill out my Mohawk. Then Casey saw what was happening and made me shave it down again. That night we took a horse-drawn carriage down the main drag in town that went past all the bars. I worked at a place called the Library with my brother Dan. And when the horse pulled Casey and me past it, we saw a sign that read
CHUCK'S NOT WORKING TONIGHT, HE'S GOING TO THE PROM
. Standing beneath it were my friends, the people I worked with, and Dan, who were waving at us. It was hysterical.

I thought I could marry Casey. I even told her so. But at that moment in my life I wanted to commit to fighting even more. I didn't have the time or the energy to focus on a serious relationship. So we broke up that August, after a year of dating, as she was getting ready to go to junior college. But we stayed friends, and every so often I'd see her around town. One night I had a kickboxing match in Arroyo Grande, a town just a few miles from San Luis Obispo. For most of that fall we were on and off, dating each other, getting together as friends, never as serious as we were before, but not quite ready to completely sever ties.

Me and Pops. He was always there to support me. If he could only see me now.

Also, it was a good time to have someone I was comfortable with around, because that Thanksgiving Pops passed away. We're not the most emotional family, and a lot of that came from Pops. He had been a coroner in the sheriff's department for a while, and from the time we were young, both he and my mom taught all us kids that death was a part of life. Before he retired, Pops had befriended a man who had tried to commit suicide by blowing his head off with a shotgun. It didn't work, and instead the guy shot off half his face. The point of the story, Pops told us, was that if it's not your time, it's not going to happen and then you have to live with it. But when it is, there's no use in everyone who is left behind shedding tears. We did a lot of internalizing when it came to that. Although, to this day, I'm sad he never got to see me fight in the UFC. It's a huge regret for me. He had told me since I was a kid I could be the best in the world at whatever I did. Sure, that's what everyone's parents or grandparents say, but Pops made you believe it.

Casey and I were in one of our “off” phases, as our situation seemed to change week to week. But we'd still talk and see each other regularly, so I could tell when something was wrong. And she did not look healthy. Her face was flushed, as though she had a fever, and she seemed tired and irritable. I kept asking her, what's wrong, what's wrong? Finally she told me, “I'm pregnant.”

You'd think I'd be freaking out. My eighteen-year-old girlfriend whom I'd just taken to the prom was pregnant. Meanwhile, I'm twenty-six, working in a bar, making nearly nothing as a kickboxer, teaching at the Y, and training to become a professional fighter in a league a senator who had been a prisoner of war thought was so violent and repulsive he called it the equivalent to “human cockfighting.” No state wanted to host a UFC fight, and to make matters worse, there was a good chance this league might go under any day, before I even had a chance to make my professional debut.

Casey was sure I'd be mad when she told me she was pregnant. But I wasn't. After I heard the news I just stared straight ahead for a few seconds. Casey tried talking to me to snap me out of it, but I could barely hear her. Eventually I slowly felt a smile creep across my face. I was going to be a dad. I was thrilled.

If you're the kind of guy who stresses about how to support a family, then my life wasn't—and still isn't—for you. But I never worried about that. My mom worked hard and she loved us. My grandparents worked hard and loved us. I grew up in a house where making ends meet was a challenge, and I don't think I suffered because of it. I don't think I even noticed it. In fact, if we were any more comfortable, I'm not sure I'd be who I am today or doing what I'm doing today. I may have lived in a nicer neighborhood, gotten in fewer fights, had more space to avoid my brothers, or not moved in with my grandparents. I would have missed out on living under the same roof as the single greatest male influence in my life, my grandfather. So, no, stressing about making money wasn't my biggest concern. I knew what it took to raise a child, and being comfortable had little to do with it.

That night I called my mom and told her the news. I couldn't have played it straighter, saying, “Mom, Casey is having a baby and it's mine.” It's not that I wanted to downplay it for her sake, or downplay it at all. I was actually just calling her to find out if how badly Casey was feeling was normal.

Needless to say, my mom was shocked. She thought we had broken up. And we had. Casey and I weren't going to get married; we both knew that. But my mom didn't want us rushing into anything, either. When I was growing up, she and my grandparents had always made it clear that the children in the family came first, they were the priority. The grandparents were considered the past, the parents the present, and the kids the future. The generations past and present knew that if they didn't take care of the future, there'd be no one to take care of them.

So later that night, after I told my mom the news, I called her again, this time to talk about the impact of it all. This is a woman who had four kids and raised them all without a partner. She had a life's worth of experience in relationships and parenting; she understood how hard it was for people to stay together when one person was giving more than the other; she knew how it impacted the kids when someone walked out of the house for good. When she doled out advice, it wasn't to find a way to get Casey and me together so we could necessarily live happily ever after. She actually wanted to make sure that Casey and I didn't make any rash decisions about our future together, which, if they were wrong, could cost me a lifetime with my kid. My mom asked me straight up, “Can you be faithful to her forever?” I wasn't sure, I answered. After all, we had been broken up. “Well, if you get married and you're not, there will be hard feelings and it will compromise your ability to be in your child's life. That's how couples work. But if you don't marry her and still support her while she's pregnant and take on the responsibilities of a parent, you'll be able to retain a relationship with your child.”

More than anything else, that's what I wanted. And while the thought of having to help raise and support a kid didn't fill me with dread, I'd be lying if I didn't say that at least a small part of me thought, okay, I really need to get a UFC fight.