As someone who urged Chuck Liddell to retire from the UFC, Dana White was never a fan of seeing “The Iceman” make a comeback.
The UFC president feels even more strongly after watching Liddell lose to Tito Ortiz via first-round knockout in the Golden Boy MMA headliner this past Saturday at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. And he had plenty of choice words for lead promoter Oscar De La Hoya, who recently claimed White had no place telling fighters when to retire.
“I love Chuck Liddell and I don’t ever want to bad mouth Chuck Liddell,” White said on the “UFC Unfiltered” podcast. “People even think I’m remotely bad mouthing Chuck Liddell, but the reality is — first of all, I heard last week the cokehead ‘Oscar De La Weirdo’ is talking shit that I don’t have any place to tell guys when to retire. First of all, it’s called ‘friendship’ you f—-ing cokehead. I’ve been friends with Chuck Liddell for 20 years and the reality is that Chuck Liddell retired when he should have retired. Eight, nine years ago, however long it was. And Chuck Liddell’s almost 50 years old and has no business fighting anymore. The fact that the state of California even let that fight happen is disgusting. Disgusting.
“Chuck Liddell has an incredible legacy. He’s a huge superstar in this sport, so of course as a friend, anybody who claims to be a friend of Chuck Liddell and was anywhere near this fight is full of shit. They’re not a friend of Chuck Liddell. To let him go in and fight this fight is terrible.”
White acknowledged that it was difficult to convince Liddell to retire the first time around. And even though the former UFC champion will turn 49 in December, it doesn’t take much to spark his competitive fire again.
“The problem is Chuck Liddell was a fighter. Chuck Liddell loves to fight, that’s his passion, it’s what he loves in life. But there comes a day and age, fighting is a young man’s game. You can’t do it,” White said.
Liddell was also tempted by the opportunity to earn a lucrative payday, and he did take home a disclosed $250,000, according to figures released by the California State Athletic Commission. Still, White points to the overall payroll from the event to dispute De La Hoya’s claim that he was compensating the fighters better than other organizations.
“And Oscar f—-ing De La Hoya says, ‘Oh, come over to Golden Boy where we respect the fighters and it makes me sick what these fighters were paid’ and all this s—t. Out of 14 fights on the card, five bouts were amateur fights. Which means he didn’t pay them jack s—t, right? And 12 of the professional fighters on the card made less than [$3,000 show and $3,000 to win]. What the f—k are you talking about you cokehead junkie?
“Some of the guys on the card made $1,000 and $1,000. And he respects the fighters so much, he couldn’t remember their f—-ing names at the press conference.
In fact, White wouldn’t be surprised if further down the road there is an even bigger fallout.
“Tito and ‘Oscar De La Dummy’ were made for each other,” White said. “First of all, Tito says, ‘Hey, you guys want to get paid. Come over to Golden Boy MMA.’ Are you kidding me? Wait a couple of months until this whole thing pans out. Everybody’s going to be suing everybody in a couple of months. There was no money made over there. De La Hoya’s a moron. An absolute moron. And I don’t know how Chuck allowed himself to be talked into this stupid s—t.”