PART 5
I’m leaving some people out by adding him, but I think over everyone else Chuck Liddell needs to be here. I pick him over Vanderlie because Vanderlie was fighting random Japanese guys while Liddell was fighting random tough guys. I leave Tito off this list because he was great based on his ability to avoid Chuck Liddell. I leave Quinton Jackson off the list because despite his beating of Chuck twice, he hasn’t earned his way onto an all time greatest list yet given his spotty record and the fact that he is actually insane. Chuck Liddell has earned his way on to the list of greats. It’s true his kickboxing sucks. His submission game is lacking, and his style is similar to every mexican boxer in the you hit me three times and I’ll hit you once mentality, while it’s silly it is also very effective for him.
Chuck Liddell fought anyone they put in front of him. He fought when the UFC was struggling to pay electricity bills and he fought when the UFC was renting out Las Vegas showrooms just for autographs. He took chances on tough guys that no one knew such as Renato Sobral, Amar Soloev and Vernon White. Tough guys that had been in the game forever but never got the recognition for it. He beat Randy Couture twice, showing us that he actually learned from his fights. He beat Alistar Overeem. One of the best strikers in the world by outlasting him and punching him with a baseball style pitch punch. This is something that elite level K1 fighters have filed to do, but Liddell somehow managed to do it. By the time Liddell started to lose he had already been hounding poon for so long there was no reason to fight anymore.
Liddell’s true talent was always to force you into his world, he has an uncanny ability to stand up no matter how hard you try to hold him down. Once you were verticle with him you encounter the fact that he has a freak of nature talent to punch things harder than a human should be allowed to. Chuck Liddell even at this stage could beat anyone in his weight class. Right now it’s a 30 or 40 percent chance that he wins. But he is still capable of beating anyone in his weight class 30 to 40% of the time. All he needs to do is land one of his missile’s. As time went on, Liddell’s take 3 to give 1 style stopped working. Age and life has a tendency to do that to all of us. But a prime Liddell could finish any fighter at any weight class in the world. The time I knew he would be great was when he fought Randleman, and I said to a friend. “That mohawk guy is dead.” One left hook to the face later I said. “That mohawk guy is a killing machine.”
To say that he isn’t one of the greatest fighters solely because his game plans were sometimes questionable is a joke. The rock’em sock’em robots style worked well for him for years and even in taking all those punches it was rare to see him actually get damaged in his fights. Is he the greatest? He was the one guy that could knock out any of the people that are the greatest. And that says something doesn’t it?
For some reason I don’t want to add him to the list, but I’m reaching the end and I think it’s fair to do so. Mauricio Shogun Rua came out in the same explosion and fury that we’ve seen a few times, he exploded with an aggression similar to Vitor Belfort’s and Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou’s however when the dust settled on those guys Shogun was still kicking in faces. It’s no stroke of luck that he has wins over Randleman, Little Nog, Overeem, Liddell, Jackson, Arona and Machida. Those are just to many kills to count as a lucky shot. Many people will say that he is back to his true form with his win over Forrest recently, but I saw a different fight. While he won, he left himself open more than once.
Had Forrest threw and overhand right once or twice in the fight, it may have gone different (Fedor vs Henderson) I was fortunate enough to meet with him before his Jones fight, him and his brother were both the nicest people to me, but right away I knew something was wrong with him. I told a friend prior to the fight, he was going to lose. He’s mentally not there. And that might be the only thing that slows him down in the future, but those mental holes I’m sure are not on his abiltiies, but more on his bodies ability to person up to his abilities. In terms of raw nonstop aggression, no one on Earth has been as good as Shogun. What he lacked in technique he made up for it with pace. What he lacked in accuracy he made up for it with output. Shogun in his prime could stop anyone on Earth on any given night.
We were fortunate enough to see a prime Shogun fight so many other greats in their prime. Crushing them all, never looking out of the fight, never in real REAL trouble. His relentless ways had Overeem trying to get the hell away from him. He attacked Quinton Jaskson so vicisiously that he broke him in the first minutes of the round. He fought the resiliant Akira Shoji and battered him in what could have been classified as a hate crime. Shogun was fighting the best in the world when they were all at their best. A very rare thing. The only down fall of him now, and why he isn’t the same is that at a young age he was the best fighter on the planet then at a young age he had to get multiple surgeries.
The guy is still in his twenties and has had more surgeries than all the guys who did those Jackass movies combined. It’d be silly to say that he isn’t one of the greatest fighters on earth. If someone were to say that he is in fact the greatest. The main issue with him now, is his real career has spanned 6 years. And in that time his body has racked up 20 years of damage. There is only so much knee surgeries can do. If you ask any doctor the knee is one of those parts of the body that has a huge flaw in it’s design. It’s not technically designed to handle the weight and impact that it does. It really was only made to walk forward, hence it’s a hinge joint that only goes forward and backwards, but all of us especially Shogun use or legs in a multitude of directions.
Hence, the injuries. I believe Shogun gives us a rare glimpse of what many young people in Thailand that fought Muay Thai go through, which is sadly the possibility of being decrepit at a young age. Fortunately, he can afford surgery. (People in Thailand cannot) but at what cost. I love Shogun, I think he is wonderful and believe few people in the world when he’s on his game even stand a chance against him, let alone have the ability to stop him. While Jon Jones did beat him, again were talking about Young Elvis and Old Elvis here.
