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Hanging-up the Gloves: Chuck Liddell’s Retirement is just the Beginning
Written by Miles Hackett   
Monday, 20 April 2009 16:07
"Who is next to say goodbye?"

This past Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal marked an emotional evening for not just the Iceman, but for the Mixed Martial Arts community as a whole. Chuck Liddell has been a front-runner in one of the most stacked divisions in the sport for as long as most of us can remember, but in the last two years of his prolific, exciting, and accomplished career, his aura has melted, exposing his age and the fact that the level of competition has simply passed him by.

The changing of the guard happens in every sport, but not as frequently and quickly as in MMA. In the span of sixteen years we’ve seen multiple generations emerge and fall victim to the next, and at this juncture in 2009 it is happening again. The major difference between this passing of the torch from Chuck Liddell’s generation to Mauricio Rua’s at UFC 97, is the fact that the Iceman’s generation was the first to really cast the UFC into the mainstream spotlight, making him one of the sport’s first truly iconic superstars.

As unpleasant as it is to think about, Chuck Liddell is just the beginning of the heartbreak mixed martial arts fans are going to experience in the coming two years, as many of the sport’s most notable fighters that emerged in the late 1990s are facing permanent excision from the octagon. So, who are these beloved fighters that are teetering on the brink of retirement?


Wanderlei "The Axe Murderer" Silva

Whenever the “Axe-Murder” is discussed on the Fightlockdown forum, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone saying anything negative about him. Every time Silva steps into the octagon, you can expect him to come forward aggressively with the hope of not just beating his opponent, but absolutely massacring them. His style, while extremely pleasing to the fans—who he dedicates every one of his performances to—is not in the best interest of his personal well-being, and that’s evident in the fact that in 3 of his last 5 outings, he has been brutally knocked out.

So how many more times does Wanderlei have to see stars before Dana White intervenes and calls his career? Chuck Liddell has had more success in his last few fights than Silva, and Dana still managed to convince him that his days in the cage are over. As much as it pains me to say this, if Wanderlei Silva cannot beat Rich Franklin and his next opponent, it may be the last time we see him fighting in the UFC …that is, if Dana truly cares about his fighters’ well-beings.



Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira

Another fighter among the pantheon of MMA legends facing potential retirement is Minotauro. At 32 years of age, Nogueira in his last fight looked like a geriatric wandering the octagon without his walker. Words cannot express how painful it was for me to watch him get pummeled by Frank Mir, leading to the first stoppage loss of his career. While Nogueira has managed to squeeze out victories from the jaws of defeat in a number of his recent fights—particularly against Herring and Sylvia—it has become clear that his wars under the PRIDE FC banner have caught up with him.

Although he sustained a nasty staph infection a few weeks prior to fighting Mir, it’s hard to deny that Minotauro hasn’t looked quite the same in his UFC outings, as his head movement has slowed, his footwork has become labored, and his reaction times just simply aren’t what they used to be. While the loss to Mir was his first in two years, Nogueira has a lot to prove in his return against Randy Couture, and if he looks anything like he did in his last outing, it could be one of the last times we see him inside the octagon.



Matt Hughes

Regardless of the fact he may be one of the most despised fighters in the sport because of his grating personality, Matt Hughes remains the most dominant welter-weight champion of all time. Even though he hasn’t sustained as much accumulative physical damage as Silva and Nogueira in his last few outings, Hughes has been exposed instead for the one-dimensional skill-set he possesses. Unfortunately for Matt, his style simply has not evolved and developed alongside his peers at welterweight. This is the era of hybridized fighters, where competitors are not just wrestlers or BJJ practitioners, or strikers, they are all of the above, and Hughes hasn’t shown the development required in order to remain relevant.

Thiago Alves and Georges St. Pierre are fighters of the new wave and they dismantled Matt with ease, not just because of the fact they’re great athletes, but because Matt has refused to grow along with them. Even though I am certain Hughes should beat Matt Serra—who really should be at Lightweight—unless he can develop new skills to reinvigorate his career, he’ll be waving the fans goodbye in the not too distant future. 
Randy "The Natural" Couture

“This is the last time you'll see me in these gloves and these shorts in this Octagon, because I'm retiring. That's it for me. It's time to do something else.” When Captain America bid us farewell following his rubber match against Chuck Liddell at the Mandalay Bay Event Center in 2006, fans mourned the end of an era and the departure of a hero. One year later, fans rejoiced when they were treated to the single greatest return in MMA history, as Randy dismantled and dominated Tim Sylvia for his third UFC Heavyweight championship.

Certainly Randy has shown the ability to reinvent and improve himself to stay relevant in the sport, but it’s not his skill-set that is limiting his time in MMA, it’s the fact that he’s turning 46 this year. Randy has proven that age is simply a number, but even as physically gifted as he may be, he’s nearly two times as old as some of the fresh talent in the UFC’s HW division. How much longer can Randy keep participating at this level? It’s a battle with the clock for him, and as awesome as it is to see him compete at his age, it’s hard to deny the likelihood of his forthcoming second retirement.


All four of these fighters fit within MMA’s pantheon composed of legends like Chuck Liddell, and they’re all entering the twilight of their careers, marking both the end and beginning of eras in our beloved sport. As much as these warriors would love to continue fighting, at some point they will have to stop or be stopped, in order to avoid "Shamrocking" their legacies.

As hard as that may be for most of us to accept, it’s the nature of the game, and we need to remember that as old stars fade, new ones are born. Let’s fondly remember the past, but let us also embrace the potential legends of the future, as they will certainly carry our sport to another level of greatness showcasing the influence of their predecessors.

Is Chuck Liddell’s departure a sign of things to come? If so, who is the next to say farewell?