Chuck Liddell has been making a statement in the Light Heavyweight class. He put Randleman out, which made many people take notice. While being a wrestler himself, the Iceman has shown that he has the punching power to put people to sleep and have them wake up with headaches. With his training partner, Light Heavyweight Champ, Tito Ortiz, the two men are cleaning house in the under 205 pound weight division. I hope the UFC is scouting other fighters to bring in because there are not many fights left before these two must put aside their friendship and show the world who is the number one man in this division. I talked with Chuck at the weigh-ins of the Warrior's Quest in Aiea, Hawaii on August 24, 2001.

FCF: Are you preparing for Murilo Bustamante differently from any of your other fights since he is primarily a ground fighter that is comfortable on his back?
CL: I'm not training any different. I doing all the same things I normally do. I work on the ground. I work standup. I work not getting taken down.

FCF: You've held your own with various submission based fighters and high quality wrestlers, are you planning on knocking him out or testing your ground skills?
CL: I'm going to keep it standing. There's no surprise about that. I'm going to try to knock him out.

FCF: How soon will you be going out to Las Vegas for the fight?
CL: I'll be going out there pretty soon, but I'll probably go out for a week and come back, train at my gym for a while, and then go back out right before my fight.

FCF: Are you signed in the UFC for a multiple fight deal?
CL: Yes.

FCF: How many fights do you have left?
CL: I'm not sure, but I've got quite a few though.

FCF: You are on a path headed to fighting Tito for the title. Do you have any reservations or concerned about fighting a friend?
CL: Concerned, I mean he's my friend. If we can avoid it, I would prefer not to fight him, but we talked about it. If we have to, we have to. We'll fight.

FCF: What do you feel you have to do to beat a guy like Tito?
CL: I'll treat him like I treat everyone else. I'm going to fight him the way I want to fight him.

FCF: Do you feel that there are enough fighters in your weight class so that you can stay busy in the UFC and not fight Tito?
CL: We're running out of them [opponents]. Obviously, if me and him keep winning, they're going to run out of opponents. That's when it will be me and Tito fighting. If we both keep winning, a lot of things can happen.

FCF: How much do you actually train with Tito or is it very occasionally?
CL: We train very rarely now, but we trained a lot in the past. We train together when we get a chance. He helps me out. I help him out so he's a good training partner. We're friends. We hang out together. It's cool.

FCF: Was it at John Lewis' academy where you guys first started training together?
CL: No, actually I started working out with him down in LA, down in Huntington. John Lewis, I started training with him years ago when I first started fighting in the UFC, about a month before.

FCF: How long were you training with John?
CL: Three or four years. I started about a month or two before my first UFC fight.

FCF: How often do you go there to train?
CL: It just depends on the month. Before the Randleman fight I was there twenty days out of the last thirty days before the fight. I go out there quite a bit.

FCF: Since he is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu specialist, do you guys focus on that or do you train stand up as well?
CL: We mostly go over that, but I also go over and work with Skip Kelp when John's working with his standup.

FCF: Are you still with SLO Kickboxing?
CL: Yes, that's my and Scott Adam's gym.

FCF: How do you see the fight between Tito and Vitor going?
CL: I think he [Tito] beats him like he did Vanderlei Silva, but it should be a fun fight to watch. It could go either way and it will be a great fight.

FCF: What flaws do you see in Vitor that will work perfectly in to Tito's game?
CL: I don't think it's that. I just think Tito's getting a lot better with his striking and his takedowns are really good. I think he can take him down and ground and pound him. I think it will be strikes on the ground that will stop it.

FCF: Thanks for your time and good luck.
CL: Thank you very much.