"The Iceman": Has he gone cold for good?John Hackleman Talks Chuck Liddell’s Retirement.

Pit Boss John Hackleman, trainer at The Pit in San Luis Obispo California where Chuck with Dell has trained for much of his career, recently sat and talked about the prospect of his star student's retirement.

Liddell's career has been a keynote in many an MMA discussion lately, as talk of his retirement has been abound within MMA circles not only socially, but also in media. Aroundtheoctagon.com took some time to ask John what he thought about moves Chuck should make at this point in his career, as well as his opinions from a business standpoint on what Dana white has had to say regarding Chuck and the current phase of his career.

“Chuck can do whatever wants to do,” said Hackleman. “It’s disappointing. He lost to a great champion and that’s no reason to retire. His record is no indicator to retire. He’ll retire when he’s lost the desire to fight or he’s getting hurt. He’s fought 100 times and only been knocked out twice. We’ll talk about it in the next week or so but no one is going to tell him when he’s going to stop fighting.”

Hackleman seems to be of the opinion that Chuck has a lot of time left, and that retirement at this point would be premature considering the potential he still has to compete, as well as his career numbers to this point. He's quick to point out that Chuck has only been knocked out a handful of times in his career. His two win streaks while with the UFC equaled ten and seven losses each.

John also draws parallels to the decisions that Randy Couture had to make when he started seeing consistent defeat as a heavyweight. Chuck's last four fights have yielded one victory, and three of them have ended by brutal knockout, two of them resulting in Chuck laying face down and motionless on the floor.

“A lot of people thought Randy Couture was done at heavyweight and he went to Light Heavyweight and won a title,” said Hackleman. “He lost to Chuck a couple of times then they said he was done again and he went to heavyweight and won another title. It’s up to Chuck.”

John stops short of calling Dana's decision to call Chuck Liddell retired anything relative to a business move. He believes that Dana's relationship with Chuck is good enough for Dana's spoken concern to be sincere.

“I have two trains of thoughts, said Hackleman. “One, Dana can do what he wants because he has two multi-millionaires as his partners. It’s his ballgame. He can play it anyway he wants. It doesn’t have to be good business because they make so much money. He can make a bad business decision and still make a lot of money.”

“On the other side of that I think a big part of his decision making is that he cares for Chuck,” said Hackleman. “He cares for his well being. I think he think he’s looking out for him. It’s irritating. He spouts off sometimes and he has the big boys backing him with the money but he does care for Chuck. That’s his first concern.”

Hackleman believes that this point in his career, Chuck may lack the motivation to sincerely focus on any of his fights. John points out that in Chuck's most successful performances during the peak of his career, he righteously wanted to kick the crap out of the opponents he was staring across the octagon at. Most notably, Tito Ortiz and Vernon White come to mind.

“I don’t think Chuck cares about his fights, said Hackleman. “He wanted to fight Tito because he didn’t like him and for some reason he wanted to beat Vernon White. Most of the time he doesn’t care. If someone beats him he doesn’t like it but he says oh well, I’ve beat plenty of people. He doesn’t want a rematch just because he got beat. He’s the Ice Man. He’s kind of cold about that.”

Hackleman has known Chuck for years, nearly a decade consecutively, and would know better than anybody where Chuck's motivations lie. If what he's saying there's any semblance of truth, we may have valid reason to believe that Chuck Liddell has seen his last competitive fight not only in the UFC, but in MMA in general.

Source: Around the Octagon

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