The relationship between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz could be described as volatile to even the most casual viewer that’s ever heard the two former champions talk about each other. When things get personal though, that’s when Liddell’s anger rockets to a new level.
The former light heavyweight champion says he didn’t take the bait when Ortiz’s girlfriend, former adult actress Jenna Jameson, took to Twitter recently and bashed Liddell and UFC president Dana White. Liddell says he even told his followers to back off of Jameson when things got a little too heated.
“I just take the high road with that,” Liddell said on Monday. “I even asked my people on Twitter to back off the stuff with his girlfriend. I’ve got nothing against his girlfriend. They were mostly just pot shots they were taking, cheap shots too.”
He contends that if anyone has ever gotten personal in the past, it’s Ortiz who has railed on the San Luis Obispo, Calif., fighter in the press before, and he had to be silenced even back then.
“Tito complaining about people talking about personal life things is insane,” said Liddell. “I remember back when he was going to fight Vitor (Belfort), before he fought Vitor, he said ‘I don’t date white trash (expletive) like Chuck’ on a radio interview. Now, the sad thing about that was he was talking about Star Magazine had said I was dating Juliette Lewis, which obviously wasn’t true. She’s a nice person, but we weren’t dating. I met her a couple times, but anyway, then he was referring to her he said.
“I told him not to talk about (my) family or friends again, or I’d beat him in his own living room, and he apologized in front of all his friends.”
When filming for the reality show started, Liddell admits that things stayed pretty civil between he and Ortiz in the beginning, but it didn’t take long for the “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” to go after him again. A report surfaced a few months back with Ortiz alleging Liddell had an intervention from White, urging him to get help for an alleged alcohol addiction.
Liddell says it was that altercation alone that motivated him not only to beat Tito during the show, but to knock him out for a third time when they fight again.
“That’s the thing he did to piss me off the first week of the show,” Liddell said about Ortiz’s claims of alcoholism. “He heard me and Dana talking, and I talked to Dana about through my career I started out I was six weeks from a fight I wouldn’t drink, then it was eight weeks, then 12 weeks, then as I’ve gotten older I’ve taken more and more time off of drinking just to make sure I’m training good and staying in shape. And I talked to Dana about how I stopped drinking in November to get ready for the show, and I was going to go all the way through to the fight.
“He took that and said that he was very proud of me that Dana had an intervention in September, which I don’t know where that came from, and that I was an alcoholic. I don’t know where that came from, and he was very proud of me that I had quit that, or doing what I was doing.”
Making things personal yet again is what Liddell doesn’t understand, but he says it’s those sorts of things that have to be expected from a person like Ortiz.
“It’s bad enough to talk about someone’s personal life, but then to make something up like that about my personal life, he’s just a scumbag.”
by Damon Martin - MMAWeekly.com
Tags: Belfort, Chuck, Dana, former, Jameson, Jenna, Liddell, light heavyweight champion, Ortiz, Tito, ufc, Vitor, white