A much-talked about — and much-criticized — trilogy fight between former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Light heavyweight champions Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell has been signed, sealed and soon-to-be delivered.
According to ESPN, the fight will indeed go down on Nov. 24, 2018 inside The Forum Inglewood, California as Oscar de La Hoya recently teased, and later confirmed. The fight will be under the Golden Boy MMA banner, de la Hoya’s brain child. Oscar revealed his plans to get into the mixed martial arts (MMA) business earlier this year, and now it’s getting closer to becoming a reality.
Tito and Chuck initially threw down at UFC 47 way back in 2004, with “The Iceman” knocking Tito out in round two. A couple years later, Chuck did the same thing to his former training partner at UFC 66, though this time the fight made it into the third frame. The two were set to meet for a third time under the UFC banner in 2010, but the fight didn’t come to fruition after all.
Eight years later, Golden Boy MMA will bring the fight to fans and give Ortiz one final chance at redemption. Tito has been the more active fighter of the two, last competing against Chael Sonnen, defeating “American Gangster” at Bellator 170 in early 2017. As for Chuck, he hasn’t stepped foot inside the cage since suffering a knockout loss to Rich Franklin in 2010.
The loss was “The Iceman’s” third straight knockout defeat. At 48 years of age, Liddell will look to finally put an end to his storied rival against “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” with a third straight win.
Early predictions?