CM Punk and Chuck Liddell are both planning to step in the cage this year, and both leave us with something of a puzzle.
CM Punk and Chuck Liddell could not be more different at first glance. One is a decorated, multi-time world champion beloved the world over. A top box office draw, a bonafide star. The other sports a mohawk. We kid, we kid. Yet there are some similarities between the former UFC light heavyweight champion Liddell, and the WWE to UFC experiment that is CM Punk: both plan on coming back to fighting this year. Both are coming off a tough loss. Both have been out for a bit (okay, so Liddell has been out a lot). Both are more curiosities now than anything else.
And we don’t really know what to make of either of them.
Look, if Chuck Liddell wants to fight on a senior’s circuit, well, we’ve been there before. Kimbo Slice was doing essentially that towards the end of his career. Royce Gracie vs. Ken Shamrock anyone? Not to mention the legendary Dan Severn, who would probably still fight today for the right amount of money.
Yet the scary thing is, Liddell is talking about serious competition. Maybe that’s all talk and self-promotion, but even eight years removed from a trio of scary knockouts, how scary is it to think of Liddell facing someone with heavier hands than a 40-something Tito Ortiz? It’s terrifying, quite frankly.
And then there’s CM Punk. Also pushing forty. Never did anyone seriously expect a high ceiling for the man properly named Phil Brooks, yet his debut pretty much wrecked any chance of even a short run in the UFC. For the better part of a year, UFC President Dana White suggested he look for a fight elsewhere. Punk didn’t seem to budge. He kept training, staying mostly out of the spotlight.
Now, he returns at UFC 225 to face the only other fighter currently in the UFC with an 0-1 record: Mike Jackson. The man brought in to give Mickey Gall a UFC fight before Gall faced Punk. Gall defeated both men. The necessity of ever giving Gall that original fight against Jackson is definitely in question; that he flattened both Jackson and Punk is not.
Yet whoever wins between Punk and Jackson will be 1-1 in the UFC. And then what? Does the promotion continue to bring in green fighters if Punk happens to get the better of ‘The Truth?’ There’s a very good chance he might; this, at least, seems to be a fight much closer to Punk’s level. Short of battling members of an MMA kid’s class.
Maybe we need a senior’s circuit. Maybe we need a celebrity circuit. Maybe, though, we don’t need either of these fights at all.
The debate continues in the latest edition of The Drive In podcast, which you can check out below.
