By Lee Casebolt 

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Welcome back to the Total MMA Book Club.  Today we take a look at the latest MMA literary offering, a new autobiography by former Light Heavyweight champ Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, appropriately titled Iceman: My Fighting Life. 

 First things first.  Chuck would like you to know that he likes girls.  A lot.  And by that I mean both that he likes girls a lot and he likes a lot of girls.  It’s not exactly Penthouse Forum, and Liddell spares us the (ahem) blow by blow, but Liddell spends no small amount of time on his attraction to the fairer sex, and how the fame of being a UFC champ increases ones appeal.  Little things like dating alleged pop star and original TUF host Willa Ford, having random strangers present him with hotel keys, and filling his hotel room with (give or take) six girls and a few dozen used condoms are just a few of the perks of the job when the job is Champion of the World.

 Not bad for a wobbly kneed, funny looking kid from a broken home in small town California.  Reading the opening chapters of Iceman is like going down the Future Fighters Checklist.  Pop left when you were a kid?  Check.  Physical disability or deformity which forced you into painful rehab?  Check.  Desperately want to remind people you’re smarter than you get credit for?  Check.  Forego legitimate economic opportunities for the chance to beat the crap out of people professionally?  Big check. 

 Liddell’s story in brief - raised by a single mother, long since abandoned by the man he refers to as “the sperm donor”.  Learns how to fight early, takes a little longer to learn when.  Unlike, say, Matt Hughes, Liddell’s problem seemed to be fighting too little instead of too often, and taking some beatings he could’ve avoided.  Takes up karate and wrestling and football, turns out to be a better karateka and wrestler than football player.  Beats up a whole bunch of people in college.  Takes up kickboxing because he’d rather beat people up for a little cash and bartend to make ends meet than grow out his mohawk and crunch numbers in an office.  Finds the UFC and decides that’s the job he really wants.  If you’re reading this, I presume you know the rest.  If not, buy the book.

Actually, buy the book anyway.  It’s a much, much better read than Made In America.  I don’t know how much of that to credit to their respective co-authors and how much to chalk up to the differences in personality between Hughes and Liddell.  Hughes will, by his own admission, argue with you just for the practice, and that same combative tone comes through his book.  Liddell got a nickname like “Iceman” because if he were any more laid back, he’d be asleep.  Similarly, he doesn’t get too worked up about much of anything in the book, either.  Only “the sperm donor” and Tito Ortiz seem to get any sort of rise out of Liddell.

 Oh, yeah.  Chuck really doesn’t like Tito Ortiz and apparently never did.  He thinks Tito is soft, weak, cowardly, and classless, and discusses knocking him out (twice) with undisguised glee.  I suspect that Dana White could schedule Liddell vs. Ortiz 3, 4, and 5 in short order and for stunningly little amounts of money, at least from Liddell’s perspective.  Apparently hurting Tito is its own reward, and never gets old.

 Iceman is, in my estimation, roughly twice as good a book as Made In America.  Some of that can be attributed to simple length.  While their page count is not dramatically different (Hughes’ book is actually two pages longer), Iceman uses a tighter spacing.  I don’t have a word count, but it wouldn’t shock me to learn that Iceman clocked in at 20% longer, word wise, than Made In America.  It’s also a more focused book.  Hughes is prone to go off on rants about people he disapproves of, most notably Tim Sylvia, Frank Trigg, and Randy Couture.  Liddell, other than his dislike of Ortiz, doesn’t do that.  He devotes most of his time to discussing his fights and his training for fights, which is exactly what I as a fan want to read about.  Sure, give me the backstory on the “Tommy Morrison” interview (Chuck sez no coke was involved) and tell me a little bit about your kids (I, personally, would not have taken a high school girl to her prom at age 26 and then knocked her up), but if you’re famous for fighting, your book better talk a lot about fighting.  Iceman is, as it’s subtitle suggests, about Chuck Liddell’s fighting life.  Everything else - family, kids, school, fame - is discussed as it relates to that central premise.  Is Liddell that smart, or is his co-author that good?  I don’t know, and I don’t care.  Chuck Liddell wrote the book I wanted Matt Hughes to write, though, and I thank him for it.  It’s not a perfect book.  I’m a greedy reader and I always want more.  More detail, more dirt, more confessions.  But what Liddell gives us is more than we’ve gotten from Hughes or Jens Pulver.  Iceman: My Fighting Life is well worth your money and your time.