I haven’t really met that many celebrities in my life and Chuck Liddell wasn’t someone who I thought I was gonna geek out over; and I didn’t. However, he was super cool and now I’m his fan. Matt, one of our training partners at the gym is his friend and set up a Sunday open mat for Chuck to come by and train.
Of course there are no photos of myself rolling with Chuck but right before we started rolling, I noticed that all the toes on his left foot were painted black. I asked him if he had a daughter, he nodded yes, pointed to his foot and began to manhandle me. 
I had to look up Chuck’s Wikipedia page to find out his age and boy did I feel bad knowing that a 48 year old dude wrecked me with ease. His top game was crushing and I had very little to offer in the offense department. It was pretty much just him smashing me until he passed my guard and straight into a North/South choke. We chatted for about 5 minutes after our roll and he gave me a few pointers. To my credit, I made him work for those passes.
The whole time I rolled with him on top, all I could think of was him punching me in the face and how much that must suck. He was super nice and easy to talk to but damn, he could destroy me in an instant if he wanted. I’m super grateful to have trained with someone of his caliber. He was the UFC light heavyweight champ for two years! Have you seen his war with Wanderlei Silva? His beef with Tito? The man is a legend.
Chuck began to shadow box around the gym and Matt told him that we had mitts. He motion for Jonathan to grab them and go train with Chuck. I could see in his eyes that he was having a “holy shit, this is really happening” moment and he tentatively walked over to his pads. Immediately, the gym echoed with power punches as Chuck unleashed his fury on the pads.
