Ultimate Fighting Championship

Fighting to be the ring leader

Ultimate Fighting Championship has withstood a lot of hits and now is ready for a staredown with boxing and wrestling

By Childs Walker

Sun reporter

Originally published July 30, 2006

When Chuck Liddell first fought in an Ultimate Fighting Championship octagon, he was a 28-year-old bartender with backgrounds in amateur wrestling and karate and a fervent hunger to scrape out a living doing what he loved -- fighting.

Eight years later, Liddell is the face of the country's fastest-growing combat sport. He's a millionaire. He endorses exercise supplements on cable television. His angular visage, adorned with tattoos and topped by a tightly cropped mohawk, is known to thousands upon thousands of men, ages 18 to 34. And when he walks out for his next fight at the end of August, those men will pay handsomely -- whether $700 for a ringside seat in Las Vegas or $39.95 to tune in from their couches -- to watch his fists fly.

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