Joe Rogan points out the main flaw in Chuck Liddell’s fighting style

Chuck Liddell’s long-discussed return to the cage did not go as planned. Instead, the former UFC light heavyweight champion was knocked out by Tito Ortiz — a man he’d bested twice previously — in the very first round. With this outcome, the 48-year-old Chuck Liddell has now been knocked out in his last four fights. UFC color commentator Joe Rogan believes he knows why this has happened.

He believes that, at the height of his career, Liddell was able to rely on the strength of his chin when chasing his own knockout victories. When his chin began to weaken, however, he did not adjust his style, and thusly found himself on the receiving end of violent knockouts more and more frequently.

“He was just a marauder,” Joe Rogan said on a recent episode of the JRE MMA Show (transcript via MMAjunkie). “You could hit him the face with a (expletive) crowbar and he would just spit metal out. He didn’t give a (expletive). He was so badass back in the day.”

“There’s a right way to fight and a wrong way to fight and one of the things about seeing Chuck go out on his shield like that, it’s like, this is the bed he made,” Rogan said. “This is his style.”

Joe Rogan also advised young fighters to learn from Chuck Liddell’s apparent mistakes. Most importantly, he said, fighters should fight smart, rather than for the approval of the crowd or the promoter.

“When you see Chuck go out on his shield, something about it to me, I don’t like seeing it,” he said. “I definitely would’ve like it if he didn’t get knocked out again. But one thing I would like young fighters to see is there’s consequences to choices in terms of how you approach these exchanges and how you fight. I’m of the belief that you should fight the correct way.

“Don’t fight the way that pleases your boss or the crowd. Fight the way you’re supposed too with your skills, and win by knockout when you can. But don’t get knocked out because you’re trying to win by knockout and you overextending yourself and overexposing yourself. That’s not wise. I think part of fighting has to be wise.

“It’s exciting enough. It’s wild and crazy enough. But everybody wants every second of it to be filled with blood and the crowd cheering and they’re not. How many times have we seen fights and there’s just a lull in the action and people start clinching and they start booing? You see it all the time.”

What do you think of these comments Joe Rogan made on JRE?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 12/3/2018.