Chuck Liddell Is Coming Out of Retirement, Targeting Tito Ortiz and Jon Jones

The Iceman hasn’t been in the cage since 2010.

The Iceman returneth. 

Chuck Liddell, one of the original UFC superstars, is coming back to mixed martial arts eight years after his last fight, he said Monday on “The MMA Hour.”

“I will fight again, yeah,” he said. “If we can get a deal together with somebody that makes sense, yeah.”

“I miss it. I never stopped missing it,” he added.

While the 48-year-old hasn’t scheduled a bout, he said he’s hoping to get in the cage with longtime rival Tito Ortiz in November. Liddell and Ortiz, at one time the biggest names in MMA, fought in 2004 and 2006, with Liddell winning both fights by knockout.

While Liddell dabbled in acting in recent years, Ortiz remained tethered to the fight game, if only half-heartedly. He’s fought four times in the last four years, most recently defeating Chael Sonnen by submission over a year ago.

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Liddell vs. Ortiz 3, if it happens, will be promoted by Oscar De La Hoya, who recently told TMZ Sports that he’s “finalizing contracts, getting everything rolling.” One MMA promoter who wants nothing to do with this fight is Dana White. “Chuck Liddell is almost 50 years old, he doesn’t need to be fighting,” White said when asked about the comeback recently, adding that it would “really bum me out.”

But Liddell seems determined. Monday he said that even if he and Ortiz don’t complete their trilogy, he’s getting back into the cage.

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When Ortiz “brought it up and we started getting going, and I started training and I started doing stuff again, getting ready to try to take this on, it made me go, ‘You know what, what if he pulls out? Am I not going to fight? Am I going to do all of this and not fight?’” Liddell said. “Oh no, we had to have somebody backing up, and if it doesn’t work out with him, I’m [still] going to give it a shot. It’ll be somebody else, one of the guys from my past probably, most likely, and we’ll see where I’m at.”

But Liddell doesn’t want to stop there. He said after a couple tune-up fights, he’d like to go toe-to-toe with the UFC’s former pound-for-pound king, Jon “Bones” Jones. The 30-year-old, who is currently serving a suspension, is not scared.