Wow, what a fight. As I predicted a few days ago Liddell won this with another TKO, this time in the third round. The decisive factor, again as I predicted was that although Ortiz tried to get Liddell onto the ground he was for the most part unsuccessful and fell victim to some brutal stand up at the hands of the champion.

I’ll give Ortiz credit, the fight looked as though it should have been over in the first round when Liddell put Ortiz on the matt and delivered a succession of blows to the challenger. I was expecting referee Mario Yamasaki to stop the fight at that point but Ortiz was doing enough to defend himself, and miraculously made it back up to his feet.

The ease with which Liddell countered Ortiz’s takedown attempts was damn impressive and each time Ortiz failed to take Liddell to the ground the champion made him pay. After another failed takedown attempt in the third round Ortiz made his final mistake he seemingly decided to get into a standup exchange of blows with Liddell who sent Ortiz crashing to the ground with a flurry of blows, and followed it up with a barrage of blows on the grounded Ortiz that forced Yamaski to stop the fight just under the 4 minute mark.

It was an impressive win for Chuck, he showed great composure throughout the fight stuck to a very simple gameplan and kept Ortiz off balance.

I’m hoping we now will finally get to see Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell face Wanderlei “The Axe Murderer” Silva sometime in 2007 … a fight which was on the cards until recently. Silva is the Pride Middlewight Champion and Liddell is the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion – unfortunately the politics involved in getting a fight set up between two champions from different promotions looks likely to prevent this happening. If it does happen … my money is on the Axe Murderer 😉