One Wednesday evening in late February, Rich Franklin received a call from UFC president Dana White.
White told Franklin that Tito Ortiz had pulled out of his scheduled fight with Chuck Liddell due to a neck injury. White asked Franklin if he would come to Las Vegas and replace Ortiz as a coach during the tapings for the 11th season of The Ultimate Fighter, a move that would culminate with Franklin facing off with Liddell in the season-ending coach’s fight.
Franklin asked White if he’d checked with Liddell to make sure the former light heavyweight champ was okay with the fight. He didn’t want to cause any problems with a long-time friend. White assured him that Liddell was a professional and would do what needed to be done. Franklin told White he would do whatever the UFC needed him to do.
Franklin spends a lot of time doing whatever the UFC needs him to do. He’s a company man, one of the few fighters who White can count on to deliver in a time of need. Franklin wanted some time off after beating Wanderlei Silva last summer, but when the UFC found themselves stretched thin on headliners after UFC 100 last year and needed Franklin to face Vitor Belfort at UFC 103, he agreed.
Franklin turned in a losing effort to Belfort. He says he wasn’t mentally prepared for the fight, that he may have been beaten before ever stepping in the cage.
“I think part of it was a moment where I got caught. I mean, looking back at the tapes of that fight, I didn’t fight well,” Franklin says. “Honestly, I think that fight may have been lost before it even began. When you start coming to the gym and you’re looking at the clock and mentally counting down the minutes until you can leave, that’s never a good thing.”
Franklin concedes that he was mentally burned out prior to the Belfort fight. The minor injuries he’d overlooked in the name of being a good company man were stacking up, and he needed to take some real time off. The UFC called him several months later with a fight proposal, but this time Franklin took a hard stance and said no.
By the time White called Franklin in late February, he was rested and healed. The idea of a bout with Liddell, one of the most popular fighters in UFC history, intrigued him.
“I don’t think I would ever seek out a fight with Chuck. The only reason I accepted this one in the first place was because Dana asked me to,” Franklin say. “But when you have the chance to fight somebody like Chuck, it’s not something you can turn down.”
Franklin has been in a sort of limbo over the past few years, taking fights ranging from middleweight to light heavyweight with 195-pound catchweight fights sprinkled in for good measure. He enjoys being someone that the UFC can rely on, but says he is ready to work his way towards contending for the light heavyweight title.
“That’s always the goal. It’s nice to put on big fights and stuff like that, and I have a great opportunity here fighting Chuck,” Franklin says. “But eventually these are the kinds of things you want in the past so you can look towards the title. I’m the kind of person that will do what the UFC needs, but we’ve been planning for 205 and my plan is to stay here.”
Liddell has experienced many rough patches over the past few years. The fighter once considered the best light heavyweight on the planet has lost four of his past fights, with three of those losses coming by knockout. He was forcibly retired by White after his last loss to Rua, but retirement didn’t suit Liddell. White agreed to give Liddell another chance, but a loss to Franklin would almost certainly signal the end of his UFC career.
Franklin refuses to believe that Liddell is past his prime or out of shape. “The shape that I saw Chuck in about ten weeks ago when I was out there for the show, I’m not really sure if that’s going to be an issue or not,” he says.
Critics of the bout say that it’s a matchup of two aging veterans who can’t cut it against a younger generation of fighters, but Franklin disagrees.
“I think the fans are excited to see this fight. Look at our track records. We like to put on exciting fights for the fans,” Franklin says. “We have similar styles, and I think that’s going to mean a good show for the fans, and I think they know it.”
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