California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) executive officer Andy Foster has responded to criticisms following Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz 3.
Liddell and Ortiz went one-on-one for a third time this past Saturday night (Nov. 24). It didn’t take long to see that Liddell was significantly slower than even his previous outing back in June 2010. While Ortiz is well beyond his prime, he still showed far better movement than Liddell and he capitalized on it with a first-round knockout win.
Andy Foster Responds To Criticisms
Many have been ripping the CSAC for clearing Liddell to compete despite the fact that he hasn’t competed in over eight years and is 48 years old. Foster responded to those criticisms during an interview with MMAFighting.com:
“We want to keep the fighters safe. At the end of the day, it’s a fight. If we hadn’t approved the fight, that fight was probably gonna happen somewhere. California is the safest place for that fight to be at. We had our top referee in there (Herb Dean), he stopped the fight in a timely fashion. If you tell somebody as the executive officer, ‘Yeah, I don’t think you should be doing this even though you passed all your medicals,’ you’re basically telling that fighter, you can’t make a half a million dollars or however much he was making. That’s a big responsibility to tell somebody they can’t make a living. I take that responsibility seriously.”
Liddell has now been knocked out in his last four outings. He hasn’t had a win since Dec. 2007. As for Ortiz, he insists that this time his retirement will stick.
Should the CSAC be held accountable for what transpired this past Saturday night?
