Fast & Furious Film Star Vin Diesel helped UFC legend Chuck Liddell squash his rivalry with Tito Ortiz
Vin Diesel doesn’t have friends. He’s got family.
The Fast and The Furious film star has certainly seen better days after recent reports revealed that the action icon is being sued by a former employee over an alleged sexual assault that took place during the making of Fast Five, arguably the best of the love-it-or-hate-it franchise.
Diesel also had a very public spat with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson after they shared the screen for multiple installments of the series, but according to UFC legend Chuck Liddel, Diesel played a role in him making peace with his longtime Octagon rival, Tito Ortiz.
Appearing on a recent episode of Bradley Martyn’s Raw Talk, ‘The Iceman’ recalled the moment he squashed the beef with Ortiz, noting that Diesel was involved and acting as a moderator of sorts during the interaction.
“So Tito [Ortiz] when he was fighting Vitor Belfort, he was doing a radio interview in San Diego, said ‘I don’t date white trash like Chuck’ And a bunch of guys called me up… So I wasn’t real happy with him,” Liddell recalled. “We went to that fight and after the fight there’s an afterparty at I think seven, John Huntington was promoting it, friend of ours.
“He comes up to me, he’s like ‘Bro, you gotta squash this stuff with Tito because your guys are going to fight his guys. I don’t need trouble in here. I don’t need problems with you. Please squash it.’ I went over, they got Tito over. Actually, Vin Diesel was there too, I don’t know he was negotiating I guess… He was trying to get us to talk. I’m like okay, first off this is my girlfriend, apologize. Secondly, you ever talk about my family and friends on a radio interview again, I know where you live, I’ll come beat you in your living room, you understand that?
“He’s like yeah, no man, I got it, I’m sorry, I wasn’t talking about her. I was talking about Juliette Lewis… I’m like, ‘Really? She’s not white trash, bro. She plays characters in movies, you idiot” (h/t MiddleEasy).
Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz engaged in one of the UFC’s most memorable feuds, producing two fights with the first going down on April 2, 2004. On that night, Liddell scored a second-round knockout of the ‘Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ to hand Ortiz a second straight loss in the Octagon. Two years later, they would run it back at UFC 66 with ‘The Iceman’ once again walking away the victor via a third-round TKO.
They would meet for the third and final time under the Golden Boy Promotions banner in 2018 with Tito Ortiz winning via a first-round KO. Liddell had been retired for eight years before taking the fight.
The two light heavyweight legends were spotted having some fun together at the afterparty following Israel Adesanya’s win over Alex Pereira at UFC 287.
