Issue 068

October 2010

Eric Williams is MMA’s top photographer. He’s spent the last three years documenting ‘The Iceman’s legacy.

The 37 year-old Georgia native has made mixed martial arts his niche over the past years. Ad campaigns for Nike nestle alongside portraits of Hollywood stars in Eric’s glossy and weighty photographic portfolio. But it’s his striking shots of mixed martial arts’ most heralded fighters that stand out greatest. And he’s amassed quite a range. From Fighters Only cover stars like ‘Shogun’ Rua, Anderson Silva and Georges St Pierre, through Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson, Thiago Alves and Diego Sanchez, Eric Williams has reached the pinnacle of mixed martial arts photography.

“I owe Chuck Liddell the opportunities that have been afforded to me in the sport,” confides Eric, who took his first photographic steps into MMA due to a serendipitous 2007 meeting with the then UFC light heavyweight champion. A fashion, music and celebrity photographer as well as casual UFC fan, Eric made a connection with dancer Darcy Tormey, a one-time Pussycat Doll, while the group was still a burlesque-based attraction. Noticing NFL and NBA stars among Eric’s back catalog of captured subjects Darcy remarked that he should shoot her ‘brother Chaz’. “He’s a fighter and he knocks people out left and right,” she said. Eric expands: “She goes, ‘I talked to Chaz the other day and it’s funny because when he comes down we generally chill out and I paint his toenails or I babysit his chihuahua.’ So I’m like, ‘You paint his toenails? You babysit his chihuahua? He’s a fighter? What?!’”

A dumbfounded Williams couldn’t resist the chance to meet, and potentially photograph, this walking contradiction. He accepted Darcy’s offer to talk with ‘Chaz’ at a house party in Santa Monica, California, a few weeks later. Eric arrived fashionably late at 11pm with portfolio in hand eager to meet this intriguing character. However, no sign of Chaz. Some time past 2am the property’s back door begun to omit a series of thunderous – yet unanswered - booms. “I was like, ‘There’s somebody beating on the door,’” recounts Eric. “And they were like, ‘Yeah, just answer it,’ everybody’s kind of preoccupied. So I open up the door and it was Chuck Liddell. And I said, ‘Holy sh*t man, you’re Chuck Liddell.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah.’ He had his UFC belt over his shoulder and he was hauling his chihuahua.” Eric soon realized his mistake – ‘Chaz’ was Chuck ‘The Iceman’ Liddell. Mobbed by a throng of party-going fans, Chuck never got a chance to view Eric’s portfolio but the two still exchanged numbers. “If you’re cool with Darcy you’re cool with me,” said Chuck of his very close, though not strictly blood-related, friend.

The Liddell-Williams relationship that founded Eric’s start in the sport began – although not immediately. Chuck had placed Eric’s number in his beloved Sidekick cell phone but without a corresponding name. Eric received confused and non-committal replies to his photo shoot enquiries for two months until the pair met through another coincidence on the set of talk show Inside MMA. Upon photographing the fighter’s UFC 76 training camp and seeing the mohawked one’s house, Eric realized that Chuck Liddell, MMA’s first superstar and mainstream celebrity, possessed few images that chronicled him as more than a fighter. Eric convinced Chuck that as a man, a business owner, a father and as an athlete he needed to be documented. Chuck agreed. “I aimed to be to Chuck what photographer Howard Bingham was to Muhammad Ali,” Eric says of the relationship that recorded ‘The Greatest’s most intimate moments.

Although Liddell was the man who opened the door into MMA for Williams his first photographic subject was ‘Rampage’ Jackson and his next was Bas Rutten. After Chuck Liddell the line-up of legends hasn’t ceased. “I want to shoot these guys in their absolute best light,” explains Eric. “It’s always been my goal to make them look like celebrities and turn them into the icons that they are.” The lens man’s in the process of creating a book chronicling his photographic journey through MMA that he’ll complete in two years. “You get to see a fighter’s career grow over a five-year period. Or, you get to see a fighter’s career come and go within the UFC,” he imparts.

Williams notes that through his time with Liddell he realized a link. “When people say mixed martial arts and UFC, the first thing that comes to mind is Chuck Liddell, the first one. And when you say boxing, the first thing that comes to mind is Muhammad Ali. Whether you’re new to the sport, whether you’re 35, 40, 50, 60 years old, those two are extremely relevant to each individual sport.” Ali is another legend who suffered late-career losses and as a result question marks above his abilities. “Taking [the losses] in his stride is part of his make-up,” reveals Eric of his Chuck. “It’s part of that cool factor, that ‘X’ factor that people go, ‘Why do you like Chuck Liddell so much?’ ‘Well, sh*t dude, I’ve got a list as long as my arm.’”

For Williams, who has achieved so much in only three years covering the sport, it is about more than just taking photos. There is a destination in mind. “People always ask me, ‘What’s the end game for you?’ The end game for me is becoming the best shooter from this sport... Every sport or aspect whether it’s cars, whether it’s food, whether it’s corporate portrait, there is one guy who’s set the bar for how things should be done. That’s my goal and has been my goal since working with Chuck.” 

There was no better place to start.