MMA in 1998 was a far different animal from the sport in 2015, but MMA in Brazil was a different beast entirely.

The bouts were bare-knuckle and with an extremely limited set of rules. But UFC Hall of Famer Chuck Liddell faced a completely different hurdle when he traveled to Brazil for the first time to face Jose Landi-Jons at IVC 6.

“That was an interesting trip,” Liddell recently told longtime broadcaster Joe Buck on Buck’s show “Undeniable with Joe Buck.” “Back then everyone was talking about the crowd and it being dangerous fighting down there because there were riots in the crowd and all that stuff. I went down there and it was my third mixed martial arts fight. We get in there and everyone is getting out of the ring and I looked at my trainer and said, ‘Is that his manager right there?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Oh!’ His manager was the referee. I was like, ‘This ain’t sounding too good.’”

The potential for battling two men in the same ring aside, Liddell put on a fantastic performance. After the bout came to a close he had earned a decision victory over a man who came into the ring with a 13-fight experience advantage.

“It was one 30-minute round,” Liddell said. “Bare knuckles. Everything was legal; groin strikes were legal. No eye gouging, no biting and no grabbing the ropes – oh, and no oil. You couldn’t put oil on. Those are the rules they had. It was really interesting actually.

“They had a net – it was in a ring and they had a net from the bottom rope down to the apron. By the end of the fight, I had him stuffed underneath that thing and I was leaning out and hitting him through the net. There was blood dripping off me, it was pretty funny.”