The Wrestling Observer Yearbook '97: The Last Time WWF Was Number Two

by Dave Meltzer

  Jose Torres, a well-known former world light heavyweight champion boxer, noted boxing author, former head of the New York State athletic commission, and current EFC commissioner (which isn’t a figurehead position), wrote a letter back to the Times decrying its editorial.

  Your call to ban extreme fighting in New York (editorial, Jan. 17) was unfounded. When I was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame last week, I had occasion to reflect on the sport that has been a part of my life for over 40 years. I concluded that boxers use every bit of skill, trickery and determination to win. Interestingly, the champions are usually those men with the best character.

  This is exactly the case with extreme fighting, the combat sport you inaccurately denounce as one in which fighters “pummel each other into pulp until one of them becomes unconscious or surrenders.” Last October, I became commissioner of a group that promotes extreme fighting. I accepted this appointment only after assuring myself that the fighters in no way attempted to maim or kill their opponents. The fighters wear protective gear, and the matches are supervised by a referee and overseen by doctors with full, independent discretion to stop a bout.

  While there have been injuries and deaths as a result of boxing matches, auto racing and high school football have claimed even more lives and serious injuries. Yet your newspaper routinely covers these sports. For you to then call for the ban of a sport that has never caused a death or serious injury because it is too brutal seems spurious.

  My endorsement of extreme fighting is based on a long history of actual participation in combat sports. Your criticism seems based more on perception than reality. Just because politicians who may never have seen an extreme fighting match want to ban it, that is not a good reason to join the politically popular parade. If censors and politicians succeed in banning these events, their next target may be our religion, our sexual preference or the books we read.

  FEBRUARY 10

  As is nearly always the case, in the days leading to up the UFC PPV, it is the courts that are providing most of the hype and action.

  Semaphore Entertainment Group filed suit on 2/3 against the New York State Athletic Commission and Chairman Floyd Patterson and Commissioner Rose Trentman after the Athletic Commission introduced a series of rules that would totally change the face of UFC and were obviously designed not to make the show safer, but to ruin the show.

  The lawsuit, filed in U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District in Manhattan, NY, claims the imposition of the new regulations at the last minute violates Article I of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits states from passing laws that interfere with existing contracts, as well as provision for due process. The suit was filed not only to get a legal order immediately preventing the state athletic commission from implementing new rules for the 2/7 show, but also an attempt to get a federal ruling in their favor stopping the state from being able to squash the proposed 5/30 show at the Nassau Coliseum.

  While there is no question that an event under UFC rules will take place on PPV on 2/7, actions of the Athletic commission in New York put into question whether it would emanate from Niagara Falls, NY as is scheduled. At press time on Tuesday, SEG was planning for the event to take place in Niagara Falls and UFC officials believed the chances of a last-minute move to a secondary site somewhere in the South were very slim. Many SEG officials and several of the fighters and other people associated with the event were already in Buffalo and Niagara Falls as of press time.

  Due to pressure from numerous politicians in New York, the athletic commission sent both SEG and Battlecade Inc. (which promotes Extreme Fighting Championship which is still publicly scheduled for Manhattan although the odds of it happening within the state of New York on 3/28 are extremely slim) an extensive rule book publicly designed to make the matches safer but realistically designed to force the show on 2/7 to be moved out of New York since, because a law was passed legalizing the event, the politicians won’t be able to enact a law that would go into effect rescinding the new law in time to prevent the show.

  Among the rules stipulated by the commission were banning chokes, the most prevalent submission move used in UFC matches; kicking above the shoulders or below the knee; head-butting; any strikes to the throat (which had previously already been banned in the existing law); striking an opponent while down; usage of knees and elbows to strike; any strikes to the neck or spine areas; attacking the groin area; mandating combatants wearing eight ounce boxing gloves as opposed to the fingerless grappling gloves; mandating all combatants wear protective headgear ala amateur boxers; implementing five weight classes and banning any matches in which the two combatants aren’t in the same weight class (thereby destroying the planned tournament line-up for Friday); having the matches fought in five-minute rounds to be judged by athletic commission boxing judges on the ten point must system; and making it mandatory for an octagon if used, to be at least 40-feet in diameter. The octagon used by UFC is 32-feet in diameter so this rule in essence shows the real intention of the law since it would force UFC to have to build a new octagon which it couldn’t do so quickly and thus force them out of the state.

  The word we’ve received is that if forced to use those rules, the event will be moved out of the state. The rules aren’t fair to the fighters based on their skills and how they’ve trained as it basically turns it into a tough man contest with headgear. Ironically, tough man contests, like boxing and other sports including forms of hard hitting and high flying worked pro wrestling have a higher injury rate than UFC but haven’t become political hot potatoes. In the UFC controversy, both in the city council in New York and on talk shows and among politicians in Buffalo, EFC and ECW have been confused and interchanged regularly with people talking about banning the events where they use chairs and tables on each other. The mandated gloves and banning of chokes takes away the wrestling and submission skills which actually makes the fights much safer because they consist of something other than banging to the head with gloves to protect the hands in a long fight. In fact, chokes, while misunderstood by people with no experience or understanding of judo, are probably the safest finishing technique in a UFC event. A PPV under those rules would destroy subsequent buy rates for the rest of the year, not to mention several of the fighters would have to seriously consider pulling out.

  APRIL 14

  The bill to ban NHB, not only from live events but also events to air on PPV, won approval from committee in the Hawaii state senate and was considered likely to gain full senate approval. The Hawaii house of representatives had already passed the proposal. Hawaii has its own regular NHB promotion called UFCF that runs shows every few months at the Blaisdell Center Arena in Honolulu, with the next show planned for 4/16 with Kimo vs. Brian Johnston as the main event, generally drawing about 3,000 to 4,000 per show. The local debate was no different than anywhere else. Senator Rosalyn Baker stated, for example, “There is no level of skill required. It’s anything goes. It’s the kind of thing that if they were doing this outside the ring, people could end up on aggravated assault charges, attempted murder charges, or even attempted manslaughter charges.

  MAY 19

  The NHB world suffered its latest in what seem to be weekly political blows with the announcement that Time-Warner Cable systems will drop carrying its PPV shows, believed to take effect after the 5/30 UFC show, a blow so devastating to the genre that it caused the Extreme Fighting Championship to tap out for apparently the final time.

  “As of this afternoon, my show’s over,” said EFC promoter and booker John Perretti to Vale Tudo News on 5/7. “We’re finished. The powers that be have beaten us.”

  EFC, which first went out of business on 4/14, liquidating the company known as Battlecade Inc., got a new investor, believed to be Japanese, and re-opened the company under the name Extreme Fighting and scheduled a PPV show on 8/15 in Davenport, IA. That show was canceled this past week.

  Many Time-Warner systems, mainly in the Southeast, pulled the plug literally at the last minute
on the most recent EFC show even in systems that were still advertising the show even after the pullout. SEG promoter David Isaacs said he believed Time-Warner systems would carry the 5/30 UFC on a system-by-system decision basis. Other Time-Warner systems decided not to pull the last EFC show because so much advertising had been out and there.

  Time Warner is the second largest cable operator in the United States, behind only TCI, which officially pulled out of carrying NHB events after the 3/28 EFC show.

  Time Warner’s decision came on the heels of National Cable Television Association President Decker Anstrom urging all the cable operators to pull out of carrying NHB shows in the 5/5 Cable World trade journal. Anstrom said he felt it would be the politically correct thing to do because Congress, which is contemplating regulation of the cable industry, is putting pressure on the cable industry to curtail violent programming and banning NHB events would politically look like the cable industry is taking a step in the right direction.

  At the same time, Semaphore Entertainment Group officials have been meeting with TCI about reversing its position. It is believed TCI will come to a decision yay or nay sometime this coming week. It is believed that SEG has offered several rule alterations in UFC as a concession to get TCI to agree to carry future shows, perhaps even the next one, including making the wearing of gloves mandatory, a position Isaacs admitted is more designed to make it look like sport to outsiders than one which would actually in reality minimize the brutality and injury risk.

  TCI expressed major concern which led to the decision not to carry the events which included Leo Hindery, who has been anti-UFC coming on board as new company President, but also claimed the New York (and perhaps Hawaii law) could be interpreted as banning the events to be able to be aired (in Hawaii, there is no interpretation as a television and PPV ban is specifically spelled out) and they didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the law. They wanted SEG to present the event to where it looked more like sport and less like a spectacle, and because Americans think of boxing as sporting, the gloves were a compromise offered in that vain.

  The thought process seems to be that if the industry leader, TCI, reverses its position, that Time Warner would likely follow suit, leaving only Cablevision, the seventh largest cable operator, as the lone major not carrying the programming. In addition, a reversal of positions may stop what has basically been a domino effect of systems looking into and officially dropping NHB shows. As of press time, the events are no longer available throughout Canada, which was the strongest market for UFC in its heyday, and in 35 to 40 percent of the American PPV universe.

  With EFC officially folding and releasing all its fighters from their contracts, SEG signed EFC heavyweight champion Maurice Smith on 5/13. Smith is expected to be introduced on the 5/30 UFC show, possibly in the role of color commentator, to build up a 7/27 PPV champion vs. champion match against UFC champion Mark Coleman. Exactly how Smith’s EFC championship will be addressed on the UFC broadcast is unknown at press time but it is believed his EFC championship and WKA heavyweight kick boxing championship would both be acknowledged on the next broadcast.

  Negotiations to hold that show at the Yokohama Arena in Japan, as a co-promotion with the Samurai 24-hour fighting cable channel, appear to have fallen through for many reasons. Among them is that Smith is under contract to RINGS in Japan and thus wouldn’t be able to appear on a UFC show taking place in Japan, and the inability to put together a show that would mean something both in Japan and the United States.

  The Japanese promoters, H2O promotions out of Nagoya, were wanting a Don Frye vs. Genichiro Tenryu match, and UFC officials didn’t like that pairing because of the risk of Tenryu, 47, getting seriously injured in such a match. The Japanese promoters wanted to use pro wrestlers Koji Kitao and Koki Kitahara as well for their name value because they were close to the WAR group, and UFC didn’t want that close a connection to pro wrestling and thought such a show would lack interest in the United States which is still where the promotion has to draw from. The Japanese promoters didn’t want Yoshiki Takahashi because of his affiliation with Pancrase, even though a Takahashi vs. Jerry Bohlander match seems to be a natural from a booking standpoint stemming from the 2/7 PPV show. There were also numerous technical problems with producing a show in Japan for broadcast in the United States that needed to be worked out but time was running out on getting it done with enough time to properly put together the show. There is still talk of holding a show in Japan later in 1997.

  MAY 26

  The dominoes kept falling this week, leaving the future of no-holds-barred fighting on PPV in the gravest of situations.

  After TCI officially turned down the attempts by both fans of NHB and by Semaphore Entertainment Group to get the company to reconsider its ban on allowing its systems to carry future shows, an even bigger blow followed when Request television informed SEG that after the 5/30 show, it would no longer carry future events due to the fact that so many of the systems it carries programming for (roughly 50% or more of the systems Request serves) wasn’t going to be airing the shows. It is believed that Jones Cable, another of the nation’s largest conglomerates, had followed in the footsteps of Cablevision, TCI and Time-Warner Cable in deciding not to carry Ultimate Fighting Championship PPV shows after the next program.

  For those keeping track with a scorecard, Cablevision, TCI and some Time-Warner systems won’t be carrying the 5/30 show. The remainder of the Time-Warner systems, Jones and Request are pulling out after the next show.

  Due to the lack of penetration into the PPV universe, it is nearly impossible to see any kind of a bright future for the Ultimate Fighting Championships, coming on the heels of the folding of the Extreme Fighting Championships for exactly the same reason.

  Leo Hindery Jr., the President of TCI, wrote a letter on 5/14 to Bob Meyrowitz, the CEO of Semaphore, the parent company of UFC, stating:

  Thanks for the constructive effort you and your colleagues have made to meet some of our objections to carriage by TCI of Ultimate Fighting Championship events. However, we have decided to maintain our current position regarding carriage of the telecasts.

  A primary reason for our decision is that states in which TCI has millions of customers do not allow the events to be held within their jurisdictions. This is a clear indication that regulatory authorities in these states consider the events inappropriate, given their current format.

  The long-term solution obviously is to seek the type of widespread state sanctioning that is common for other athletic events of this type. Please keep us informed if you make progress in this regard.

  Meyrowitz and SEG had been in heavy negotiations for weeks with Hindery, to the point that Meyrowitz had been heavily praising one of his long-time critics in the media. SEG had offered numerous rule concessions in an attempt to get TCI to reverse its position and was actually fairly confident of a reversal, which would be a major victory at a time the company needed one, so the news hit like a ton of bricks. While we are not aware of all of them, one of them was to make wearing gloves mandatory in UFC matches and certain types of strikes were going to be banned.

  There will be no rule changes for the 5/30 show, but it is expected there will be significant changes in an attempt to get cable companies to reverse their positions and attempt to get boxing commissions in key states to sanction the events which is apparently what the industry leader, TCI, is wanting, before the 7/27 show. That’s another political problem because of the heavy boxing influence in most of the key commissions, which simply don’t want this around, as the actions of the commission in New York showed by implementing the ridiculous last minute rule book to kill the February event. What the new rules will be haven’t been finalized at press time but it is believed they’ll include both mandatory gloves and banning attacking the fingers (a tactic which has never been used in a UFC fight up to this point anyway).

  SEG is still working on doing a follow-up show on 7/27, rumored to be in Mobile, AL after the attempt
s to run a show in Japan on that date fell through. After doing the math, SEG feels the show will still be available in 17 million homes because at present, Viewers Choice is the carrier of choice in 61 percent of the PPV universe in the United States. With scaling back costs, it is still enough homes to make the show potentially viable if the buy rate is decent. There is talk of running a show later this year in Russia, and perhaps still going to Japan by the end of the year as well. Running a show from a foreign country is only going to result in an overall more expensive production coming at the same time SEG is said to be re-working the budgets so the next shows should be scaled way back from a production and talent standpoint.

  While these dominos have all fallen in recent weeks, the dye had been cast months ago. At a national cable convention, one leading pro wrestling promoter had informed us that the talk of the convention was that UFC and EFC were “done.” They saw the pattern with buy rates no longer being what they were, combined with the fate of cable in the hands of a committee empowered by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, that it would be the politically wise move to jump off the NHB bandwagon.

  David Isaacs, who heads the UFC division for SEG, said that the letter sent by National Cable Television Association President Decker Anstrom two weeks ago urging all the cable operators to pull out of carrying NHB events was a potent factor in the dominos falling, far more than he realized at the time the letter went out.

  “Our buy rates have been good, but not great, but the others (EFC, MARS) have been crappy,” Isaacs said. “These changes have made it so the other events aren’t going to be able to continue. By getting rid of the other events, the buy rates for the entire genre are going to start looking better.”