by Bruce Buffer
Pat and I were on a flight together that dead-ended somewhere in Texas. It was supposed to be an hour-or-so layover, but of course the flight was canceled, leaving us stranded thousands of miles from our destination.
It had been a long day, and I was not in the best of moods. I started swearing. It was colorful. It wasn’t creative. Just an angry stream of F-bombs from a guy who thought he should have been better treated by a multinational corporation from whom he’d bought a ticket.
There were dozens of families in the seating areas. Lots of little kids fidgeting or playing around their parents’ luggage. Pat’s eyes darted from me to the kids and back.
He glared down at me as I sat in my chair, moping.
“Buff,” he said. “I like you, but if you don’t stop cursing right now, I’m going to punch you.” His eyes flicked to the children again. “You know it’s not right.”
No way in hell did I want to get punched in the face by the UFC’s first welterweight champion in a Texas airport. I piped down.
“I’m sorry, Pat,” I said. “You’re absolutely right.”
“I know I am.”
“Won’t happen again.” Then I paused and looked at him. “Are you still gonna punch me?”
I come from the old school where, if you have a disagreement with someone, you fight it out, then have a beer. You can’t do that today, because you never know if the stranger who just mouthed off to you is a gun-toting maniac. There have been times when I’ve been in crowds and someone will think it’s funny to whack me with an elbow. Ha, ha—let’s hit the guy in the monkey suit. One time it happened and I was going to deal with the guy, but my friends pulled me out of it, and they were right to do so. I cannot let myself be drawn into altercations of that type, because it’s bad publicity for me and the organization. In my father’s day, a guy who got what was coming to him learned to shrug it off because he knew that he’d brought it all on himself. Times have changed. Today, the slightest altercation can create a lawsuit. I don’t need that headache.
But MMA athletes are trained to fight. It’s what they do. When they get into the Octagon, they’re there because they’ve been asked to fight. They may not hold a particular grudge against the other man. And yet, look at what they do to each other. Imagine what they’d do to someone who gives them a reason. Unless you’ve been trained to fight, your first instinct is to shrink away from confrontation. Most of the time, that’s the logical and prudent thing to do. MMA guys don’t think that way. If the person pissing them off is another fighter, they know the guy can take it. If he doesn’t back down, they let him have it. And that has led to some insane moments on the road.
The first time I saw non-Octagon violence on a fight weekend was at UFC 6 in Casper, Wyoming—the first UFC I attended. The Sunday after the show, Michael and I were about to leave the hotel for the airport when I heard a huge commotion, which sounded like a fight. I ran to the elevators, where I saw Pat Smith, a kickboxer who’d fought the night before, on his knees, tearing up and making sounds like a wounded banshee. I later found out that he’d been in a beef with Tank Abbott’s crew the night of the fight. Now, as he’d walked out of the elevator the next morning, he’d been coldcocked by one of Tank’s cornermen to settle the issue. I have seen a lot of street fights, but the sight of a highly skilled professional fighter holding his head and screaming from unanswered punches has etched itself permanently into my memory banks. Remember—anyone can beat anyone on any given day. It is not always fair and by the rules. It’s the street.
Then came UFC 13, my first official UFC event, in 1997. That Augusta, Georgia, event marked the first appearance of Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz. Both had emerged victorious that night. Randy especially, since he’d taken on two opponents and won both times. Really a great night. We had just finished the fights and were hanging around at an after-party in the hotel where we were staying. Bob Meyrowitz always knew how to throw good after-parties. There was a nice buffet going, a couple of good drinks, people having a few laughs. I was ecstatic that night, basking in the glow of my new job and looking forward to great things now that I was part of the organization.
The main event that night saw that big, bearded monster Tank Abbott pitted against Vitor Belfort, who took Tank out in less than a minute. It was a tough time for Tank. He’d picked a fight with the Brazilian fighter Allan Goes at UFC 8, down in Puerto Rico. Bob had banned Tank from the organization for close to a year to teach him a lesson. His loss to Vitor would turn out to be the second in a trio of professional losses.
Tank had started as a bar brawler, tearing apart chumps in Huntington Beach who coughed up money for the chance to take him on. Once, one of those takers whipped out his cash, waved it around, and said, “Where do I put this? Do I give it to you, or what?”
“Just stick it there in your shirt pocket,” Tank told him. “I’ll take it after I knock you out.”
He and I go way back and I still consider him a friend of mine, though we’ve had our differences. He’d call my house late at night and say, “Hey, Buff, let’s go out, get drunk, and get arrested. Whaddaya say?” And I’d reply, “How about we do just one of the three and leave it at that?”
Although scary to most who don’t know him, Tank can be fun to be around. I used to get a kick out of watching him impress girls back in the day by standing on his head to show off how he can drink a beer upside down. Most people don’t know him as well as I do, and don’t realize how intelligent he is, or that he has a degree in economics. Like me, he’s taken the time to pound out his memoirs. One of these days they’ll come out and we’ll get to see what goes on behind that gruff, beefy exterior.
He doesn’t reserve that personality for strangers, either, by the way. Even his friends are occasionally subject to his wrath. We were sitting outside on the deck of my house one time, watching the beach, and he said to me, “I like you, Buff, but if you ever fuck me over, I’m gonna have to come for you.”
You don’t want to mess with this guy.
So here we were, drinking and talking with each other, when who should come up to say a few words to Tank but Vitor Belfort’s striking trainer, Al “Stankie” Stankiewicz. He’s an older gentleman who is in his seventies now. Back then he was maybe in his late fifties. He got his start training fighters when he was still an undercover vice cop in Los Angeles.
I have no idea what Al said to Tank. A few words of commiseration on his loss that night? Better luck next time? A heck of a fight? For some insane reason, Tank bitch-slapped Stankie hard. Bam. Right in the face. Right in front of all of us. Dozens of men and women are standing around, drinks in hand, confusedly looking and asking each other, “What the hell is this, now?”
Well, that touched off a melee. Vitor and the Brazilians came over, and Wallid Ismail sucker-punched Tank with an overhand right to the jaw. Tank fell to the ground in the turtle position; in his defense, he was a bit inebriated. All hell broke loose. The fighters got into it, and the rest of us tender civilians were scattering on the periphery, trying to get the hell out of the way.
I tell people sometimes that I’d rather fight in the Octagon than anywhere else. You’re safer in the Octagon because there are no obstacles. No furniture. No glass. No sharp edges. Start flinging heavy men around a room, and there’s no telling what’ll happen. I remember one fighter beating the crap out of another fighter in a bathroom. The guy had it coming; he’d mouthed off to the fighter about his wife. I would never want to be involved in a bathroom fight. Too much porcelain. Too much tile. Too many ways to split your skull open.
Anytime a fight breaks out in a public place, you’re in danger. When people see red, they think everyone’s their enemy. They aren’t thinking carefully, especially if they’ve been drinking. I’ve been in enough fights to know that as soon as it starts, you must reduce your chances of being hit. That’s why I immediately grabbed Bob Meyrowitz and pushed him out of the way and got up against the wall. With your back against the wall, you can at least s
ee the punches coming.
In the center of the room was this swirl of tangled men. Then the swirl broke up and a couple of the guys started swinging at people on the periphery. One guy came sailing toward me as if to punch me. There was this funny moment where he did a double take, fist in the air, and saw who I was. “Oh, sorry, Bruce,” he said, and then he ran back into the tornado of limbs again.
It was like something out of a movie.
Mind you, this was only a thirty-second melee. That’s how fast fights spring up and blow over. Anyone who thinks they’ll see it coming and have time to react is kidding himself. It happens fast. Twenty seconds later, it blows over and you’re holding a broken nose or jaw because you didn’t move fast enough to protect yourself.
Mark Coleman didn’t fight that UFC, but he was in town. He walked into the “brawl room” about two seconds after the fight blew over. He seemed three sheets to the wind and started swinging, as he’s always up for a fight. Big John reacted instinctively, grabbing Mark and subduing him before he could create any more damage.
I watched Bob Meyrowitz, the businessman, talk Tank, the barroom brawler, down from his rage. Big John took the big man upstairs to his room.
And that was the end of that. That was the only time a fight broke out at the after-party in the hotel where we were staying.
Another brawl I witnessed is also the most famous—the one that took place outside the Chinawhite Nightclub in London in 2002, right after the first-ever British UFC event. Fighters and fans still talk about this one, and everyone has his own take on it. It was pretty harrowing, and I doubt we’ll ever get to the bottom of it.
None of us were feeling any pain that night. UFC 38 had played to an enthusiastic crowd at the Royal Albert Hall, showcasing the talents of a mix of fighters from all over the globe, but especially a handful of Brits and Australians.
You have to understand something about UK fans. They love watching their warriors go toe-to-toe. Even today, no matter what size arena we’re in, such as the O2 Arena in London, which holds around 20,000, UK fans make it sound like 50,000-plus are in attendance. The Manchester fighter Michael Bisping, with whom I’ve enjoyed becoming friends over the years, has had a couple of hundred street fights and never turns down a professional fight. He took on Chael Sonnen once with only four weeks’ notice. One of my favorite fighters to introduce is Nottinghamian Dan “The Outlaw” Hardy. Whenever I turn to his corner to begin introducing him, he beckons for me to come closer and roar my intro face-to-face. He’ll mouth the words with me and shake his head only inches from the camera. The fans love it.
Bisping and Hardy didn’t fight at UFC 38, however. That night, Matt Hughes took on and beat Carlos Newton in the fourth round of the main event. A truly wonderful ending to our first-ever show in England.
Afterward, we were at Chinawhite and the champagne was flowing. It was packed to the gills upstairs and downstairs, but we were cordoned off in the VIP area. I was with Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell most of the night. All of us were getting off to the music and the beautiful women. Around three in the morning, it was time to start thinking about heading back to our hotel. For some reason, we didn’t have a ride back and needed to hail some cabs. We stepped out into an alley to do so. Pat Miletich was horsing around with one of Tito’s friends, Bo, who had climbed onto Pat’s back and was pretending to mess with him. The first thing I saw was another guy come up to them and grab Bo off Pat’s back, whereupon Bo fell to the ground. The guy who pulled Bo off was fighter Tony Fryklund, who was a friend of Pat’s and apparently didn’t realize that the two were just horsing around. Years later, Tony would tell me that when Bo dropped off Pat’s back, someone else—who Tony believed was fighter Lee Murray’s bodyguard—started punching Bo. Tito saw his friend Bo getting punched out and ran over to deal with it. During the ensuing melee, a taxi actually ran over Bo’s arm.
It was as if someone lit a powder keg. Next thing you knew, everyone in the alley was throwing punches. I followed Chuck as he mowed through the crowd. I watched him bring a hulk-like hammerfist down on someone’s head and swipe him with a right. It was bad news for anyone who got in front of Chuck at that moment. A ring girl who was partying with us was just standing there, looking confused. I grabbed her and pulled her out of the way. Lorenzo Fertitta’s assistant was trying to calm things down, too. I got her out of the way. You don’t want to be going past that swarm of swinging limbs.
On the other side of the alley, Tito was trading punches with Lee Murray, the Moroccan-British MMA fighter. Tito went down and Murray reportedly kicked him viciously in the head. Murray was a tough guy, a hothead best remembered today for later orchestrating a £53-million bank heist that put him in prison. (He’s still there.) For some reason, that night he had it in for Tito, of all people.
All of us, the Americans at least, were having trouble defending ourselves that night. Most of us had never fought on a cobblestoned surface; our ankles were wobbling every which way, giving the Brits the home-court advantage.
The fight blew over fast. Lee and a few other people disappeared before the British bobbies showed up and threatened to arrest us all.
When I finally saw Tito, his mouth was bleeding and he was pissed as hell. I wanted to leave, but he wanted to wait for Pat, who was talking to some of the cops.
“Bruce,” Tito said. “Can you talk to them?”
I introduced myself and Tito to the bobbies in their tall helmets, and gave them my version of the events. In a nutshell, what happened appeared to be a freakish misunderstanding. All we wanted to do was get back to our hotels and go to bed. The cops took our statements and let us go. On the way back in the cab, Tito was pissed and openly emotional. I had never seen him like that in my life.
Back at the hotel, Tito sat in the lobby waiting for Pat and his crew to return. I knew that he was pissed enough to start a fresh brawl, which would inevitably involve me as well. It took me a while to convince Tito to let it go and get up to his room, which he finally but reluctantly did.
The London brawl affected me in ways I am still discovering.
10 TIPS FOR SURVIVING A STREET FIGHT
1. Never bring a club, knife, or gun to a street fight unless you’re prepared to be clubbed, stabbed, or shot, too.
2. Never have your girlfriend or wife throw the first punch—unless you’re dating MMA Champion Ronda Rousey!
3. Hit first and ask questions later—unless it’s a police officer!
4. Stay alert! If you see trouble brewing ahead of you, walk away.
5. Elbows hit harder than fists, knees hit harder than elbows, and head butts rule!
6. As soon as the fight starts, get your back up against a wall. It’s easier to defend yourself from three angles than four.
7. Anything goes in a street fight. When in doubt, BITE!
8. Bar fights are bad. Flying glass cuts deeper than a punch, and leaves scars, too.
9. When fighting in the street, assume the attitude “Kill or be killed.”
10. The best self-defense is to avoid street fights in the first place. As Bruce Lee said, master “the art of fighting without fighting”!
Just a for-instance: In 2011, after UFC 135 in Denver, I was at an after-party with Rampage Jackson after his loss to Jon “Bones” Jones. Everyone was there: me, Damian McLawhorn, Michael Bisping, Chuck Liddell, Rashad Evans, Jason “Mayhem” Miller, and a couple of other fighters. The night before, a bunch of us had gone out with MMA journalist Ariel Helwani and Arianny Celeste, the Octagon girl, to a fabulous steak place in Denver, where I’d proceeded to get them all tipsy on port, which was a novelty for some of these folks.
Tonight, I was marveling at the camaraderie of the sport. Think of it: fighters like Mayhem and Bisping, for example, who were destined to meet in the Octagon in December 2011, were hanging out like brothers. That was a truly wondrous sight, I thought.
But at the end of the night, we had to go out the back alley of the club, and as we did so, everyone was
joking back and forth, and there was the usual booze-fueled grab-assing. The local cops were watching us from the top of a nearby parking garage, flashing lights on us and urging us to disperse. I looked around and spotted another huge crowd of partiers also leaving the club. We were surrounded.
Suddenly I got this weird feeling: Uh-oh, it’s going to be London all over again.
Nothing actually happened that night, after all. But I’ve learned that if I’m going to hang out with fighters, I need to stay alert, because you never know when something like the China white incident will happen again. I firmly believe that professional fighters don’t purposely cause fights of this magnitude. When they let loose, they more often are trying to defend their honor or protect a loved one.
That said, I’m always on the lookout for a “London vibe.” When the party’s going late, when everyone’s been drinking, and when musclebound men start giving each other affectionate, brotherly punches that are just a tad too forceful, maybe it’s time to call an end to the night.
YOU want to talk fights? When I once went to Hawaii with my brother Brian, we were hanging out at Waimea Beach on the north shore of Oahu, watching surfers tackle twenty-foot waves. Later some young Hawaiian guys chased these haoles (white guys) off their turf and commenced to kick the crap out of them. Needless to say, if my brother and I were thinking of surfing on that beach, we quickly found a new spot. It was not the last time we saw that happen. It’s a tough culture.
My friend B.J. Penn embodies what I call true Hawaiian warrior spirit. He is ferocious, tenacious, and unstoppable. I got to know B.J. Penn and his brother J.D. Penn when B.J. started to fight in the UFC. We all became friends and they started inviting me to come announce their Rumble on the Rock Shows, which were fights promoted by J.D.’s Rumble World Entertainment, and I jumped at the chance because I love them, I love the sport, and I love Hawaii.