by Bruce Buffer
If you think I’m exaggerating, I should tell you that when the limo pulled up that night in front of the Encore, I got in first with my friends. Jon lingered on the sidewalk. “Jon,” I said, “come on. Get in.”
He did. And the second Jon pulled the door shut—the very second—someone in the crowd outside the hotel threw a punch and knocked a guy to the ground exactly where Jon had been standing a few seconds ago.
Jon looked at me, stunned.
“We should go,” I told the driver, who hit the gas.
Life can change fast on fight night in Vegas. When the parties start winding down, drunk people suddenly find themselves bored and looking for something to do. You’ve got a lot of testosterone flowing. Someone mouths off, and boom, someone takes it in the jaw. If that’s going to happen, I’d rather it happen to someone else, not one of our guys. They don’t need that headache, and they don’t need that publicity.
21
MMA HOLLYWOOD
My family was living in Dallas, Texas, the year the original version of the movie True Grit premiered. The opening-night event was taking place right there in town, and there was no way we were going to miss it. I was about twelve and my brother Brian was fourteen; we were obsessed with John Wayne. Our father drove us to the theater early, dropped us off, and we ran to line up for tickets.
The theater was packed with people waiting to see John Wayne play one of his greatest characters, Rooster Cogburn, the one-eyed marshal hired by a young girl to track down her father’s killers. Brian and I managed to snag seats at the end of a row. I was perched right on the aisle.
Just before the movie started, who should walk in but John Wayne and Glen Campbell, who played the part of the Texas Ranger who tags along after Cogburn in the film. I’d heard of Campbell, but he’d made little to no impression on me. The future Rhinestone Cowboy couldn’t hold a candle to the Duke.
I got excited. My eyes locked on Wayne and swiveled to keep him in my view. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I leaped from my seat and yelled, “Hey, Duke!”
The audience seemed to take a collective gasp. Even in Dallas in 1969, you were supposed to act nonchalant in the presence of a screen legend. But no one had sent me the memo.
Wayne did a ninety-degree turn and looked at me.
“Hey there, little pilgrim,” he said.
That was the first and last time in my life I was rendered speechless. That’s what it takes, apparently. A howdy from one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.
People ask me sometimes if I have any hobbies, and this is my chance to bore them to tears with my knowledge of movies. I became obsessed with them as a kid. Like my father and brother, I enjoyed historical weapons and artifacts, but I was always more into collecting vintage movie posters and lobby cards. It’s a Wonderful Life. Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. James Bond movies. That kind of stuff.
Because I live in Los Angeles, it’s inevitable that I see movie stars and celebrities all the time. On the road with the UFC, I meet and see tons of these people, too. Some impress me because they’re stars; others impress me because they’re stars who clearly love the fights, like the director Guy Ritchie, who trains in martial arts in Torrance, California, and his two Sherlock Holmes stars, Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr., who have often showed up at UFC events together. Ed O’Neill, the Modern Family star, worked for more than a decade to attain his black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu with the Gracies. The actor Jason Statham is another who is respected not only by me but by a lot of the fighters, because he trains incessantly, mostly jiu-jitsu. He’s one of the few actors I’ve met who I believe could hold his own in a fight, and could be a real fighter if he wanted to be.
And there are “celebrities” who make no impression on me at all. I remember one time seeing Paris Hilton at one of the fights. She was sitting in two of the best front-row seats ever—seats fans would kill for—only to leave the event after watching a couple of fights. That impressed me about as much as a used Kleenex lying on the ground.
And today I’m proud whenever I see UFC fighters such as Randy Couture or Quinton Jackson transitioning to film. They bring a powerful, presold mass appeal that few other new actors have—but they have to be willing to work the call of Hollywood into their careers.
Hollywood people often phone my office to reach fighters because they know me from previous projects or deals. In 1999 I received a call from the offices of the famous director Ridley Scott. One of his casting people called to say that Scott was interested in having the UFC fighter Mark “The Hammer” Coleman for an upcoming movie. Could I get hold of him so they could talk to him about casting him?
It was an opportunity of a lifetime. Mark was at the height of his UFC fighting career, and would have been a perfect pick for any movie showcasing raw physical talent and strength. But when I called Mark at his training center, he was just not into it. The thought of switching gears from training to run out to Hollywood seemed like too much of a hassle.
“Mark,” I said, “this is a golden opportunity. This is going to be a huge movie.”
He passed.
Well, that movie was Gladiator, which went on to win five Academy Awards, including the Best Picture and Best Actor awards, the latter for Russell Crowe. Every time I watch it, I can just picture Mark Coleman playing a scene as a Roman soldier or gladiator with Crowe. Mark just has the look. But it was not to be.
After the film’s release and amazing commercial success, Mark came up to me at a UFC event, expressing huge regret for not agreeing to meet with Ridley Scott. In so many words, he said I should have hit him upside the head to make him listen when the opportunity presented itself.
A lot of martial arts fans developed their love of the sport from watching fight scenes in movies. I was maybe too young to befriend the great actor James Cagney, who a lot of people don’t realize was a judo practitioner. That fight scene in the 1945 movie Blood on the Sun, where he kicks the ass of the evil Japanese soldier, is such a classic. That was probably the scene that persuaded me to study judo.
In my younger years I always rushed out to see movies like Enter the Dragon, The Octagon, Above the Law, or Bloodsport. I loved Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris and really enjoyed Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, as did anyone who cared about martial arts.
It turns out that Jean-Claude lived near me; we both worked out at the same Gold’s Gym. In 2006, out of the blue, Van Damme called me, politely asking if I would agree to meet with him because he was thinking of doing a fight movie and thought he might have a role for me.
I went over to his beautiful house and we sat down to chat. I had actually met Jean-Claude in the 1990s at a popular hot spot in Hollywood called Bar One. He and I played pool together with a bunch of girls, and I will always remember how he posed and flexed his muscles for the girls, who of course loved it. That night he was on top of his game, wearing a huge smile, and fun to party with.
But now I could not get over how the ravages of time and drug abuse had aged him from the handsome guy I played pool with that night some twelve years ago. At one point in the meeting he was pontificating about life in general and happened to say, “You see, Bruce, when you get to be my age, you will understand this.”
“Jean-Claude,” I said, “how old do you think I am?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I’m forty-eight,” I said. “You?”
“Forty-four.”
It saddened me to see how this guy, one of my on-screen heroes, had been diminished by his past of drugs and depression. Nothing came of our talk, which is fine, but I was always struck by his kind, courtly manner. A true gentleman.
BUFFERISM NO. 14
“LIFE IS LIKE A PYRAMID.”
In business, family, politics, sports, and entertainment, the leaders and authority figures sit on top, with the followers underneath. That can give you a big head if you’re on top, until you realize the top can’t survive with
out the base.
A few years later I went to see his new film, JCVD, about a washed-up action star who unwittingly becomes involved in a bank robbery. It’s probably the only one of his films that actually garnered some critical acclaim and awards. I was blown away by one scene, a six-minute-long soliloquy in which the character talks about all the mistakes he made in his life—the drugs, the womanizing—and how he ended up a broken, defeated man. The film was regarded as a fictionalized portrayal of Jean-Claude’s own life. I had such profound respect for him when I saw that. It was probably the most honest thing I’ve ever seen on film. I thought it was Oscar-worthy.
As I write this book, Jean-Claude has just stormed back into Hollywood again, with his amazing turn in The Expendables 2. When I saw him up on the screen in that movie, I couldn’t believe I was watching the same man I’d sat down with a few years before. It was like the charismatic Jean-Claude I’d known in the 1990s had magically returned. He’s gotten himself back in incredible shape, throwing those amazing high kicks of his like a twenty-year-old, and he absolutely owns the screen in his scenes as the bad guy. I have to say, seeing the transformation he’d made was an emotional moment for me. Life’s put him through some hard times, but in the end he’s proven that, like the iconic characters he’s played, he’s a true warrior.
Chuck Norris is another of the great screen fighters who feel like they’ve been in my life ever since I was a kid. He used to come over to Steve McQueen’s house to train him. I never met Chuck in those days, but I remember Steve McQueen and his son Chad always talking about Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Later I would train with Chuck’s fighting partners, Bobby Burbich, who taught Tang Soo Do, and Pat E. Johnson, who did the fight choreography in movies such as To Live and Die in L.A., The Karate Kid, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman & Robin, and a bunch of other really popular films. Norris and his crew were all part of this tight-knit community of fine martial artists in Los Angeles who trained people to do authentic-looking fight sequences in the movies, and mentored a number of fight-loving celebrities as clients.
But I never met Norris until I ran into him one day at my dentist’s office. I was doing the UFC by then and he recognized me. We enjoyed bonding over all the various missed opportunities we’d had to meet over the years.
“I’m going down to watch some kickboxing at the Palladium,” he told me. “I might be able to get you some tickets. You interested?”
“Sure! I’d love it,” I told him. “I’ll bring my brother Brian.”
“Great, if it works out, I’ll leave you two tickets at the desk,” he said.
So Brian and I get there and find our seats, only to discover that we are sitting dead center, front row, with Chuck Norris and his wife. We certainly didn’t expect to be hanging out with the man himself.
Since then, Norris and I have become friends. If he’s promoting a fight, he’ll always make sure I get tickets. He often showed up at UFC fights in Vegas. I respect him because he’s refreshingly free of Hollywood BS. Remarkably, for a gentleman who’s reached his seventh decade, he trains every single day. He trains with another Hollywood martial artist, Bob Wall. In the great Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon, Wall was the guy with the scar on his face who killed Bruce Lee’s character’s sister, only to be cut down by Lee at the end of the film.
Back in the day, an aikido master turned actor who showed up on the scene reportedly issued a challenge to all Hollywood martial artists that he could beat anyone who tried to fight him. The young man’s name was Steven Seagal. All the great martial artists on Norris’s team, after they became aware of his challenge, publicly offered to take Seagal on in an article that ran in Black Belt magazine. Bob Wall says that when he called Seagal’s dojo to formally accept, the big man told him that he’d cap the ass of anyone who showed up at his place.
Gene LeBell, who is eighty years old as I write this, is probably the greatest living fight and martial arts trainer in Hollywood. He’s famous for fighting while wearing a pink gi—the product of a long-ago laundry mishap that became his signature look. The man has trained wrestlers, judo fighters, stuntmen, fighters, and martial artists, not to mention numerous actors, and he has choreographed stunts and fight scenes for more than 300 films. He is often asked by martial arts fans to tell about the time Seagal claimed he was invincible to attacks and chokes on a movie set, and LeBell—who is twenty years older than Seagal—hopped on Seagal’s back, got him in a choke, and held him until he passed out. I had heard the story thirdhand, so I once asked Gene whether it was true. He responded, “Steven Seagal is a fine man and a great actor.” That’s all he would ever tell me.
I like Steven. He’s always been nice to me, and I had him on my radio show. He stands six-foot-six and weighs about 300 pounds. I know people like to mock him for putting on weight over the years, but I notice that they don’t say anything to him directly. His closed fist is about the size of my face. I would not want to tangle with him.
In February 2002, when Anderson Silva took down Vitor Belfort with a front snapkick at UFC 126, it was one of the sport’s more eyebrow-raising upsets. It rocked the world, people say, because never in the Octagon had we ever seen anyone dropped with a front kick to the chin. It was a hugely dramatic moment. Now, that’s a basic kick you learn in yellow-belt tae kwon do. It later came out that Seagal was training Silva and took credit for teaching Silva that kick. There was a little controversy about it, because Seagal is still something of a polarizing figure who elicits snark from yahoos across the Web.
What convinced me that perhaps Seagal was teaching his tricks to younger MMA fighters was the night he walked out with Lyoto Machida at UFC 129 in Toronto, the same night I blew my knee. That was the night Machida took on Randy Couture and dropped him with the same kick to the chin. You could say that blow kicked Randy into retirement. That was only the second time I’ve ever seen anyone drop someone with a front kick like that, and both happened within three months of each other.
That’s sort of what I like to call the family tree of a kick, from Seagal to Silva, and from Seagal to Machida. As I say, there’s nothing special about the kick. It’s one thing to throw the kick; it’s another to land it in the way that both those fighters did. And yes, I really do believe that Steven Seagal in his own way had a little impact on the world of MMA.
But it wasn’t until the spring of 2012, when I went down to Buenos Aires to shoot a Budweiser commercial, that I finally got a chance to separate the myths from reality. I was slated to appear in the commercial with Seagal himself, Anderson Silva, and Lyoto Machida. While we were hanging out in Buenos Aires, I got a chance to watch Silva and Machida train one-on-one with Seagal. They worked together on some interesting moves; two in particular are ones that I have never seen put into action by any Octagon fighters in all my years of announcing. Seagal focused a little on teaching how to keep kicks under the radar when thrown, so your opponent doesn’t know what’s happening until it’s too late. Most fighters are taught, as I was, to lift and aim with the knee as your gunsight and kick through your opponent, but Seagal was training them how to keep the foot under the peripheral vision of an opponent. I also saw them using karate chops to the head and clavicle, and working with some interesting wrist submissions. At one point I saw Seagal lead Machida around helplessly because he had the young fighter in a wrist lock. Lyoto almost keeled over from it. Now, going forward, if I see Lyoto or Silva work effectively with any of these moves, I’ll know Seagal made an impression on them. During the whole time, I saw nothing in these young fighters’ eyes but obvious respect for a sensei.
I told Steven it was awesome to watch him work, and that I was impressed by his fluidity of movement, speed, and power at the age of sixty. “I’m faster than they are, but they are great fighters,” he remarked with a tight-lipped smile.
Later, Seagal invited me to dinner and I got a chance to ask him about all these little rumors about his past. He denied Bob Wall’s story of threatening to shoot anyone who came to his
dojo. “What I said was, ‘I don’t fight in print,’ ” he told me. In other words, he would fight any challenger, but not for publicity, which is what Seagal felt Wall was looking for.
And he insisted that his original challenge did not arise out of any disrespect for Chuck Norris, which is what a lot of people thought at the time of these so-called dojo wars. “I said I didn’t like Chuck Norris’s films,” Seagal told me, implying that he had a healthy respect for the man and his martial arts talents.
If you know anything about street fighting and you watch a lot of MMA, you probably spend a lot of time analyzing fight scenes in movies you come across. I’m the same way. Half the time what I’m seeing is really just the magic of the movies—great fight scenes, based in fact, that are designed to look beautiful on the silver screen. Other times what I see is just utter nonsense.
Knowledge of street and sport fighting can take the fun out of fight scenes in movies. The biggest movie “fight myth” is simply the idea of the movie punch. You hit a guy in the face, and he drops cold. Now, can that happen? Sure, you’ve seen it happen in the Octagon. Think of your famous KOs, guys who dropped with one punch, such as Matt Hughes or Chuck Liddell. But fans also know that fighters don’t go down easy. If a man’s trained to the point that he’s pretty much immune to all punches but a perfectly placed shot to the temple or chin, you really have to wear him down before he’s ready to drop. Another classic Hollywood fight standard is breaking a guy’s neck with one fatal twist. In movies like Salt, we have the beautiful Angelina Jolie doing this to bad guys left and right. Now, can a neck be broken with someone’s bare hands? Sure, it’s possible. But not by a woman the size of Angelina.