Royce began to talk to me. “You watch this movie Rocky?” he said in his Portuguese accent. He kept wiggling while I tried to squash him.
I didn’t know how to answer.
“You watch Rocky,” he continued. “Everybody think he lose too.” I thought that was funny.
With that, Royce draped his legs over my shoulders and straightened out my arm by pushing his hips up underneath it. My elbow joint extended at an uncomfortable angle, and I tapped out immediately.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
Royce flashed his all-knowing smile.
I’d have to return to find out.
Rorion, Royce, and I started training together almost immediately after that. I became a student in the subtleties of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu at Rorion’s academy, and he tried out his suggestions for the police panel on me.
I had no idea what it was like to be a jiu-jitsu expert, and Rorion didn’t know what it was like to be a police officer. Whenever he said, “This is the way I’d do it,” I’d give him the gun belt and let him try the technique on me.
In any situation as a police officer, a gun is involved. If you’re rolling on the ground with a suspect, you have to be conscious of your weapon because the suspect could always reach for it.
The difference between Rorion and all the other panel experts was that he was willing to learn. Over time, Rorion would meet me at the police academy, where I taught him how to use a gun better, how to shoot on the move, take angles on suspects, and perform other police-related exercises. This was the beginning of our friendship.
And like so many others, I fell in love with Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It was a simple but highly effective art, and it was real. I appreciated the fact that there was no mystic element to it. You trained hard with your partner, and the longer you practiced, the better you got.
The Gracies didn’t just dole out ranking belts, a problem I saw with other martial arts academies. You had to earn them, and the only way to get to the next level was to work hard and dedicate yourself.
That wasn’t a problem for me. I became a disciple. These guys had the knowledge of life. To me, this was it. They fought. They competed. They were honest. I was convinced, hook, line, and sinker.
I even tried the Gracie diet, which involved eating a lot of watermelon and cream cheese. I got sick of watermelon really fast.
I started going to the Torrance academy twice a week and even started taking my kids to the academy to train. I’d drive home to Corona from the academy in Los Angeles, pick up my seven-year-old, Ron, and four-year-old, Britney, and take them down to Torrance. I was putting in some serious miles.
Twice a week was already pushing it, but I had to train more. Three times a week was the ultimate commitment, so I made it and then also paid for private lessons with Royce on the side.
As my knowledge of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu grew, my faith in the martial arts panel dwindled. Amidst all the bickering and posturing, the panel was never going to produce anything of use to police officers. Yes, they came up with great ideas and techniques, but the real problem was the police department itself.
The LAPD kept asking the panel for ways to use force that wouldn’t injure the suspect but would keep the officer safe. But when we suggested techniques like an arm-triangle choke, which has nothing to do with the trachea, the LAPD would reject them. They said officers couldn’t use chokes.
It became a frustrating and hopeless situation. Though the police force eventually adapted the panel’s recommended techniques and a few of them came from Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I felt most of them were watered down and would never work against a suspect. Knowing some officers could get hurt while using these new techniques, I walked away from the panel after merely eight months.
Still, I was thankful for the panel because it had introduced me to the Gracies and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which changed my life forever.
Easter with Ron, Charlie Brown (Johnny), and Britney
Another life changer following the riots came when Elaine and I learned we were expecting our third child. With both of us on the force, it had gotten to the point that nannies were basically raising our two kids, and our “riot baby” would make three. Elaine and I agreed we didn’t want our kids being raised by strangers.
I told Elaine that if she loved police work, I’d quit my job once she returned from maternity leave. I felt she had much more of a chance of upward mobility than I did.
Instead, Elaine decided to leave the force altogether.
Johnny, our second son, was born on January 31, 1993, which was Super Bowl Sunday. I got to watch the Dallas Cowboys kill the Buffalo Bills through a tiny TV in Elaine’s hospital room, which I didn’t mind given the circumstances.
Eventually the world turned its attention away from Los Angeles, which began to rebuild and move on. Still, what I’d seen for six crazy days in April of 1992 didn’t leave me. It’s funny how resonating moments in your life can give you pause. The riots made me think about what I was doing with myself and my family. My schedule was impossible. I was reporting to roll call at 2:30 p.m. and was out on the streets for CRASH by 3:30 p.m. until about 2:30 a.m. Then I’d go home for a few hours of sleep and get up at 6:00 to make it to Los Angeles in time to appear in court as a witness for my cases by 8:30. I never had enough time to drive the seventy miles home and make it to roll call again by 2:30.
One morning I woke up, looked in the mirror, and saw my dad. It’s not that this was a bad thing. I love my dad and all he stood for and accomplished. The LAPD and SWAT had been so important to him, and he was always there for it. But I realized I wasn’t him and didn’t want to be.
I knew that in the end, the LAPD wouldn’t give a damn about me. It was how I raised my children that would define me. My kids were already getting older, and I felt like I was missing out on so much. I didn’t want to struggle to make it to occasions like Ron’s preschool graduation. It got to the point that I simply wouldn’t do it anymore.
It just so happened that at that time in early 1993 a teaching position in the police academy opened up. The hours would be far better. I’d start at 5:30 a.m. and be done with my day at 2:30, right as the kids were getting out of school. I could go play in the backyard with Britney, take Ron to Little League games, and be home at night with Elaine and the kids.
I and a group of hopefuls applied for the position of tactics instructor and went through a battery of oral and written tests. During the orals, I had to do a presentation of my teaching skills. As a kid, I’d hated public speaking. It made my stomach turn, but now I had something to fight for. For the test, I taught a standard vehicle stop lesson, showing how I would disseminate the necessary information to a class of cadets and explaining why I would teach it that way.
Tommy McDonald and I were the two finalists for the position. Tommy had worked for SWAT and was Sgt. Frank Mika’s choice. Mika was the officer in charge (OIC) of the Tactics Unit. Glen Hees, the assistant OIC, thought I was the man for the job. Both Frank and Glen had worked for my dad.
I’m told that in the end, Frank said to Glen, “You can have McCarthy, but you’d better be right.”
There was a big difference between Tommy and me. I was surprised they gave me the spot. Tommy was a golden boy, and I was a bad boy.
The one thing I knew after getting the job was that I had to prove they’d made the right decision. I can’t justify it, but I have always felt that whatever position I was in or whatever team I played for, others were always trying to replace me. I know it sounds crazy, but even if I was the captain of the team, I still felt that the coach was looking to put in someone else so I had to continually prove myself. It’s my own personal paranoia that’s stayed with me to this day. In this case, it did ensure one thing: the cadets would get the best I had to give, guaranteed.
The change of scenery and pace, both at work and at home, came at just the right time. I’d told Elaine one of the perks of working for the LAPD was that if you ever got tired of what you were doing, y
ou could try something else.
I felt I’d accomplished a lot of good in the four and a half years I’d spent in CRASH, but there comes a point working with gang members when you just want to kill them all. There’s something about them that makes you think you can change them, and I guess it takes about four and a half years to realize you can’t.
Returning to Elysian Park seven and a half years after I began my career there, I was undoubtedly a different person. The academy had changed as well and mostly for the better. When I’d been a recruit, I’d gotten about 908 hours of training. When you think about it, that’s pretty scary. I read somewhere that you needed 1,500 hours of training to become a cosmetologist, to carry around scissors and cut someone’s hair. You need only 900 hours to be a cop, to carry a gun and potentially take someone’s life. It doesn’t quite add up, does it?
The academy hadn’t offered nearly as much tactical training when I’d attended as it did by the time I was an instructor. For instance, my 1985 class hadn’t been taught how to do a building search, but by 1993 the academy had a mock town with houses and buildings to maneuver through. I got to play every day alongside the cadets as I put them through paintball and grappling exercises, and I taught them the proper way to find and apprehend me in the mock town.
I felt being a police officer was all about tactics, learning how to handle oneself properly both physically and mentally in the field. After what I’d seen out there, I had a few pearls of wisdom to share.
In the classroom, I was assigned to teach the course on use of deadly force. Thankfully, it had been given considerably more hours than when I’d been a cadet, which was helpful as I instructed seventy students on department policy, including the proper use of firearms and chokes. All the time I was spending studying jiu-jitsu with Rorion Gracie gave me a better handle on how to train others in certain aspects of force.
Rorion was studying too, though I didn’t realize it at the time. His weekly meetings with the rest of the martial arts panel weren’t necessarily about improving officers’ field techniques. In Rorion’s mind, he was holding an audition, and the traveling show was about to come to town.
The family that started it all, the Gracies (from left to right: Rilion, Relson, Rorion, Helio, Royce, and Carlson)
THE BEGINNING
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.
—George Washington Carver
They say some of the greatest successes have come when someone wasn’t afraid to look at what others had rejected and said, “Let’s try it another way.” Rorion Gracie’s mind had certainly been churning during those weekly meetings with the other martial arts leaders on the advisory panel. When I’d been there, I’d seen a roomful of well-meaning but stubborn zealots. Rorion had seen an opportunity.
Each master was as dedicated to his own art as Rorion was to Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, but Rorion wondered if they’d all be willing to prove it. Would their students lay it all on the line? Pride can be a powerful motivator, and Rorion knew firsthand that there was none greater than a martial artist’s. Not only was there no way they’d step down from a challenge, but Rorion bet people would probably be willing to pay to see who was the best.
Who was the best? The question buzzed around Rorion’s gym in Torrance as he began to speak about his plans for War of the Worlds, a martial arts tournament he’d host in the coming months to decide once and for all which martial art reigned supreme.
Rorion’s grand scheme wasn’t all his own creation. There had already been a man who’d fearlessly tested his art against all who’d challenged him. That man was Rorion’s father, Helio Gracie.
The Gracie family opened their first jiu-jitsu academy in 1925 in Brazil, nearly a dozen years after a Japanese foreigner named Esai Maeda, also called Conde Koma or Count Combat, had befriended Helio’s father, Gastão, a respected politician.
Gastão and his family lived in the northern state of Pará in Brazil. Gastão helped Maeda, who was part of a Japanese colony there, establish himself in Para. In gratitude, Maeda, a champion martial artist, offered to teach Japanese jiu-jitsu to the oldest son of Gastão’s family.
For the next few years, Carlos Gracie learned the self-defense art, then passed it on to his four brothers. One of those siblings was Helio, the youngest and frailest. Helio was said to get winded scaling a flight of stairs, but from the sidelines he intently watched his brothers master the moves on the mats.
One day when his brother Carlos was late for a private lesson he would be instructing, sixteen-year-old Helio offered to begin the session with the student. When Carlos finally did walk into the academy, the student asked if his brother could continue the lesson. Carlos agreed, and Helio became another instructor.
Helio was an innovator and could see beyond what others did. He realized quickly that many of the Japanese jiu-jitsu moves relied on strength, something he didn’t possess. For the next few years, Helio modified every move he’d learned to manipulate leverage and timing in his favor. The eventual result was Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, also referred to as Brazilian jiu-jitsu today.
Word of Helio’s new effective techniques spread throughout Brazil. Fighters came from far and wide to challenge him. Helio, whose small frame never surpassed more than 140 pounds, wasn’t afraid to demonstrate his system.
In 1932, Helio submitted boxer Antonio Portugal in thirty seconds with an armlock. Helio would go on to fight seventeen more times, submitting wrestlers, judokas, and sumo wrestlers alike. Sometimes Helio would issue his own challenges to the well-known practitioners of the day.
Because of Brazil’s fascination with combat sports, many of these battles were fought in stadiums filled with thousands of people. Helio didn’t win every time, and on numerous occasions the bouts were declared draws, but no opponent ever spoke ill of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu when leaving the proving ground.
Helio’s most famous match was against the much heavier judo expert Masahiko Kimura at a Rio de Janeiro stadium, where the president of Brazil and thousands of other spectators watched.
Because of their size difference, Kimura told Gracie, “If you last more than two minutes with me, you should be viewed as the winner.”
The match lasted thirteen minutes. Kimura controlled most of it and finally caught Helio in a reverse ude-garami, a type of shoulder lock that eventually broke Helio’s arm.
3 When the thirty-eight-year-old Helio wouldn’t tap out to Kimura, Helio’s older brother Carlos threw in a towel to stop the match. The results graced the covers of the local newspapers the next day.
Helio also fought what could be considered the longest uninterrupted MMA bout in history when he grappled with his former student Waldemar Santana for three hours and forty-two minutes at a private event. Gracie lost due to a kick to the head as well as exhaustion. In 1967, fifty-four-year-old Helio fought his last public match.
Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and other forms of combat sports continued to grow in Brazil. In the 1960s, the early forms of MMA, called vale tudo, or “anything goes,” found its way to TV on a show in Brazil called Heróis do Ringue. Some of the Gracie family participated as coaches. The bouts attracted all styles, including another popular discipline called luta livre, or “free fighting.”
Soon the popularity of the sport would cross national borders. Rorion, the oldest of Helio’s seven sons, was the first to come to America to spread the gospel of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Out of his garage in Southern California, Rorion taught private lessons and accepted the frequent challenges of nonbelievers who would seek him out. Some of those bouts, along with a detailed version of the Gracie family history as told by them, were captured on the Gracie in Action videotapes.
When Rorion decided to create the War of the Worlds tournament, it came from the greatest inspiration of all and one that I could personally identify with: his father. At Rorion’s gym, we’d all watched the tapes of vale tudo fights from Brazil.
Rorion said, “I am going to bring these f
ights to America. It will be like those fights you see on TV.” The ambitious Rorion wanted Gracie Jiu-Jitsu to become a household name in America and knew the TV medium could do just that.
Since Rorion had arrived in California in the late 1970s, he’d taught relentlessly and collected a diverse clientele. One Gracie student, Art Davie, then an advertising executive, began to develop War of the Worlds with his jiu-jitsu teacher. John Milius, another client and the writer and director of Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn, also joined Rorion and Davie. The three men brainstormed and developed the concept of a sixteen-man single-elimination tournament where each participant would represent a recognized combat art.
4
Milius, who became the show’s initial creative director, first conceptualized an eight-sided fighting structure, which Jason Cusson helped develop into an eight-sided cage with canvas-covered floor padding enclosed by fencing so competitors could neither flee nor fall off the sides or through a set of ropes. The cage was named the Octagon. Initially there was an elaborate plan to either surround it with a moat full of alligators or electrify the chain-link fencing. Cooler heads prevailed, and it was decided the cage alone would suffice.
Among Rorion’s students, friends, and family, he and Art gathered enough investors to fund the event and formed a company called WOW Promotions to produce it. Davie then pitched the concept as a one-off event to a handful of pay-per-view producers, including HBO and Showtime.
Let’s Get It On! Page 10