Let’s Get It On!

by McCarthy, Big John; Loretta Hunt, Bas Rutten; Bas Rutten

  “John, you ever referee a boxing match or a jiu-jitsu tournament?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got no clue.” I laughed. “I’m just going to stand back and try to look like I know what I’m doing. It’s No Holds Barred. Man, there’s no rules, and they don’t want me to stop it.”

  I really didn’t think I’d have much to do come fight night. None of the matches at UFC 1 had gone five minutes.

  My plan was to move around and act like I was doing something while really just watching two guys go at it from the best seat in the house. All I had to do was stop the fight when a guy tapped out or his corner threw in the towel. Other than that, I’d make sure nobody bit or eye-gouged, which wasn’t hard to pick out. Pretty easy, I thought.

  Everything else was legal. Groin strikes, which had been banned in the first event, would be admitted at UFC 2. A few of the applicants claimed they were a vital part of their disciplines and if they were allowed to execute them, they would perform better. Most of the fighters were wearing steel cups anyway, so Rorion said, “Why not?”

  Rorion had an easier time scouting for the second event, I think because he now had something to show prospective fighters. Word spread through the martial arts community, and they came to Rorion like moths to a flame. Martial artists couldn’t resist the opportunity to prove their discipline was the be all and end all.

  With more fighters to choose from, Rorion decided to expand UFC 2 to a sixteen-man tournament, a dream he hadn’t been able to realize with the first event. In keeping with the Brazilian marathon fighting tradition, Rorion also decided to get rid of those pesky rounds.

  One of the common misconceptions of the early UFCs was that time limits and rounds weren’t instituted until later. UFC 1 was actually scheduled for unlimited five-minute rounds separated by one-minute rest periods until a winner was determined. But because no fight had gone past the five-minute mark at UFC 1, Rorion and SEG didn’t see the point of having rounds at all. It was decided that time limits wouldn’t be necessary for UFC 2. The fights would go on for one endless round until one man tapped out or his corner threw in the towel, no exceptions.

  Again there would be no weight limits, but all the sumo wrestlers must have been fond of their teeth because UFC 2 had no one to follow in Tuli’s footsteps. The largest fighter weighed 275 pounds, and the lightest was 20 pounds below Royce’s 176.

  With the lineup set, Rorion moved on to the next details.

  Though UFC 1’s pay-per-view numbers were promising, the live event itself had failed to muster up enough of a paying audience to justify using Denver’s McNichols Sports Arena again. On top of that, in the first of many political interventions to come, the mayor had said he didn’t want UFC 2 there. So we packed up the circus and moved about seven miles down the road to the 2,000-seat Mammoth Events Center.

  As a Los Angeles police officer, I was required to apply for a work permit to referee the event because I was going to get paid. On the form I wrote that I would be officiating a martial arts event. When my superiors asked me what kind, I told them, “It’s mixed martial arts. It involves jiu-jitsu, karate, tae kwon do, wrestling, boxing . . .” I doubt they understood it was a combination of all those arts in one fight, and I wasn’t about to overcomplicate things.

  Satisfied with my answer, they finally signed off on it.

  About a week before the show, I flew out to Denver with Elaine, who’d been asked back to help Kathy Kidd set up. In my new role as referee, I didn’t seem to have much to do, so I hung around the production office with Elaine and worked out at one of the local gyms commandeered for the fighters. I had a few officer friends with me, too, who Rorion had flown in as extra security to work the event night.

  A day before the show, we had our second rules meeting. The fighters sat anxiously at long tables set up classroom style as the matchups were selected randomly with the numbered balls pulled out of the bingo machine. Art Davie introduced me to the room as “Big” John McCarthy and asked me to come to the podium to go over the rules, or really the lack of them.

  This was the first time I’d been called “Big” John in front of the fighters. My mother had called me “Big” John all the time when I was younger, but it was Art who reintroduced it a few weeks earlier at the WOW offices in Los Angeles.

  The WOW offices were out the back door of the Gracie Academy, across the parking lot on the other side of the street, so I found myself there a couple times a week. On that day, Art and I had gotten into a little back-and-forth discussion. I don’t remember what we were talking about, except that I told Art to shut up and when he wouldn’t, I lifted him off the ground and over my head.

  “Big John, Big John, let me down, let me down,” he yelled, until I obliged him.

  In this playful interaction between two smart-asses, I was marked for life.

  “‘Big’ John. That’s what you are from now on,” Art said. And sure enough, each time he introduced me, a few other people would start calling me it, until the name finally etched its way into the sport’s vernacular.

  Standing at the podium in front of all of the competitors in UFC 2, “Big” John didn’t know what the fuck to say. I was nervous, but from my years on the police force, I knew I had to at least give off the vibe that I was in control.

  Certain things just stuck out in my mind that I had to get across. I remembered Jason DeLucia getting cut by Trent Jenkins’ toenails at the first event, so I drilled home that the fighters had to cut their toenails and fingernails.

  Then I said, “Look, if you want out, tap the mat.” I hit the podium for emphasis. “You can tap the mat, your opponent, or even yourself if that’s all you can reach. If your hands are tied up, you can tap out with your feet.”

  I also addressed the cornermen. Nobody had asked me to do this, but since the corners had the ability to stop the fight and I didn’t, I figured communication between us all was probably a good thing. “If I think your fighter’s in trouble or starting to have a problem, I’m going to point to you and say, ‘Watch your fighter.’ If they’re really in trouble, I’m going to say, ‘Throw your towel.’”

  Soon the fighters were dismissed for their last-minute preparations. As they poured out of the room, Rickson Gracie walked up to me and said, “Hey, John, you’re scaring everyone.”

  Apparently my nerves, stern delivery, and podium slamming had made an impression.

  UFC 2 introduced another new player to the mix: Bob Meyrowitz, the owner of SEG. He’d watched UFC 1 on his couch back in New York City, and the smell of greenbacks must have wafted right out of his TV. He flew all the way out to Denver to see the second show firsthand.

  I was sitting in the hotel restaurant’s bar when Bob approached me for the first time. “John McCarthy, how are you?” he asked, extending his hand. Bob was a decent-sized man, maybe six feet and 200 pounds, with a distinguished salt-and-pepper beard, but his nasally voice didn’t match up.

  Truthfully, I had no idea who he was at the time. All I knew was that he owned the TV production company SEG. I had no idea that SEG might have ownership stake in the UFC.

  Bob started describing to me what he wanted to see happen during the fights, as if I was the puppet master controlling the strings. “I want you to make sure the fighters are fighting good.”

  I wondered how the hell I was supposed to do that. Little did I know that TV producers and promoters would be saying the same stupid thing to me eighteen years later: “Make sure it’s an exciting fight. Don’t let them lay on the ground too long.”

  Here was this fortysomething TV guy doing what TV people do—trying to make the show better any way he thought he could—but I didn’t understand any of that at the time. I just thought a lot of what he was saying was pretty ridiculous.

  Rorion had never really spoken of Bob, so I just wanted him to go away. When it came to the show, I didn’t take orders from anyone except Rorion. He was my boss.

/>   There was one request that I did fulfill for Art Davie, though, and it was something that would become fairly synonymous with, well, me. A couple days before the show, Art asked me to come up with a catchy way to begin the fights. He thought a slogan and some sort of hand gesture would fit well.

  “Christ, Art, I’ve got two guys standing in a cage waiting to knock the shit out of each other. I’m just going to ask this guy if he’s ready and then ask the other guy if he’s ready and then tell them, ‘Let’s get it on.’”

  Davie loved the idea.

  UFC 2 “No Way Out” was held on March 11, 1994, at the misleadingly named Mammoth Events Center, which had been incarnated as everything from a sports venue to a textile warehouse to an open food market. Compared to the McNichols Sports Arena, the place was like someone’s armpit. It was old, outdated, and in a seedy part of town.

  The arena didn’t even have dressing rooms for the fighters to wait in before their bouts, so WOW and SEG rented a few rooms next door in a broken-down hotel full of prostitutes and drug addicts. The fighters pushed the beds against the walls to make space to warm up, and as the night wore on, they were ferried back and forth through the rat-infested alleyway between the two buildings.

  Royce found that being Rorion’s brother had its advantages. He was the only fighter given accommodations at the venue in an area behind some curtains.

  This night there were sixteen participants and two alternates. There would be a whopping fifteen fights—nearly double the eight quick bouts that had transpired at UFC 1—and Rorion decided I would referee all of them. Only the last eight fights would be televised, and Royce’s first-round bout would kick off the pay-per-view.

  I don’t know if there was a momentous realization when I first stepped into the cage, which was officially dubbed the Octagon at the beginning of the UFC 2 telecast. I wore baggy, black Otomix weightlifting pants and a UFC T-shirt with the ironic words “There are no rules” across the chest. Standing there in the cage, I was nervous, I admit. I had no idea what I was doing. I just thought, Holy Christ, don’t let me screw this up.

  The first fight matched eighteen-year-old karate expert Sean Daugherty against Scott Morris, an American ninjutsu black belt at least ten years Daugherty’s senior. Morris, a student of Robert Bussey’s Warrior International program, was escorted to the Octagon by an army of teammates in matching button-down shirts, ties, and red-and-black letterman jackets. One of these dapper guys was Matt Andersen, half brother to future fighting great Jeremy Horn. Andersen himself would fight at UFC 9.

  Once the fighters and their corners had settled at opposite ends of the cage, I walked to the center and motioned to each fighter one last time to make sure they were on board. “Are you ready? Are you ready?” I pointed to each fighter. My first “Let’s get it on” was a far cry from its later glory. It was more like I was casually telling the guys I was going down to the store to pick up some milk. At least I accentuated it by raising my arm and throwing the imaginary gauntlet down in front of me.

  As soon as the fighters engaged, I got out of the way fast.

  Daugherty came out and threw a really fancy front hook kick, but Morris grabbed ahold of Daugherty’s neck in their clinch and flipped him over his head in a backward roll before climbing on top into mount.

  That’s good, I thought.

  Morris then cranked on Daugherty’s neck, and I’m sure the karate kid had felt nothing like this in the dojos. He tapped the mat fast and hard, and I rushed in to separate them. Twenty seconds had elapsed.

  That’s it? I thought. This is going to be easy.

  Before Morris could walk away, I grabbed his arm and raised it to signal that he was the winner and would advance. The two fighters left the cage, and the next pinball was in the chute ready to be launched on the first fight’s heels.

  Patrick Smith, a Sabaki Challenge champion kickboxer, was a returning fighter from UFC 1. I’d also seen his opponent, Ray Wizard, at a karate tournament in Los Angeles. Wizard was fast. I quickly realized fighter recognition would be important for me because it gave me at least a faint idea of what the dynamic of the bout might be.

  I checked both fighters’ fingernails and toenails to make sure they’d been cut down and then walked to center cage and repeated the starting words.

  Smith flailed his arms above his head in some mock traditional stance, but what he really wanted was to lock up with Wizard and find a quick submission. Smith had learned his lesson from UFC 1. He clinched with Wizard and pulled him in tight as the two migrated to the fence. Finding a guillotine choke around Wizard’s neck, Smith pushed his hips up to sink the choke in even deeper.

  I was standing next to them. Rorion, dressed this time in a more practical tracksuit, squatted on the other side of the chain link. We both knew either the tapout or Wizard’s unconsciousness was imminent.

  As soon as Wizard went limp, I stepped in and he fell back to the canvas.

  Two fights in under two minutes. No sweat.

  The next fight paired Johnny Rhodes, another karate champion, against David Levicki, a kung fu practitioner and supposed Navy SEAL.

  I took one look at all 275 pounds of Levicki and thought, I don’t think so. I’d met a few Navy SEALs, and there was no way a man Levicki’s size would be able to fulfill all those physical demands. Besides, the way Levicki talked about it set off my bullshit meter big-time.

  Still, Levicki had Rhodes on the run right away. But when they clinched and fell to the mat, Rhodes landed inside Levicki’s guard, then quickly hopped one of his own legs over Levicki’s right leg into half guard. From there, the fighters pretty much stalemated in terms of punching, though Levicki regained his guard by pulling Rhodes’ body back between his legs. I watched Rhodes try to push his fingers into Levicki’s jugular, which was perfectly legal.

  Levicki wasn’t doing much from the bottom except trying to keep Rhodes close. As he hugged him, Levicki’s legs naturally tugged at Rhodes’ gi pants until suddenly we had a full moon rising inside the Octagon.

  Son of a bitch, I thought. I didn’t know what to do at first because I wasn’t supposed to interfere with the fight. But the man’s ass was staring me in the face, so I decided to move in and pull them up. I tried to offset this by blurting out, “Get to work,” but Rhodes’ pants just kept sneaking back down his legs. I must have yanked them up at least fifteen times.

  Eventually, Rhodes’ hugging, slapping, and sporadic punches opened a cut over Levicki’s eye. The blood began to flow, creating a puddle on the canvas next to him, but there wasn’t much I could do but grab those pants and try to keep UFC 2 from earning an X rating. The blood started to cloud Levicki’s vision, so I asked him if he wanted to continue. Levicki finally tapped out by telling me no, he’d had enough.

  At about thirteen minutes, it was the longest UFC fight so far, and I was thinking, Shit, here I’ve been touching a man’s ass on TV. This sucks.

  Little did I know a little nudity would be the least of my worries. It was all about to go downhill.

  The first round’s fourth fight matched the two greatest names I would ever hear in the UFC: Freek Hamaker and Thaddeus Luster. Hamaker was a student of Gerard Gordeau, the savate champion who’d made it to the UFC 1 finals against Royce. Gordeau had been announced as retired for this event, but I guess he wanted to keep his lineage alive by sending in one of his students.

  Hamaker said his main discipline was sambo, which is Russia’s version of wrestling with some effective leg locks and submissions. Luster was introduced as a seventh degree black belt in kung fu san soo, which he calmly explained on the telecast was the most potent fighting system on the planet.

  As soon as this match hit the ground, the ponytailed Hamaker moved on top of Luster to half guard. Luster soon figured out that Hamaker’s ponytail made a nice handle for keeping his opponent at an arm’s distance. Hair pulling wasn’t illegal, so I simply paced, waiting like the rest of the audience.

  Hamaker kept trying to line up
a shoulder lock called the keylock or Americana. I was a Brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt under Rorion at this point, so I could follow his technique. I was tempted to tell him he was doing it wrong.

  Hamaker finally freed his now unruly hair and managed to create enough distance for a few punches. Then he mounted Luster.

  Smothered underneath the Dutchman, Luster called out a muffled surrender. He’d had enough, and I stepped in fast.

  It was the second verbal submission of the night, which reminded me that I had to listen just as much as I had to watch.

  I was still thinking I was doing all right. I hadn’t prematurely stopped a fight and was doing what Rorion wanted, and that’s what I thought I’d been hired to do. The next fight would make me reevaluate my thinking.

  Kickboxer Robert Lucarelli bobbed into the arena. At 245 pounds, he was bigger than opponent Orlando Weit, a slighter but well-conditioned muay Thai fighter, who bowed to each corner of the cage in the tradition of his art.

  Lucarelli was soft and out of shape, so I was thinking he should go after Weit as fast as he could before he tired out. As if he were reading my thoughts, Lucarelli muscled Weit down and grabbed his neck in a basic bulldog choke within the first few seconds.

  Weit was the better athlete, though. His instincts, agility, and a lot of hair pulling got him out of the hold and back on his feet in no time. When Lucarelli went to rise, Weit grabbed his head and launched a knee into his face. Lucarelli folded to the mat again, and Weit kicked his head like a soccer ball, then began to walk away.

  I still couldn’t do anything because Lucarelli wasn’t tapping out, so Weit came back to finish the job. Honestly, I think Lucarelli was too dazed to signal that he was done, which left the only other option: his corner throwing in the towel.

  Remember: I’d told the corners beforehand that if I pointed to them, I was signaling for them to think about throwing in the towel.