Let’s Get It On!
Page 19
UFC 13 would turn out to be a landmark event because it produced two future superstars of the sport. One was a young protégé of Abbott, Tito Ortiz, and the other was a four-time Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling alternate named Randy Couture.
Quiet and composed, the thirty-three-year-old Couture entered the heavyweight tournament on two weeks’ notice and won both of his fights that evening to become the heavyweight tournament champion.
It was hard to tell what Couture would be able to do as a fighter from his initial two bouts because although both opponents had been bigger than him, neither had been particularly technical. Couture’s wrestling had allowed him to control and dominate, which I’d expected. But Couture would really come into his own as a fighter in his next appearance.
That night, it was easy to recognize another fighter’s potential. The tournament’s one lightweight alternate, Ortiz, walked through opponent Wes Albritton in thirty-one seconds. The rest of the tournament also played out in Ortiz’s favor.
In the first bracket, Lion’s Den fighter Guy Mezger earned a unanimous decision against Chris Leininger to secure his spot in the final match. In the other preliminary bracket, Enson Inoue submitted Royce Alger with an armbar but took a big hit during the bout. Afterward, Inoue’s eye socket swelled up when he blew his nose; he had a small crack in his orbital bone. Dr. Istrico took one look at Inoue and told him he couldn’t fight the next match.
The bleached-blond Ortiz would be called to the finals, but because he was a wrestler in the NCAA collegiate system at California State University Bakersfield at the time, he wasn’t allowed to accept any money for the bout, including the final prize. Ortiz had agreed to fight for free.
Mezger and Ortiz faced off in the finals, and Ortiz was doing quite well with his wrestling skills. He cradled Mezger on the ground and started kneeing him in the head, which opened large cuts on Mezger’s scalp. One sliced an arterial vein, which was like striking oil: blood just started pulsing out with each heartbeat.
Feeling the heat from politicians who were calling the UFC a “barbaric bloodbath,” Meyrowitz had told me before the show to scrutinize any excessive bleeding and to stop the fight if it got bad. With Mezger spouting blood like a fire hydrant, I paused the match and called in Dr. Istrico. Good old Dr. Istrico wasn’t squeamish in the least. He looked at the laceration and said the fight could continue as long as the cut didn’t get worse.
At the time, I was to always restart any fight standing no matter where it had been stopped. I did, which meant Ortiz lost his position on the ground. It was Mezger’s gain for sure. Ortiz shot in for a takedown, and Mezger locked him in a guillotine choke, then sat back and squeezed, forcing Ortiz to tap out.
I knew after the fight that Ortiz hated me because he thought I’d taken the win away from him by restanding the bout after Dr. Istrico had checked Mezger. I’d thought Dr. Istrico would stop the fight, and I hadn’t really had a choice when he’d said it could continue. For better or worse, and in this case it was definitely the latter, I had to follow the scant rules that were in place.
UFC 13 marked another turning point for the promotion, though this one would prove crippling. Senator John McCain, having been elected chairman of the Committee on Commerce, which regulated the cable industry, made sure UFC 13 was the last event to see the light of day on major cable carriers, including Time Warner, TCI, Request, Cablevision Systems, Viewer’s Choice, and others. Overnight, the UFC’s potential viewing audience dwindled from 30 million homes to about 5 million.
Meyrowitz had never planned for this reality. Without pay-per-view buys to sustain the promotion, he turned to the live gate revenue. But Meyrowitz had never set up the UFC to be a spectator event. He didn’t give a shit about the crowd because he was a TV guy; the telecast was all that had mattered to him.
My family experienced this firsthand when my dad took my son Ron to the first Ultimate Ultimate event in December of 1995, and they sat in the front row. It’s hard enough to see into the elevated cage when the fighters hit the ground, but my dad had to contend with a cameraman’s ass blocking his view the entire time. My dad finally approached the cameraman and yanked him off the cage lip.
With budget costs cut, the live experience had only gotten worse since then.
What kept the UFC’s small, devoted following were the fighters. After watching Royce and Brazilian jiu-jitsu dominate the first few events, fans debated when the reign of wrestlers in the UFC would ever come to an end. No one had come close to beating Mark Coleman, but Maurice Smith, a world champion kickboxer, changed that at UFC 14. Smith eventually wore the weary wrestler’s legs down to unseat him with a unanimous decision nod after twenty-one minutes. It was the beginning of a wave of successful strikers to enter the UFC.
No matter what anyone tells you, the UFC was always a work in progress. There was never a time when it wasn’t evolving, including in its rules. Even from UFC 1 to 2, changes had been made. Situations would arise in the cage that would make us realize certain rules had to be implemented to preserve an even playing field. Some rules we saw right away. Others took more reflection.
At Ultimate Ultimate in 1995, I’d watched Oleg Taktarov grab the fence with one hand to pull himself up and away from Marco Ruas, who was trying to take him down. He’d used the fence to change the context of the fight and ended up winning the bout. The cage was there to keep the fighters from falling out, not to aid in leverage. I went to Meyrowitz and the rest of SEG and told them grabbing the fence shouldn’t be allowed, but they didn’t agree with me at first. They loved what Taktarov had done and thought it was a great strategic move.
It didn’t take long for certain scenarios to repeat themselves, especially if they were effective. At UFC 11, Jerry Bohlander bent the fence in his bare hands as he held on to avoid being swept by Fabio Gurgel. Then at UFC 13, Wallid Ismail took Kazuo Takahashi airborne, and Takahashi grabbed the fence the entire time so he wouldn’t get dumped on the mat.
UFC 14
“Showdown”
July 27, 1997
Boutwell Auditorium
Birmingham, Alabama
Bouts I Reffed:
Joe Moreira vs. Yuri Vaulin
Kevin Jackson vs. Todd Butler
Mark Kerr vs. Moti Horenstein
Dan Bobish vs. Brian Johnston
Kevin Jackson vs. Tony Fryklund
Mark Kerr vs. Dan Bobish
Maurice Smith vs. Mark Coleman
I jumped into the cage during an alternate match between Tony Fryklund and Donnie Chappell that I hadn’t been reffing when Fryklund stepped on Chappell after he’d tapped out. I told Fryklund, “If you want to be a champion, you need to start acting like one.”
Later, Jackson submitted Fryklund in forty-four seconds, and Fryklund pushed me away in frustration when I was helping him to his feet. In anger, I grabbed Fryklund under his arms and picked him up. I didn’t think anyone had noticed until Joel Gold, the owner of the publication Full Contact Fighter, published a picture of Fryklund in my arms with his feet about a foot off the ground. It was not a proud moment for me. I’d lost my cool.
Once Meyrowitz saw this, he finally agreed to add the rule.
At Ultimate Ultimate 96, Tank Abbott scooped up Cal Worsham and tried to throw him over the top lip of the cage. That was cause for an obvious rule addition.
Some changes were much subtler. I was in the cage with the fighters up close and personal, so I was seeing details others didn’t have a vantage point to notice. Once I’d get a new regulation approved by Meyrowitz, I’d pass it on to the fighters at the rule meetings, but I’d never been asked to write them all down.
Losing its pay-per-view platform had been a slow process for the UFC. Since around UFC 10, Meyrowitz had told me there was a chance of it happening and I’d wondered if that was the beginning of the end.
Just before UFC 14, Meyrowitz called. “We’ve got to come up with rules, John. We have to have rules. It’s the only way they’re going to put us bac
k on cable. Come up with rules that look like something on paper but don’t change the sport in your mind that much.”
With the rules we’d already instituted, I rounded out a list of seventeen dos and don’ts for the UFC.
I didn’t mind adding “no groin attacks,” a tactic that didn’t look good for the sport anyway. I didn’t mind “no hair pulling,” either, because the practice didn’t derive from any legitimate combat sport.
I thought about headbutts and knew getting rid of them would be a game changer for a few of the fighters, like Mark Coleman, who dominated his fights due in no small part to his headbutts. Nixing headbutts was going to change the sport a little, but how in the world could we get away with saying they were legal when boxing had already established them as a major foul?
I added “no small joint manipulations” to the list. It wasn’t a highly practiced technique, but it became a rule nonetheless.
I also added “no pressure point attacks.” To me, that was a bullshit fluff rule, but it made it sound like the UFC was contemplating even the most intricate of techniques.
With the completed list, I flew with Meyrowitz to Denver to meet with Leo Hindery, the president of Time Warner Cable.
Hindery, who’d probably never seen an MMA fight in his life, was a tough customer from the start. “There’s no sport you can show me where you can hit somebody in the balls,” he said.
Meyrowitz and I nodded and pointed to where we’d banned groin strikes.
We could counter all of Hindery’s objections but one. Hindery’s real problem was one man punching another man on the ground. In boxing, you’d never hit a man while he was down. There would always be a ten count and a referee would step in, and the fallen fighter would be given time to recover. Even in the movies, a man would punch another man and pick him up before he took another swing.
Taking a fight to the ground was a big component of MMA, and sitting there I realized society was not conditioned to accept that. I couldn’t draw from a single existing sport where a competitor could do it.
THE ORIGINAL 17
No Biting
No Eye Gouging
No Headbutting
No Hair Pulling
No Groin Attacks
No Throat Strikes
No Kicking a Downed Fighter
No Stomping a Downed Fighter
No Fish-Hooking
No Placing of the Fingers in a Cut
No Small Joint Manipulation
No Pressure Point Attacks
No Holding On to the Cage
No Throwing of an Opponent out of the Cage
No C-Clamping the Throat or Trachea
No Unsportsmanlike Conduct
Gloves Must Be Worn
We were wasting our breath with Hindery, which meant we were officially off the air.
Posing in a catalog for Body Alive, a fitness clothing company owned by my friend Bob Donnelly
THE THIRD MRN
When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.
—Jacques Cousteau
I have never considered myself a celebrity, and I don’t think I ever will. I didn’t become a referee to get famous. I did it because I loved the sport I saw emerging out of those early shows and wanted to be a part of it. I never imagined it would take me on the wonderful adventure it has, and I know how lucky I was to be in the right place at the right time. Still, the added attention has been something I’ve struggled with from day one.
The first time I was asked for an autograph was at UFC 2. I thought the fan was stupid for asking for it, and I felt stupid giving it to him. I was the referee, not a fighter. I wasn’t a big deal. The fighters who got in the cage were the ones who deserved all the attention. I was just the third man, the third wheel. I thought a good referee did his job without bringing attention to himself. Period.
But at each show, fans would continue to hand me their event programs to sign or ask me to pose for photographs. After a couple shows, it dawned on me that the people coming to see the UFCs were spending their hard-earned money not just to watch some good fights but to take in the whole experience. If they approached me and wanted to take a picture or get an autograph, it was little skin off my ass. I owed it to them and the sport. If it made them feel good, who was I to deny them?
The one request I don’t usually fulfill is saying, “Let’s get it on,” outside the cage. I’ve said it at the end of radio spots or for video games and for other marketing purposes I feel help propel the sport forward. I even said it when Zuffa allowed a die-hard couple to get married in the Octagon in Las Vegas the day before UFC 36. But most of the time, I politely decline. I don’t like to throw around the phrase. When I say it, two fighters are about to put their lives in my hands and I’m letting them know I’m on the job, I’m paying attention, and I’ve got their backs.
The first wedding ever held in the Octagon: I told the couple to “Get it on.”
Over the years, being an MMA referee has afforded me some interesting opportunities outside the cage. I’m continually surprised when people notice me at the airport or in the gym or on the street. I’m told I have one of those faces. I can’t explain what it feels like to have people stare at you when you enter a restaurant or the movie theater before they finally ask, “Are you that referee in that fighting thing?” Most of the time, people make me laugh because they are so genuinely enthused.
It’s a pleasure to be able to see fans respond to the sport firsthand. I’m a lucky guy, and I know it. I do get extra attention and always have people to talk to who love MMA as much as I do.
But it goes both ways. I have been bombarded by fans at hotels and casinos during fight weekend and had to leave my family alone so they could walk around freely without me. Nowadays, I don’t leave my hotel room until it’s time for the show.
I’ve never felt that being recognizable made me better than anyone else. I learned early on that celebrities aren’t necessarily better people than the average person. Usually, they’re worse off because they have the means to get away with more. When I first became a police officer in 1988, I met one of my childhood heroes. I was called to Melrose Avenue to assist another officer already on the scene. When I arrived, I saw none other than O. J. Simpson and an attractive blonde lady standing there. They’d been arguing, and she said he’d hit her, though I couldn’t see any visible marks.
I stood there talking to Simpson, who had the same calm, personable voice you’d hear each week on ABC’s Monday Night Football. He didn’t hide the fact that they’d had a disagreement but said his wife had been hitting him and he’d put his hands up to defend himself.
Gene, the first officer, wanted to take Simpson to jail, but I couldn’t stand by and watch this three-time American Football Conference MVP and pro football Hall of Famer get dragged away. I was twenty-four years old and impressionable. “Gene, this is O. J. Simpson. You can’t take him to jail for this. Let me talk to her.”
We told the Simpsons they could each go to jail for accusing the other of domestic abuse. Neither of them wanted that, so we talked it out and Gene and I eventually left. As we drove away, I felt good for saving Simpson from certain public embarrassment.
Six years later, Simpson was charged with killing his wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman on the steps of her condo. I know it wouldn’t have made a difference if we’d arrested him that day, but I never forgot how I’d been swayed into thinking Simpson was somehow better than the rest of us.
I crossed paths with more celebrities as the UFC’s popularity grew. In early 1997, I got an interesting call from Bob Meyrowitz that demonstrated how much the UFC had penetrated mainstream culture. “How would you like to be on Friends?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you know what Friends is?” Bob asked.
Of course I knew what Friends was. In its third season on NBC, it was one of the most watched shows on tel
evision. It was also one of Elaine’s favorites.
Meyrowitz explained that the show’s staff had written a premise around the UFC, in which Monica’s Internet millionaire boyfriend enters the Octagon to test himself. When he mentions “the ring” to her, she mistakes it for a pending marriage proposal. I was a little surprised, given the UFC’s current problems with its public perception, that a hit NBC show would want it on, but of course I said yes.
Announcer Bruce Buffer, Tank Abbott, and I were hired for the episode. We were brought onto the NBC lot to rehearse and then shoot.
Some of the actors knew about the UFC and the sport and were very welcoming. Jon Favreau, who played Monica’s boyfriend and would go on to direct the blockbuster Iron Man films, talked about watching UFCs and liking them. Most of the other cast members were very cordial as well.
I was told that the biggest fan on the set was Matt LeBlanc but that he hadn’t been available to shoot on these two days and would kick himself for missing them.
Wow, Joey Tribbiani wants to meet me, I thought. That’s pretty cool.