Zuffa continued on with UFC 61 “Bitter Rivals,” held July 8, 2006, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. I officiated two fights on the card, including a spirited lightweight contest between Yves Edwards and Joe “Daddy” Stevenson. I’d always thought highly of Edwards and Stevenson, and their bout was competitive. Stevenson took Edwards down and planted him against the cage. Edwards was protecting himself until Stevenson reached back and acted like he was going to set up a leg lock. Edwards responded by sitting up toward Stevenson, who timed a perfect elbow that connected with the side of Edwards’ head. It created a small one-inch laceration but cut a vein that started spraying the mat and the fighters.
Dr. David Watson, one of the best cageside physicians in MMA, wasn’t squeamish about blood; only the cut and its location mattered. He always said he wasn’t worried about a fighter bleeding to death from a cut in the cage, but this fight may have changed his mind. After thirty seconds, the canvas had a bloodstain like a crime scene, but Watson examined Edwards and let the bout continue for another minute until the bell.
As Edwards went back to his corner, Dr. Watson came into the cage to look at him again and then walked to me. “You need to stop the fight.”
I said, “Okay, but why’d you change your mind in one minute?” The fighter’s face was now clean, and the blood was out of his eyes.
“I would guess he’s lost about 400 cc of blood at this point; if he loses 500 cc, I’ll be giving him a transfusion.”
I didn’t doubt Dr. Watson’s wisdom and promptly waived off the fight.
Six weeks later we all returned to the same venue for UFC 62 “Liddell vs. Sobral,” held August 26, 2006. There was some controversy in a lightweight bout I officiated between Hermes Franca and Jamie Varner, when I stopped the fight in the second round to take a point away from Varner for timidity—something I’ve rarely had to do in recent years.
After winning the first and possibly the second round, Varner gassed out fast and was actually running away from Franca in an attempt to steal time and not engage in the fight. After I warned Varner, Franca turned up the heat in the final moments, which prompted Varner to backpedal again. He was tired and spit out his mouthpiece, either in an attempt to kill time on the clock or get a clearer airway. I stopped the fight and took a point away. Franca ended up winning the fight with a guillotine choke, but I was criticized for slowing down the fight for the point deduction. However, if Franca hadn’t caught the last-minute submission, that point would have made the bout a draw—a much fairer outcome in a bout where one fighter was trying to stall to his advantage.
In the main event, Chuck Liddell defended his light heavyweight title against Renato “Babalu” Sobral in a rematch of their UFC 40 bout when Liddell had knocked out Babalu with a beautiful left shin kick to the face. Babalu started the bout calm, but Liddell quickly connected, and that pissed off Babalu. Fighters usually can’t fight mad because they make stupid mistakes and their opponents usually capitalize. Babalu went after Liddell and left an opening for a right uppercut, which sent the Brazilian down. Liddell followed up with more punches, and Babalu was holding onto Liddell, but there was nobody home. I put myself between Liddell and the prone Babalu, but Babalu thought the fight was still going and his training took over. He found a leg and grabbed it; however, the leg belonged to me. Babalu tried to take me down as I kept telling him the fight was over, but his mind was too scrambled to understand what he was doing. I realized if I didn’t do something I’d have a fighter on top of me. I under-hooked his arm, forced him over, then moved to mount where I was finally able to get control of Babalu, who was snorting and gasping for air. Just one more thing to add to the list. Fighter tried to take me down—check.
Teaching my first COMMAND referee course (December 2007)
Coaching my son and the Canyon Cowboys in the Pac Youth Football League
ALL IN THE TIMING
You can fool the whole world down the highway of years, and take pats on the back as you pass. But your final reward will be heartache and tears if you’ve cheated the man in the glass.
—Peter “Dale” Wimbrow Sr.
Heading into 2007, I had no idea I was entering what would be my fourteenth and final year as an MMA referee. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; the sport was evolving, and so were the people within it.
It had been my dream back since my powerlifting days to open my own gym, but I’d gone into police work instead. Back then, I hadn’t thought to open an MMA gym. The sport hadn’t existed in the United States at that point. However, over the years I’d soaked in every detail I could about the combat sports gyms I’d walked into.
I’d been in everything from filthy boxing gyms that smelled like the inside of a never-washed jockstrap to tidier karate dojos filled with kids in their white, pressed gis. Rorion Gracie’s school was the nicest gym I’d ever been to. The mats were kept clean, and it even had a juice bar, but it was limited to Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes.
As I watched mixed martial arts evolve and grow over the years, my dream shifted to opening a facility where a fighter could get all the necessary instruction, equipment, and experience to compete and excel in the sport.
Dana White, who had opened a couple gyms in Boston and Las Vegas prior to getting involved with the UFC, gave me some advice. First, he said I was an idiot for wanting to open a gym because all they did was lose money, but he helped me nonetheless by hooking me up with equipment distributors, like Ringside, who gave me discounts that kept some of my initial costs down. White also gave me a few of the thirty-foot canvases that covered the Octagon floor—bloodstains and all—from some past events.
13 I hung these pieces of MMA history on the gym walls.
I also ran the gym’s name, Big John McCarthy’s Ultimate Training Academy, past Dana to make sure I had his blessing. Elaine and I found a warehouse on an industrial road a few minutes from our house, and we filled it with a cage, a ring, an ample mat area for grappling, and weightlifting and cardio equipment.
People who know me understand that when I do something, I like to do it right. Billionaire Donald Trump says if you’re thinking of something, you might as well think big. So BJMUTA, which Elaine and I opened in Valencia, California, in September of 2006, lived up to its name. At 16,000 square feet, it was three times the size of most MMA gyms. The best part was that it was all mine to run the way I wanted.
The plan was to get the gym on its feet so I could eventually retire from the police department. My time with the LAPD had run its course, and although I hated a lot of politics in the department, I loved a lot of the people who worked there, which made it fun. But I knew once I left the police force, the gym would be a place where I could find my next team.
I also liked the idea of opening my own gym because I’d be able to train anytime. With my police job and my UFC assignments, it was difficult to get to a gym to take a jiu-jitsu class or hit the weights. I was still a brown belt in jiu-jitsu, and every time I watched a fighter line up a crafty submission in the cage, I missed being able to do the same.
In reality, though, I ended up working out less once the gym finally opened. Every time I’d walk in there, somebody, whether an instructor or a student or a friend who’d stopped by to visit, would need to talk to me. Sometimes I was tempted to sneak off to the gym down the street so I’d be left alone during my own workouts.
UFC 65
“Bad Intentions”
November 18, 2006
Arco Arena
Sacramento, California
Bouts I Reffed:
Antoni Hardonk vs. Sherman Pendergarst
Tim Sylvia vs. Jeff Monson
Matt Hughes vs. George St. Pierre
Hughes had been a dominant champion and had already defeated the rising French Canadian star with a first-round armbar at UFC 51 in 2005. This time around St. Pierre’s gaze never left the Illinois wrestler’s eyes. St. Pierre confidently attacked Hughes with a variety of stand-up techniques perfo
rmed to perfection. St. Pierre’s footwork was beautiful, like a master painter throwing colors on a canvas, each new hue making the portrait that much better. St. Pierre clipped Hughes with a flurry, and he went down, but the bell sounded before the younger fighter could finish the job. In the second round, Hughes tried to figure out what to do with his lightning-fast opponent. Then, St. Pierre landed a left high kick that dropped the champion and finished him with ground punches. It was an electrifying performance by St. Pierre.
At the start, owning a gym was a bit of a strain because I was still teaching at the LAPD. In 2000, the training academy had been moved to a nasty patch of Earth located in the hottest part of the San Fernando Valley. It was a lot closer to where we now lived, but I’d still be out my door at 4:30 every morning, teach the cadets, then head to the gym around 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon to stay until it closed that evening. I hired instructors in all the disciplines, from Brazilian jiu-jitsu to boxing, and helped teach a nighttime MMA class where the fighters could put it all together. Afterward, I stayed around mopping the mats and cleaning up for the next day and wouldn’t get home until midnight or later. Then I was up a few hours later to do it all over again. In the beginning, if I wanted to have my own gym, this is what had to be done.
Despite the rigorous schedule, I was delighted to be grappling again. A couple months after the gym’s opening, my Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructors Lou Salseda, Mike Ortiz, Todd White, and Felicia Oh jointly awarded me my black belt.
UFC 66
“Liddell vs. Ortiz”
December 30, 2006
MGM Grand Garden Arena
Las Vegas, Nevada
Bouts I Reffed:
Thiago Alves vs. Tony DeSouza
Keith Jardine vs. Forrest Griffin
Jardine-Griffin was a competitive fight until Jardine landed a clean right hand that knocked Griffin down. When Griffin couldn’t recover, I put an end to it so he wouldn’t get hurt more. Griffin came to his senses and broke down crying on the telecast as the cameras chased him around the cage to get his reaction.
What most people don’t understand is that fighters are just like you and me: they work hard and put everything they have into something, and when they come up short, it can be a serious letdown. Losing a fight could be the difference between being able to pay your bills or not.
In late December, Zuffa promoted the rematch between former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and his rival Chuck Liddell at UFC 66 over the New Year’s weekend in Las Vegas. The show was said to have gotten 1.05 million pay-per-view buys. It was the first time the promotion had broken the 1 million barrier, and the event garnered nearly twice as many purchases as the previous installment had.
Ortiz lasted into the third round with Liddell this time, but the outcome was still in the Iceman’s favor.
At $50 a pop and with Zuffa supposedly receiving half of that amount for each buy, the promotion would have made over $26 million in pay-per-view dollars alone. Not a bad day’s work in anyone’s book.
With profits like that seemingly possible, in 2007 the market began to flood with new promotions, clothing companies, and other MMA-related businesses that sold everything from gear to mats to cages. It seemed everyone with money thought they could get into the business to make a buck or two, and why not? Zuffa made it look much easier than it really was. Some new MMA businesses did find success, while others weren’t as lucky.
A new group called the World Fighting Alliance was one of the first to realize promoting fights isn’t as elementary as putting a big-named card together. After a handful of shows hosted in nearly empty arenas, the UFC swooped in on the promotion in turmoil and bought out a bunch of the WFA’s more attractive fighter contracts.
UFC 67 “All or Nothing,” held on February 3, 2007, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, was a big night for Dana White and the UFC, as it marked the debut of a couple of those key WFA fighter acquisitions. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson had been with Japan’s Pride Fighting Championships before switching over to the WFA. Lyoto Machida was also under a WFA contract and, although he wasn’t as well-known as Jackson, people who knew the sport were banking on the unbeaten Japanese-Brazilian contender as the future of fighting. Both passed their Octagon debuts with flying colors.
The other big name White was waiting to unleash was Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, the Croatian knockout artist who had defected from Pride just as the foreign promotion stumbled in Japan because of a magazine article linking it to the Yakuza mob. Filipovic went for the bigger payday the UFC was now able to offer, and his first opponent would be the lesser skilled brawler Eddie Sanchez.
NSAC Executive Director Keith Kizer told me I’d originally been scheduled to referee this fight but had been removed because of comments I’d made about the match to other NSAC officials on the set of The Ultimate Fighter weeks before. I’d said it wasn’t a matter of who’d win but of which row Cro Cop’s lethal left high kick would launch Sanchez’s head into. It may not have been the right thing to say, but to me there was little doubt that Sanchez was being sent in for nothing more than to fill Cro Cop’s highlight reel.
I don’t blame Kizer for taking me off of the fight. In fact, I thank him for it. I got to referee two more evenly matched bouts, including a rematch between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and kickboxer Marvin Eastman.
In 2000, I’d watched their first fight at a King of the Cage show at the Soboba Casino in Southern California. The fight was a war. Jackson absorbed three hard head kicks from Eastman and kept coming forward. I was amazed by his chin as much as anything. Afterward, I told Jackson, a wrestler with a penchant for stand-up brawls, he had a great future if he kept working hard.
The rematch at UFC 67 was a well-paced affair. Eastman, a Las Vegas prison guard by day, would fight anyone, anywhere, anytime and was stopped only after Jackson nailed him with a knee and follow-up punches. Jackson’s win set him up nicely for a rematch with UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell.
Now that the Las Vegas shows were drawing healthy attendance numbers with some consistency, it was time again to take the show on the road. UFC 68 “The Uprising” on March 3, 2007, was scheduled to coincide with the Arnold Sports Festival weekend at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.
The Arnold Sports Festival is an annual fitness and bodybuilding expo started by Arnold Schwarzenegger that hosts many kinds of competition, from Arnold Classic bodybuilding to table tennis to archery. The festival also attracts over 175,000 sports fans, who can meander through aisles of sports-related product booths and meet their favorite athletes. It was a great opportunity for MMA to get exposure alongside some other popular niche sports.
The Arnolds takes place during the first week of March every year. In 2007 that week, a monster snowstorm was gripping the Midwest, which would make travel to Columbus a challenge for most of us.
The only recurring dream I’ve ever had about the UFC is one in which I’m frantically trying to get to a show and miss it, disappointing the promotion and the people who depend on me to be there. I’ve never been able to let myself be late to an appointment or event because, to me, that would be disrespecting the people I’m working with. I just have to get there, and that’s that. Not being able to is my nightmare, and UFC 68 would be the show where it came to life in excruciating detail.
It started in Las Vegas three nights before UFC 68. I got on a plane with Elaine to Minneapolis and then on to Moline, Iowa. At the time, Elaine had opened her own interior design business and agreed to help manager Monte Cox furnish and decorate his new house in Bettendorf, Iowa. From Moline, we’d fly into Columbus for the show.
The plane was late getting into Minneapolis, and while we were taxiing in, I watched from my window as our next flight, to Moline, departed without us. We spent the night at the airport, and the next morning I was in line to get us on the earliest flight. But the weather seemed to be worsening by the minute, and I was now beginning to worry that I wouldn’t get to
Columbus in time.
Screw Moline, I thought, and screw whatever Elaine was going to do for Monte.
We booked a flight to Columbus, but the snow was falling heavily. The TVs in the airport blared news of the approaching storm.
Finally, we boarded the plane to Columbus only to sit on the tarmac for three and a half hours as workers deiced the plane and the pilots waited for a break in the bad weather. After another hour, the head pilot’s voice came over the intercom and told us the storm was just too strong. Then the pilot pulled the plane back into the terminal.
I wasn’t in a good mood. At the counter, the attendant told me she’d booked a new flight for us, this one from Minneapolis to Chicago, then to Philadelphia, then back to Detroit, and finally to Columbus.
I looked at her as if she were crazy. “How in the hell can you say you’ll fly me to four different cities when you can’t fly me to one right now?”
I asked for our luggage back and told Elaine to go to the rental car agency. While we’d been on the tarmac, she’d already called to rent a vehicle with four-wheel drive and a GPS.
We were talking about 650 miles to Columbus, so there wasn’t a minute to waste. By the time we had the rental keys, our luggage was still on the plane, so we took off without it. Of course, we got a call thirty minutes into the drive. Our luggage was available, so I went back for it. By now, we were in the heart of a blizzard.
Let’s Get It On! Page 31