Let’s Get It On!
Page 33
I had already moved in to stop the fight when I saw Liddell go out.
It was the first time Liddell had been whipped in three years, and it snapped the cool California fighter’s seven-fight win streak. Not coincidentally, the last fighter Liddell had lost to had been Jackson himself, who’d brutally taken the UFC fighter out in a 2004 Pride grand prix tournament in Japan.
The day after UFC 71, I received a call from John Hackleman, Liddell’s coach since before his start in MMA, who thanked me for protecting Liddell. He said he’d been climbing up on the apron to stop the fight when I’d done it. That was a phone call I very much appreciated.
For UFC 72 “Victory,” we traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the first time. Elaine came with me, as always, but this time there was no question about my plane ticket. I did what Dana had suggested and upgraded myself to business class for the trip. It hurt paying $1,000 for the upgrade, but in the air it was worth every penny.
My hectic schedule continued till something had to give. I’d given up coaching the local high school football team to referee more shows and open the gym. But each time I would add something to my life, something would have to fall to the wayside.
Elaine had wanted me to quit the police department for quite a while. I’d turned down a lot of opportunities in MMA already because I didn’t have the time. More opportunities for TV and movie appearances cropped up, and though I didn’t seek them out, I certainly didn’t mind the extra money to support my family.
The UFC had about thirty events a year now, and I’d eaten up all my personal and vacation time. Elaine reasoned that the sport had grown immensely in the last couple years, and between the gym, appearances, and requests from commissions for me to teach their officials, I could now make a living off of MMA. I know Elaine was also worried about the pace I was keeping; no one could keep it up forever.
My tolerance for some aspects of the LAPD and its politics had long been gone, but I’d always looked at the job as our safety net. If everything else went to hell, I’d still have a steady paycheck and medical insurance from the department. I also loved teaching new recruits, but the job was taking up about 70 percent of my life.
I wrestled with this decision for a while and eventually came to the decision that it was time to take another step in my life. Now, after twenty-two years of service, I’d say good-bye to the LAPD.
UFC 73
“Stacked”
July 7, 2007
Arco Arena
Sacramento, California
Bouts I Reffed:
Sean Sherk vs. Hermes Franca
Rashad Evans vs. Tito Ortiz
Anderson Silva vs. Nate Marquardt
I took a point away from Ortiz in the second round for repeatedly holding the fence to avoid getting taken down by Evans. I had to be careful where to stop the action and waited for Evans to complete a takedown as to not rob him of the advantage he’d earned. It wasn’t your normally accepted fashion for point deductions but the fairest in that situation. By the end, Ortiz was only surviving to finish the fight, which ended in a draw.
At the postfight presser, Evans said to Ortiz, “You broke. You know you broke, and I know you broke.”
I never said anything to anyone, but I’d seen the same thing.
Ortiz fired back with his own gem when asked about the point deduction, an honest and true answer I never forgot: “Look, if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t trying.”
Touché, Tito, touché.
At the same time, I was falling under immense scrutiny in the fight community. I’d been working with athletic commissions since UFC 15, but I’d always felt like I was a part of the UFC and was obligated to them. In the sport’s early years, it hadn’t been a problem because there hadn’t been many promotions outside of the UFC to referee anyway. When Zuffa had taken over, they’d always given me the schedule months ahead so I could juggle my paid time off or vacations days.
When athletic commissions had begun to call to assign me to other promotions outside the UFC, sometimes on short notice, it would often conflict with my LAPD schedule. I couldn’t accept all of the assignments. Eventually, word got back to me that some commissions thought I was a prima donna who thought I was too good to work any show besides the UFC. Honestly, I would have loved to do the other events, but some of those other promotions had caused problems with the UFC and had basically become their enemy, and I didn’t want to do anything that caused a problem. Whatever I did, I was going to piss off either the UFC or the commissions. It was really a no-win situation.
If circumstances could have stayed the same, it would have been fine, but some commissions said if I didn’t work the other shows they asked me to, I wouldn’t be working the UFC when it came to their state. After hearing that, I felt it wouldn’t be long before the UFC told me they couldn’t bring me along at all.
I understood the commissions’ stance, and I didn’t blame the UFC either. Zuffa had been generous in coming up with a solution to keep me on when it had swooped in and purchased the UFC. It wasn’t anybody’s fault that the sport had evolved, changing my role, over the years.
As I did when faced with many of life’s big decisions, I went to my dad for advice.
“You’ve been loyal to them, and the UFC’s been loyal to you,” he said. “They don’t owe you anything, and you don’t owe them anything.”
Of all my reasons, politics was the biggest one that led me to retire from refereeing. I wasn’t leaving because I didn’t enjoy refereeing. I still loved it, but I was stuck. I was in a no-win situation and felt I couldn’t make everyone happy.
My dad gave me one last bit of advice. “Walk away from it but only if it’s what you want to do.”
I knew this wasn’t what I really wanted, but I felt I had no choice. Elaine quietly started to put out feelers to some media outlets to see if someone might want to use me as a commentator or an analyst. I never wanted to be a commentator; it was merely something I could do to stay involved with the sport I loved.
UFC 74
“Respect”
August 25, 2007
Mandalay Bay Events Center
Las Vegas, Nevada
Bouts I Reffed:
Frank Mir vs. Antoni Hardonk
Joe Stevenson vs. Kurt Pellegrino
Georges St. Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck
In the second round, St. Pierre caught Koscheck in a topside Kimura that Koscheck defended by grabbing ahold of his own shorts. “He is holding onto his shorts,” said St. Pierre, which I advised him was legal. You cannot grab your opponent’s shorts, but you are allowed to grab your own.
St. Pierre didn’t know how to successfully break the grip, but his trainer Greg Jackson gave him the proper instruction between rounds on pushing the hand down first before trying to pull up. It was a beautiful moment to me. I was watching one of the top fighters in the world learning his craft.
With a minute left and with St. Pierre on top of Koscheck, the bottom fighter started congratulating him on his win. St. Pierre stopped and gave Koscheck a curious look and then a huge elbow to the face.
Meanwhile, the UFC, with no knowledge of my own inner struggle, continued to pump out shows to a widening audience. At UFC 75 “Champion vs. Champion” on September 8, 2007, at O2 Arena in London, England, I was reminded how human fighters really are, ironically by one of the most feared athletes in the sport.
Croatian striker Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic’s streak of brutal stoppages in Japan had conjured up words like “invincible” and “unbeatable.” That is, until Fedor Emelianenko exploited a chink in Filipovic’s armor when they met in Pride Fighting Championships in August of 2005. While everyone else did all they could to stay away from Filipovic’s now legendary left high kick, the sambo expert Emelianenko decided to not only stand with the former K-1 fighter but go after him and make him back up. This strategy gave Cro Cop fits, as he was never able to set his feet to kick and couldn’t gain a comfort zone moving backward.
Once a fighter uncovers a flaw or a weakness in another, other fighters are like swarming sharks quick to exploit the same.
By UFC 75 in 2007, Filipovic was losing his indestructible aura. Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Gabriel Gonzaga had knocked him out months before at UFC 70 by stunning him with his own left high kick.
Filipovic was in desperate need of a win, and the UFC matched him against French kickboxer Cheick Kongo to ensure a stand-up battle from two fighters who likely wouldn’t be looking for the takedown.
Though Kongo is one of the most physically imposing fighters in MMA with a body that could be used as an anatomy chart, he was hesitant to engage at the top of his bout with Filipovic. This is called giving respect to your opponent’s skills, and it had Kongo’s corner screaming at him to not back away. Slowly but surely, though, Kongo began to land powerful body blows that hurt Filipovic.
By the end of the first round, it was clear Kongo now believed what he wasn’t too sure of before the fight started: he belonged in the cage with Filipovic, and he could win. I watched Kongo’s confidence soar as he started to dictate the pace of the second round. Several times during the fight Kongo threw knees that Filipovic reacted to as if he’d been hit in the groin, but I paid close attention to where the shots landed and didn’t stop the action.
In the third round, as Kongo clinched with his opponent, he started throwing knees again, one of which hit Cro Cop low. I called time to allow Filipovic to recover from the low blow. He crouched on the fence.
“It’s not the low blow,” a pained Filipovic answered, looking up at me. “I just can’t do this anymore. John, do you think I am too old for this anymore?”
I covered the microphone on my shirt. This was a vulnerable moment for one of the most feared fighters on the planet, and I’m sure he didn’t realize I was wired for the world to hear him doubting himself.
“You’re not too old. You just need to believe in yourself and go back to what you’re good at. Get yourself right before we restart. Or if you don’t want to restart, I’ll get you out.”
It was nobody’s business what was said between Filipovic and me, but cageside commentator Joe Rogan was sitting close enough to hear some of the conversation and relay what he’d heard. That’s the only reason I would share this now.
Fighters have told me things I’ve never told anyone else. I want fighters to know they can trust me in the cage, and that includes keeping some of our conversations private.
UFC 76
“Knockout”
September 22, 2007
Honda Center
Anaheim, California
Bouts I Reffed:
Jeremy Stephens vs. Diego Saraiva
Lyoto Machida vs. Kazuhiro Nakamura
Keith Jardine vs. Chuck Liddell
When you name your show “Knockout,” you’d better do your best to deliver. Zuffa tried by pairing former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell against fellow striker Keith Jardine. If Liddell was known for his unorthodox counterpunching style, Jardine was—times five. Jardine tore up Liddell’s body with beautiful kicks from a variety of angles and took a decision most never predicted. Neither fighter held anything back, and it was an honor to be in the cage with two athletes willing to lay it on the line for both themselves and the fans.
By October, I was having my own private conversations with The Fight Network, a two-year-old Toronto-based cable channel that broadcasted boxing, MMA, and pro wrestling content twenty-four hours a day across Canada. The channel wasn’t available in the United States yet, but it hoped to bridge that gap shortly. What I liked about The Fight Network was that it covered as many combat sports events as it could from the UFC down to the smaller promotions, so this was a way for me to still be a part of the sport. The Fight Network reminded me of ESPN when it had launched years before, and there was something intriguing about getting in on the ground floor.
On November 6, 2007, I verbally agreed to join the company full-time as an on-air analyst and commentator, signaling the end of my fourteen-year career as a referee.
We kept the news under wraps for weeks. I wanted to tell a few key people in the industry on my own. I still felt a great sense of loyalty to the UFC and wanted to speak to Lorenzo Fertitta alone, if only to thank him for what he’d done for me and MMA over the past six years.
Just before I committed to the The Fight Network, I headed to the U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio, for UFC 77 “Hostile Territory,” to be held on October 20, 2007. While we prepared for the event, Fertitta pulled me aside and asked if I remembered the conversation we’d had six years before at UFC 30 in New Jersey about paying fighters millions of dollars. “I never realized that would be the start of all my troubles,” said Fertitta, who’d been hit with the very public resignation of disgruntled heavyweight champion Randy Couture over a contract dispute the month before. The UFC was getting popular and, in turn, the fighters were expecting a larger share in the profits.
I didn’t share with Fertitta then that this would be my last UFC pay-per-view as a referee. Only a couple friends knew of my plans, and I conducted myself as I would any other given night.
But visible to the astute eye, I took a slight pause before delivering what I thought would be my last “Let’s get it on” to start a UFC pay-per-view. I savored that moment.
After I’d left Dana White’s office a few months earlier, I’d thought about the state of officiating in the sport. Rather than continue to complain to my wife every time I saw an inexperienced referee make a bad call, I decided to do something about it. I pored over fight tapes and prepared a curriculum to begin teaching others how to properly referee mixed martial arts fights. For years, Elaine had received inquiries about a course from all over the world. I thought if anyone was going to teach it, why not me?
On December 1, 2007, I held my first COMMAND (Certification of Officials for Mixed Martial Arts National Development) course in Valencia, California. I’d feared we wouldn’t get a single person to sign up, but the first run had twenty-one attendees, some from as far away as Brazil and Australia. A few of the students had already been refereeing for years in their states; others never had. One guy said he’d sat in the front row of the first Ultimate Ultimate in 1995 in Denver, Colorado. All of them had a passion for MMA, which was obvious from their questions and willingness to be there.
My dad even made it up for the day and watched from the back of the hotel conference room as I went through my PowerPoint presentation. There was so much to get through that we went well past the allotted time, so we ordered pizza for the class and stayed until midnight. Not a single person complained.
The course lasted two days and included hands-on instruction, with my fighters demonstrating techniques in the cage at my gym, and final-day testing. Of that inaugural class of twenty-one participants, only four passed. I didn’t mind the low pass rate at all. I knew it was a difficult test. I’d made it that way to flag any weak areas because I wanted each student to leave as prepared as possible.
The regulations and rules could be learned, but what I really wanted to impart above everything else was that referees should be decisive. “When you make a decision, go with it,” I told them. “Don’t hem and haw before or after the call. It doesn’t mean in the end someone won’t say you’re wrong. If you say it’s right, it’s right at the time. If you waver, you’ll always be in a position to make more mistakes. Trust your instinct.” It was a lesson I’d learned in the cage.
I’d never had the benefit of learning MMA refereeing from anybody. Everything I’d picked up had come from seeing what had worked and what hadn’t over the last fourteen years. But if I’d had someone teach me, this was one of the more crucial lessons I would have wanted.
A week after my first COMMAND course, I refereed my last fight at The Ultimate Fighter 6 finale at the Palms Casino and Resort in Las Vegas. A friend and I had tried to calculate how many fights I’d officiated since 1994. We came up with 535 bouts, give or
take one or two I may have forgotten.
The Fight Network began to publicize my retirement from officiating and my move to full-time analysis and commentary. They’d had a conference call for me earlier that week with the media, and I’d chattered on about this great new opportunity to offer insight into fights for the fans. I’d told everyone how excited I was, but inside I’d been scared and felt like a fool for having a conference call to announce my retirement from refereeing. I’d wanted to just walk away and not make any fuss about the whole situation, but my new employer had wanted to use this opportunity to get publicity for the channel. The whole time, I wondered if leaving was the right decision.
I didn’t want my final night as a referee to change anything for the fighters I was there to protect, and I certainly didn’t want any extra attention. I was completely relieved when Lorenzo, Dana, and the rest of the Zuffa staff approached me backstage between bouts and privately presented me with an Audemars Piguet watch with an Octagon-shaped face. I certainly appreciated the gesture. It was something they definitely didn’t have to do, and it showed just how classy they could be.
I refereed the main event that night, a bout between hungry lightweights Roger Huerta and Clay Guida. As he’d done with almost all of his opponents before him, Guida drilled Huerta into the mat with takedown after takedown and pulled well ahead on the scorecards. But in the third round, Huerta, who’d been tossed around and pretty much abused the entire fight, caught Guida with a knee as he bull-rushed in with his head down. Huerta got the rear-naked choke submission shortly afterward to punctuate a highly emotional and entertaining come-from-behind win.