by Dan Severn
My buddy, Eric, was the person who broke the news to me about Ultimate Fighting. He lived in the Detroit area, and he’d watched the first UFC pay-per-view events. Then he copied them on a VHS tape and stopped by my place to show me the fights.
“You ought to think about doing this,” said Erik, while we were watching.
He’s telling me this as I’m watching the event and seeing people getting kicked in the face. Teeth were literally flying out of their mouths.
“Eric, these aren’t exactly skills that I possess,” I replied.
“You don’t need to hit anybody,” Eric pointed out. “Look at this skinny little guy doing jiu jitsu.” Of course, he was referring to Royce Gracie.
I’d never been exposed to jiu jitsu. I’d been exposed to judo and sambo and things of that nature, and I could plainly see jiu jitsu was another grappling art.
I started thinking about how a guy would obviously have to get within arm’s reach in order to punch me or elbow me, or within leg’s reach in order to kick me or knee me. All I’d have to do is stay out of striking range, and then get inside of their range so they couldn’t get any real velocity on any of their shots.
That little observation really served me well for a twenty-year career in the cagefighting industry.
Most people these days are familiar with the term MMA, which obviously stands for mixed martial arts. A lot of the kids these days aren’t old enough to remember NHB, the no-holds-barred predecessor to modern MMA. Today’s current MMA product has something like forty-one rules with weight classes, rounds, glove requirements, and so on. When I started in the NHB era, there were only two rules we had to abide by: you couldn’t bite your opponent, and you couldn’t stick your fingers in their eye sockets, otherwise known as eye gouging.
Go ahead and let your imagination run wild with the images of everything you could do to another human being in a combat setting without ever resorting to violating those two rules.
Frankly, there are a lot of ways you could take a person’s life without ever violating those two rules.
With that in mind, after Eric showed me this, he explained how the grand prize of the event was awarded $60,000, which is what was being offered up to the winner. For that kind of money, I kept thinking, “Why not give this a try?”.
IN 1994, I was approached by a guy named Glen Bailey to see if I could put together a ground defensive tactics program. Glen told me he was a cop who also worked for a national training company.
At the time, my answer to Glen was, “I don’t know,” because I had no idea what existed in the world of law enforcement self-defense. However, I eventually decided to get involved with the project and did some research.
I took several law enforcement classes back to back to back. I went through what was being taught in controlled force, survival force, CDT, Krav Maga, PPCT, and a host of other curriculums. During these classes, I made notes about what I liked and disliked about each technique, or about the specific ways the instructors were providing the instruction.
During a break period during one of the class sessions, I learned most police officers only have one mandatory day of defensive tactics training every year. In that one day, they go through everything from handcuffing techniques or baton-swinging techniques to pursuit, escorting, spraying, takedowns, foot pursuits, taser usage, and so on.
This gave birth to some questions I would continue to ask over and over again in each of my classes. “How often do you train your techniques?” followed by, “How often do you train, period?” You would be shocked by some of the answers I’ve received.
As I pulled together the best attributes from all of the training methods to create my own program, I recognized that proper self-defense training involves the development of fine motor skills, which can’t be developed in simply one day a year.
Don’t get me wrong; programs based on fine motor skills are great if you’re allowed to train the techniques regularly, but very few police departments maintain a regular training schedule. Most of what officers were being taught to implement from a standing position was fine, but once things went to the ground, they were highly confused.
As a result, I developed a training program based upon gross motor skills program involving large muscle groups, as opposed to a fine motor skills program. I used some of the principles of wrestling and modified them to create a system more conducive to educating police officers in a way that would help them retain information.
Glen Bailey, the guy who approached me to put the self-defense program together, is dead, and I’m glad he’s dead. He committed suicide, by drowning himself in a bathtub. I came to learn the hard way not to trust him or several of the people around him. The world is a better place because he is gone. One of the officers I’d gotten to know called me up to inform me of the news.
“Did you hear that Glen Bailey had died?” the officer asked me through the phone.
“I only wish I had been there to push his head underneath the water and watch the last of his bubbles come out,” I replied.
Glen cost me more than $40,000 during a period in my life when I couldn’t afford to lose that kind of money.
Glen and I took out a loan that both of us signed on in order to get the training program developed, and when the loan was called due, Glen didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. So, the bank decided to come after me, and when they did, Glen went missing in action. He turned out to be a serial liar and an alcoholic. I had to put together a payment plan to pay off the loan, and I never told Terry about any of it.
Glen was acting like he was my friend, and he’s the one who proposed we should develop this program together. He convinced me this would be a shoo-in, because he was so well connected with law enforcement agencies.
I also was never crazy about Glen’s Chicago friends Tony and Donnie at all. They ran the company Glen had proposed we partner with, but they never seemed to be sincere in any way.
Glen sold me a bill of goods.
Tony and Donnie continued to sell their existing program, and I continue to sell and direct my program under the name Danger Zone.
Over the years, plenty of departments have sought me out to instruct them with my Danger Zone self-defense program. Most of the officers who take it say it is the easiest program to remember, and the retention rate is sky high.
However, at the time this happened, it was financially devastating, and it added even more pressure to me to try to earn some money for my family and turn things around.
FOURTEEN
THE FIRST TIME I APPLIED to participate in an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, I was rejected. I’d tried to get into the third UFC tournament, which meant I would have made my UFC debut on September 9th, 1994.
Fortunately, Phyllis was very capable and very tenacious, and she was able to get me booked on a show in La Puente, California, two days after the UFC 3 tournament, against Road Warrior Hawk. This match against Hawk would also serve as my de facto try-out in front of the UFC’s owner, Art Davie, who was in attendance.
Even though I was no huge fan of professional wrestling, I definitely knew who Road Warrior Hawk was. Hawk was one of the most identifiable stars in all of professional wrestling, and the tag team he formed with Animal, which was known as both The Road Warriors and The Legion of Doom, is probably the most famous wrestling tag team of all time. With the face-paint and spiked shoulder pads they wore, they were so over the top. They were like the most badass version of Kiss you could ever imagine.
Having a reputation as a stiff worker in the wrestling ring is something that has always followed me. I regularly apologize for it, but you have to realize I’ve been involved in amateur wrestling in one form or another since 1969, and it isn’t second nature for me to ease up on my opponents.
“Loosen up, brother!” Hawk said to me during the match. “You’re like a pipe wrench!”
Despite my snug working style, the match got over great with the fans, and when I
stepped back behind the curtain, Phyllis was waiting for me with Art Davie standing next to her.
“You do realize what we do is real, don’t you?” Art asked me, extending his arm for a handshake.
“Yes, I do,” I said.
“What’s your professional fight record?” he asked.
“I don’t have one,” I replied.
“What’s your amateur fight record?” he questioned.
“I don’t have one of those, either!” I responded.
“Well, then, what are your credentials?” Art asked, condescendingly.
He gave me the impression that I’d just wasted his time.
“Mr. Davie, I may not have a professional fight record, but I’ve been in amateur matches that are realer than most of the fights you’ve had on your UFC shows,” I challenged.
Then, I proceeded to tell Art a story about an amateur wrestling match I had in Turkey when I was only seventeen-years-old. It involved me having hair pulled out, my opponent biting my forearm until it bled, and then me attempting to break his nose with my forearm.
I don’t think Art was too impressed, but it didn’t matter; I got what I wanted. I would be booked for the UFC 4 tournament in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
By the way, on the UFC contract I signed, there was fine print at the bottom that stated in the event of my accidental death, they would not be responsible. I saved a couple of these contracts in case anyone ever doubted me when I told them this story.
Ultimately, Rorion Gracie handled the booking of participants for the UFC tournament, and I was always suspicious of the way the field of competitors for the tournaments was assembled under his watch.
Because Rorion was able to control which representatives appeared in the early UFC events, along with which fighting styles they brought to the cage with them, he was able to put a cross section of fighters together that would allow Gracie jiu jitsu to emerge as the supreme fighting style, without bringing in anyone who could seriously threaten his brother, Royce.
If a situation like this existed in modern MMA, where an owner of the company determined who the fighters were, and one of the major participants was the owner’s brother, this would definitely be deemed a conflict of interests.
When Rorion agreed to let me enter the UFC 4 tournament, he knew my most recent appearances of any kind had been in UWFi in Japan.
In Rorion’s eyes, UWFi was just as fake as Pancrase, which was true. And, since Royce had beaten the roided-up Pancrase heavyweight Ken Shamrock in only fifty-seven-seconds, Rorion probably assumed that his brother wouldn’t have any trouble with me either.
Helio Gracie was the patriarch and figurehead of the family, but Rorion was the true mastermind.
SOMEHOW, WORD got back to the UWFi that I would be appearing in the UFC 4 tournament, which was bizarre to me since very few people knew I would be entering the tournament. I think Phyllis Lee and Al Snow were the only two that knew.
Anyway, Yoji Anjo called me several times over a twenty-four-hour period and threatened me in a variety of ways. He said they were going to use me even more poorly than they had been, they were going to book me even less frequently, or they were going to quit using me entirely.
Keep in mind, I was only making $1,000 a match for them, and I countered to him that winning the UFC 4 tournament would have paid me the equivalent of sixty UWFi bookings.
“You’re only paying me a thousand dollars to put over bullshit athletes who can’t carry my jockstrap!” I yelled. “What are you really threatening me with?”
When I told Yoji that I could make $60,000 for winning the UFC tournament, he called me back later with an offer to help me train for UFC 4. The only catch was, I would need to come to Japan for the training.
“You were just calling here threatening me, and now you want me to trust you to train me?” I asked, in disbelief. “No fucking way.”
It was only a few months after this conversation that Yoji stormed the California gym of Rickson Gracie, Royce’s brother, and challenged him to a fight. Rickson completely destroyed and embarrassed Yoji in front of the assembled Japanese press, leaving him a bloody mess.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy!
MOST OF the time when people are making comments to me about my professional wrestling career, they call me a sell-out to the MMA world. They say, “You had a great MMA career going for yourself, and then the wrestling promoters approached you and you sold out to do that fake shit!”
Au contraire. It’s just the opposite.
If anyone should truly be pissed, it should be the professional wrestling people for me selling out to the UFC and the cagefighting world.
When I explain my career to people in that fashion, suddenly it’s okay to them that I sold out pro wrestling to enter mixed martial arts, as if it’s okay to sell out the physical performance art for the legitimate sport, but not the other way around.
After decades of competing, the fact that I was a professional wrestler before I was a cagefighter still comes up in interviews, and people are still shocked to hear it.
In order, I was an amateur wrestler, then I was a professional wrestler, and then I was a cagefighter. I say “cagefighting” because I was involved with it before it transitioned to the MMA era.
For my very first attempt at competing in the cagefighting world, I only trained for five days, for an hour and a half a day, down in Lima, Ohio, with Al Snow and a couple of his professional wrestling protégés. All they had to train me with was one pair of old boxing gloves between the three of them.
Al would wear the gloves, and he’d be punching, kicking, and doing whatever wrestling submissions he knew how to do. Then, when he’d get tired (or, in wrestling terms, when he’d get “blown up”), Al would pass the gloves to the next guy, and then that guy would go after me.
I stayed in the ring for the entire session until I needed a drink of water, which was my only break, but the training sessions were only for an hour and a half.
I never trained a single strike, and I never trained a single legitimate submission. I decided to use my amateur wrestling skills to avoid my opponent’s range, close the distance, clinch them, take them down, then slap on a bunch of wrestling moves and turn them illegal.
A lot of people don’t realize amateur wrestling moves all work on the principle of leverage. Leverage equals pain. You’re not going to roll onto your back and let me pin you if all I’m doing is tickling you and saying, “Coochie coochie coo!”.
To get you to move, I’m applying principles of leverage like fulcrums, levers and foot pounds of pressure or torque. They’re going to hit your shoulder joints, your neck and other points on your body, and I’m getting you to move through pain compliance. If I hurt you enough, you’re going to move with me to alleviate the pain, and that results in me putting you on your back and pinning you.
When I brought amateur wrestling into the cage, I went in with the idea in my head that the amateur wrestling moves were good in and of themselves, but now I had the knowledge that I could take an already effective amateur wrestling move and turn it into an illegal amateur wrestling move that would force someone to give up or tap out.
That was my training camp. I made the three guys who helped me train scream and squawk, and it was highly comedic. These guys were not used to having painful holds applied to them for real, so one guy would start screaming and the other guys would laugh at him. Then the guy who had been screaming would say, “You think this is funny? Fuck you! Here are the gloves! You take him!”
But the real comedy was the sheer fact that I knew what I was doing. I understood the principles of leverage, and I was barely putting any kind of pressure on them. I only had three workout partners, and I didn’t want to hurt any of them. If I did, I would be down to two workout partners… or none if the other two refused to practice! So, I played nice and didn’t break my training toys.
I walked into the world of no-holds-barred cagefighting after training for an hour and a half every d
ay for just five days, and I did just fine. Try to find me one of those other guys experienced with cagefighting and get them to walk into my world of amateur wrestling and see if they’d be successful. It would never happen.
FIFTEEN
I NEVER TOLD A SINGLE family member I was entering UFC 4. Because my professional wrestling career was already well underway, it wasn’t strange for me to be leaving town. I just told them I was heading off to wrestle that weekend, which wasn’t that far from the truth.
In terms of lies, it was closer to the little-white-lie end of the spectrum, and maybe tippy toeing into the red range of lying. Based on my skills, wrestling was essentially what I was doing, so I was okay with what I’d told my family.
UFC 4 was a lot of chaos from the standpoint that you were dealing with eight different fighters from different backgrounds, and each fighter brought a very colorful entourage with him.
Most of us were one-dimensional athletes, and I’m throwing myself in the same boat. We had kickboxers, jiu jitsu practitioners, judo players, wrestlers and everything else, and there was no semblance of a uniform. Guys wore trunks, pants, or giis, each from their respective disciplines.
Modern MMA has uniforms along with rules about what you can wear, but the NHB world had no rules whatsoever about attire. In fact, the UFC management asked me to wear an amateur wrestling singlet.
“No way,” I said. “If I wear a singlet, someone is going to use the shoulder strap like a rope and choke me with it.”
“That would never happen,” they insisted.
“You guys aren’t competitors,” I pointed out. “Competitors think that way.”
Seriously, if you give a serious competitive athlete a rule, he’ll either figure out ten ways to break the rule without getting caught, or he’ll at least identify how to tiptoe into the grey area surrounding the rule without technically breaking it.