Is This Legal

by Art Davie

  At this point, their original contract offer of four pages from June 3 had ballooned to 26 pages. I still felt that Moss was wearing gloves in his negotiations with Meyrowitz’s brother, David, who seemed to be contesting with bare knuckles. But Moss had gotten concessions on a number of points, some big, but most small. SEG was paying for the fighting area, and the guarantees of $17,000 to Jimmerson and $6,000 to Tuli. They had taken on the design and costs of the fight poster and logo, and had allowed W.O.W. to create our own merchandise and souvenir event program to be sold on fight night at McNichols Arena, for which we could keep the potential profits.

  And SEG had upped their guarantee for future events, and lowered the period of exclusivity should we part ways. What they wouldn’t budge on though was Section 6, Clause C from their original contract offer: “50 percent of all revenues after SEG fully recoups all costs associated with the video production... and receives a 12-percent return on investment.”

  This was where I knew that we could, and most likely would, get fucked by the internal SEG accounting, which would determine the 12 percent, and thus our 50 percent. But Meyrowitz and David just wouldn’t give an inch. I figured that they had to pay BMG for their use of advanced funds, and that plus a profit for SEG constituted the 12 percent. No matter what we proposed, their side rejected. This was a template they had long been using with their shows and events, and they were loath to abandon it.

  With Moss and I finally coming to the realization that this was a dead-end street, I decided on a different approach. My new proposal was that after the first Ultimate Fighting Championship, SEG would pay the entire fight purse for every event moving forward. Not just the guarantees, but the tournament prize money as well. With a field of eight tournament fighters, and two alternates, I had structured the payouts so that the winner would receive $50,000 (as I had always envisioned), the runner-up would get $15,000, the two losing semifinalists would earn $4,000 a piece, and the four opening-round fight losers would each take home $1,000. That totaled $77,000, which I knew all too well was a crushing expense for us. And while I hadn’t guaranteed DeLucia and Jenkins anything to be on stand-by, I figured that if they were called upon, I’d have to pay at least a $1,000 to one or both of them.

  I knew that both the prize money and the guarantees would need to keep rising, event after event, if we were going to keep attracting quality fighters. Whoever won on November 12 would probably want more money, or at least the potential to win more money, upon their return. And the opportunity for more cash just might mean we could get someone like Bart Vale, Peter Aerts or Herb Perez to consider our offer.

  The response from SEG was, “No fucking way.” The fight purse was our expense, and we were to be thankful that they’d forked over the appearance money for Jimmerson and Tuli.

  On the first day of November, I met with Kathy to double check that we had everything in place. My event coordinator turned unofficial W.O.W. Promotions chief operations officer and her team had done a masterful job of locking down all the facets of travel and logistics. The dozens of flights were booked, as were the three shuttle vans, and the scores of rooms at the Executive Tower Inn and Suites, which was just two miles from McNichols Arena. We needed a hotel for the week of the event which was centrally located in Denver, and the right price. But most important, the hotel had to be cool with the fact that we were bringing fighters to town who were not particularly house broken.

  On Sunday, November 7, Rorion and I boarded a plane at LAX to fly to Denver, despite the ambiguity of the contract situation. My partner didn’t seem concerned at all. He had unwavering faith (or perhaps he was just disconnected) that Moss and I would get everything worked out. Rorion’s sole concern was making sure that his kid brother would be properly prepared physically and mentally to win the tournament and showcase the indomitability of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu to the world.

  When Rorion and I arrived at the Executive Tower Inn for check-in, I was struck by how small the hotel lobby was. This made me worry that a log jam of tense fighters and their respective camps would pile up there. We didn’t have the budget for a five-star hotel, and even if we did, I didn’t think that a high-dollar place would want to play host to our motley crew. So this would have to do.

  I’d already let Kathy know that she was to schedule twice daily meetings, 7:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m., which would begin the next day. After seeing the tiny lobby, I knew that I had to tell her to stay vigilant, and be ready to diffuse volatile situations at all times. I was given the master suite with an attached conference room, which I planned on making our base of operations for the week.

  Now that I was in Denver, I called my T-shirt guy. He was still working on printing our shirts and the sweats. I pleaded, “Please don’t hang me out to dry on this.” He kept reassuring me that while he was a “little behind” he would deliver. I got off the call muttering to myself that he wasn’t a “little behind,” he was a “little asshole.”

  On Monday, the fighters began arriving in Denver from all corners of the map. Elaine McCarthy was in charge of the travel arrangements, and had been told by Kathy to book the fighers on alternating floors, to avoid potential confrontations.

  Early in the day I was notified by hotel security that there was a near scuffle in the lobby, but they didn’t know the names of the participants. They just knew that it was “those fight people.”

  Among our W.O.W. Promotions event staff in Denver were two guys who I had hired specifically for the week, both of whom I knew from the Academy: Milius’ son Ethan and Clay McBride.

  Rorion and I had offered Milius $10,000 as a thank you for his inspirational work as our creative director. It was actually a thank you for letting us use his name, which had helped open a lot of doors, none bigger than SEG’s. But just like he had told us back in December when he signed on, Milius would not accept any money from us. We also offered to pay all of his expenses to join us in Denver for fight week, but he politely declined, saying he was too busy. So I arranged to have a gift-wrapped box of Montecristo #2 Cuban cigars sent to his office.

  Hiring his son, Ethan, as my assistant in Denver for the week was not a thank you to Milius, but rather a reflection of how much I thought of the kid. He was a dedicated student at the Gracie Academy, and had also started working there in an entry-level capacity. I knew that Ethan was someone who I could trust to get things done for me, even menial things, and with a smile on his face.

  Clay McBride had been lobbying me for quite some time about having a role at the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He was a bright guy, a martial arts encyclopedia, and a good writer. I was continually impressed that despite having polio as a child, Clay never had a woe-is-me attitude. What cinched it for Clay was when he gave Rorion and me a two-page summary he had written as to why we should give the tournament winner a medal rather than a crown.

  “Crowns are for beauty pageants,” Clay had stated, and I knew immediately that he was right.

  I loved the Olympic imagery of awarding a medal. It was unique and at the same time familiar.

  Rorion had a student who worked as a jeweler, and we hired him for the job. I poured over books at the Torrance Public Library on military medals, looking at the British Victoria Cross, the United States Navy Cross and the German Cross—all of which were based on the cross pattée, which has arms narrow at the center and broader at the perimeter. The form appears very early in medieval art. Using this as the basis, I sketched out a rough design, adding the inscription, “Per Aspera Ad Astra” (Through Adversity to the Stars).

  Our jeweler did an outstanding job, making it from pure 24-carat gold, with the care of a highly skilled craftsman. He only charged us for the raw materials.

  Without a real role for Clay, but incredibly impressed with his medal idea, I offered him the chance to be our in-house photographer and writer for the event. I told Clay that he would be tasked with helping Pillot and the commentators with their research and background notes on the fighters. He’d also serve as o
ur archivist, who would document everything along the way through his photos and words.

  Clay immediately accepted, but then told me that he had to get something off of his chest.

  “Well, Art. Now don’t take this as criticism, but I don’t see any stars from the real martial arts in this tournament. There’s nobody from Asia. No kung fu expert from China or a judo champion from Japan. That sort of thing.”

  I took a deep breath and explained to Clay how far and wide I had searched to find the right balance of fighters, emphasizing the numerous difficulties and rejections that I’d faced along the way.

  Clay listened patiently, and then said, “It’s just that, well, it seems you have a fixation on big guys.”

  “Come again?”

  “Could it be that since you’re a smaller guy that you’re subconsciously selecting guys like your kickboxer Rosier, and that sumo wrestler? Maybe this a Napoleonic Complex type of thing with you.”

  I smiled at this point, as I had no intention of playing Freudian games with Clay. I respected him in a lot of ways, but I could see from this conversation that above all else, he was always going to be a martial arts “purist.” Part of why I liked Clay so much was he always held to his ideals, and he wasn’t afraid to let his strong opinions be heard, even when they were far from tactful.

  The UFC medal awarded to the first Ultimate Fighter. I created the design and wrote the inscription. A talented jeweler, a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu student, crafted the medal in 24-carat gold. The idea for a medal, rather than a crown, was Clay McBride’s.

  Trying to surround myself with as many allies as possible, I also flew in my kid brother Matthew, as well as my close friends Jon and Adrianne Pannell, and Les and Prentice Smith. Prentice of course was the one who had given me the War of the Worlds idea the year before, which now seemed like a very, very long time ago. And Jon and Adrianne were investors in W.O.W. It seemed only right that they were all there with me in Denver.

  Rorion and I saw Elaine McCarthy’s husband John in the hotel lobby on Monday, and Rorion offered him a job. I’d never really gotten to know McCarthy all that well at the academy, but he had always struck me as a quality guy.

  “Would you mind guarding the championship medal for the week?” Rorion asked.

  McCarthy accepted, and since he was a highly respected LAPD officer, I had no doubt that our medal would be safe.

  When I told Kathy about this later that day, she laughed, and said that McCarthy was going to have his hands full. I asked why, and Kathy told me that in addition to McCarthy serving as a training partner for Royce in Denver, she’d heard rumors that Rorion had enlisted McCarthy as his private security guard. Apparently, Rorion’s cousin Reylson Gracie (the son of Carlos) had been making some threats. And from the gossip that Kathy had heard from her staff, Rorion was concerned that Reylson was going to show up in Denver looking for the type of fight that didn’t involve jiu-jitsu, but perhaps bullets. I stopped Kathy, and said to her that I didn’t even want to know if any of this was true. There was already far too much for me to worry about, without getting involved with yet another Gracie Family melodrama.

  Just prior to arriving in Denver, I secured two gyms for our fighters to use for fight week: Jones’ Tai-Kung Fu-Karate on Sheridan Boulevard, and Tiger Kim’s gym on Steele Street (the place where I’d first watched Pat Smith train six months earlier). Both gyms had boxing rings, heavy bags, speed bags and mats. My cousin, Nancy and her husband Sean Mahany, who were both bodybuilders, owned and operated the Powerhouse Gym on East Alameda. They graciously agreed to give our fighters and their camps access to the barbells, dumbbells and Nautilus equipment, all free of charge. Between these three facilities, I felt confident that we had everyone’s training needs covered.

  Pat Smith and Trent Jenkins, of course, lived in Denver, which in theory meant that I didn’t have to worry about them as much as the eight fighters flying into the city. I took Karyn at her word on Jenkins, and never gave the guy a second thought. Smith, though, was a different story. I’d tried to stay in regular contract with him since he signed his contract back in May, but he was a hard man to keep tabs on.

  Every time I called, his number had changed or was disconnected, or I was told by a female voice that he’d moved. And when we would finally speak, he always seemed paranoid and prone to misunderstandings. It became clear that Smith didn’t completely trust me, which made me lose some trust in him. I made sure he was given a room at the Executive Tower Inn, and I told Kathy and her crew to keep close tabs on his whereabouts. I felt that if anyone was going to flake out, and not show up on Friday night, it was going to be Smith.

  “Why do I gotta be at the hotel?” he whined to me.

  “Because I’ve got confidence you’re going to rock the house Friday night and I want you close by,” I lied to him.

  Royce, by contrast, was someone who I didn’t have to worry about at all. He had Rorion for that, as well as four of his other brothers with him in Denver. Rickson was there as Royce’s main trainer and chief second, despite all of the past issues with Rorion. I found it so odd that it could have been or perhaps should have been Rickson representing Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Yet, because of the family tensions, he was bypassed by Rorion for Royce. And yet Rickson was there as Royce’s mentor, and acting as though he and Rorion were completely cool with each other. I decided then and there that I would never be able to figure out the family dynamics of the Gracies from top to bottom.

  Joining the family reunion in Denver were Royler and Relson who had flown in from Hawaii, and Rolker who had arrived from Brazil. And of course Hélio was there, hovering over his sons like Zeus on Mt. Olympus.

  I had no doubt that Hélio was going to be in Denver to see Royce attempt to defend the Gracie Family honor, but now he also had an official role. Back in August, I told Rorion that we’d need to fill time between the semi-finals and the tournament final. The fighters were no doubt going to require at least a few minutes to rest and recover, and we had to show something to both the in-house crowd and the PPV audience. My idea was to honor Bruce Lee as a pioneering martial artist, and invite his widow, Linda, to accept an award or plaque on his behalf, and perhaps say a few words.

  Rorion, though, suggested that we do this for his father. I thought about it, and decided that this had both pluses and minuses. Hélio was, like Bruce Lee, a pioneering martial artist. But unlike Lee, he didn’t have much name recognition to the general American public, or even to the martial arts community. There was no doubt in my mind that Hélio was a legend deserving of the honor, it’s just that he was a virtually unknown legend outside of the tiny world of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. I also thought that giving him an award would create the impression that the Ultimate Fighting Championship was nothing more than a Gracie event bought and paid for.

  But this was extremely important to Rorion, and I felt I understood why.

  Months earlier I had actually met Reylson Gracie, son of Carlos, nephew of Hélio, maker of alleged threats to Rorion. We hooked up in LA, started talking, hit it off, and then decided to continue our conversation over coffee. Reylson said that he wanted me to better understand my business partner and friend. “I will tell you Arturo what you don’t know about Rorion,” he announced with a conspiratorial wink.

  “One day, Rorion went to his father and asked him, ‘Why am I dark and you and my mother are so white?’ Well, the truth was that Margarida, Hélio’s first wife was not Rorion’s birth mother. Nor Relson or Rickson’s. His real mother, the one whose egg was fertilized by Hélio and who carried him in her womb, was Isabel Soares, who was also called Belinha. She was the maid and she was dark.”

  “Holy shit. Really? Is this true? What happened then?” I asked.

  “Rorion went ballistic. He was furious at his father. Pissed that this had been kept from him all those years. This is why he came to America. He was fleeing. He was angry with his father.”

  I was never able to verify Reylson’s
story, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask Rorion about it. Rarely had Rorion spoken to me about his personal life, although he had told me that when he arrived in the U.S., he possessed nothing but the clothes on his back. After hearing Reylson’s version of events, I thought that maybe Rorion was only able to forgive his father after he had accomplished enough on his own to gain a sense of personal vindication. And then once he forgave Hélio, perhaps Rorion was determined to prove to his father that he was better than the old man’s other six sons—first and foremost Rickson. Who knows? But Reylson’s story at least gave me another perspective in regards to Rorion’s unrelenting drive to please his father.

  So I let my friend and partner have his way with Hélio and the award. Although it would be the father receiving the honor, I knew that this moment was actually going to be a lot more important to the son.

  CHAPTER 10

  THERE ARE NO RULES

  NECESSITY HAS NO LAW.

  — WILLIAM LANGLAND

  AS the fighters began arriving in Denver, I decided it was best that I personally pick up Tuli, his brother and two cousins at the airport. Tuli and I had never met, nor even talked on the phone, as all of my dealings to sign him had been with John Jacques. From what Jacques had told me, this was going to be Tuli’s first trip to the mainland U.S., and he was very distrustful of people he didn’t know.

  As I waited for Tuli and his entourage to arrive, I laughed to myself about what he could have said in anticipation of our meet-up. “I’ll be the 400-lb. Hawaiian guy with three other enormous Hawaiian guys. And what do you look like?”

  I knew he would be impossible to miss, and not long after arriving at the airport, I spotted Tuli with his menacing scowl.

  “Teila, I’m Art Davie,” I said as I extended my right hand. In my left hand was an envelope containing 60 crisp $100 bills. Jacques had told me that Tuli didn’t like checks, so I came prepared.