Let’s Get It On! (2 page)

Reading the book, I was shocked to see the similarities John and I had growing up. We were both kids who got bullied early on in life, were called “four eyes,” had asthma, and because of that were in the water a lot. We both loved sports, watched the same movie that changed our lives, like to push things to the limit, and like to make things perfect. Heck, even our daughters were born on the exact same day and year! When I read about all these similarities, I even began to wonder if I was an omen for John in writing this foreword, or is he the omen for me?

Because we have so much in common, it’s not surprising to me now that we all clicked when I met John and Elaine for the first time at UFC Japan in 1997. We’ve been friends ever since, and I’ve always had and still have, of course, great respect for John. If you need somebody to be there for you, that’s John. I actually asked him one time for advice in the middle of a fight because I got worried about something. Thank God he gave me good advice! (You will read what I mean later.)

I’m not the only one who respects John. I know the fans, promoters, managers, cornermen, cutmen, athletic commissions, and most important,
all of the fighters,
respect him tremendously as well.

Luckily for us fighters, John’s omens directed him to the cage, where he’s kept us safe for nearly twenty years. I know I always felt safe when John was in the cage with me. I think you should have that feeling with every referee.

And when the godfather of mixed martial arts, Helio Gracie, tells you, and I quote, “Everything that I have done with jiu-jitsu, you have done with the sport. You are the best there ever was or ever will be. I am proud of who you are and what you have done,” you know you really are the best at what you do.

Godspeed, John, up to your next omen. “Let’s get it on!”

—Bas Rutten

P.S. I might not have come up with the “four Olympic sports” explanation, but I
did
come up with the word “Livershot.” Party on!

Christmas with my mom and sister: probably the only picture where I can say I look kind of cute

Fishing with my best friend, Chris Lingwall, who caught a cool stingray while I got a lousy crab

Tiger father begets tiger son.

—Chinese proverb

His eyes tell me he’s had enough. Not his midsection, bruised and tenderized by a round of short, sobering body shots and unmerciful knees. Not his legs, discolored and swollen from a steady attack of low kicks from his opponent. Not his broken nose or forehead, sliced open and dripping red from a perfectly placed elbow shot.

It’s his eyes. I look into the fighter’s eyes, and they tell me he’s scared. He doesn’t know how to get out of this predicament, but he continues because that’s what a fighter does.

It’s in this moment that I know the fight is over. I know he won’t come back. This is when what I do counts most.

I am a mixed martial arts referee. The first of my kind in the United States, I started with the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1994. Before MMA was even considered a sport, back when it was called No Holds Barred and Ultimate Fighting, I officiated the fights. A one-off pay-per-view spectacle evolved over eighteen years into something followed and cherished by millions of die-hard fans worldwide, and I’m lucky to be able to say I was a part of it.

In its simplest definition, mixed martial arts is the execution of multiple combat sports’ disciplines with the goal of knocking out, submitting, or outscoring an opponent before he does it to you. Fighters jab like boxers, kick like kickboxers, throw knees and elbows like muay Thai stylists, take down opponents like wrestlers, and contort and trap appendages in chokes and holds like jiu-jitsu practitioners. They can perform one or all of these elements in a matter of seconds to win, which makes the sport excitingly unpredictable. A bout can stay on the feet or go to the mat or even dabble in a little of both, wherever the greater athlete or tactician chooses to take it.

There are no guarantees in MMA other than that no two fights ever look the same. An experienced champion can get knocked out by an underdog’s single punch. An overwhelming favorite can make a mistake, and his opponent will capitalize.

For me, MMA is competition. There’s nothing like witnessing two well-trained fighters engaged in battle. There’s an artistry to it. Like a choreographed ballet, when it’s done right, with two well-matched partners, it’s beautiful. It’s poetry in motion, and I can’t take my eyes off it. It’s my sport.

Some people don’t understand MMA. They say it’s dangerous, brutal, and barbaric. They don’t understand the motivation because they personally fear the thought of being in a fight, the rush of adrenaline that will make them shake uncontrollably, the possibility of pain or being dominated with no way to end it.

My job is to stop the competition at just the right moment, in that split second when a fighter becomes overwhelmed and can no longer protect himself. It can happen in the blink of an eye, with one punch, kick, tug, or squeeze. Sometimes I’ve called a fight right on the money. Other times I’ve missed that crucial moment, the one that decides whether a fighter will walk out of the cage on his own accord.

Thankfully, my life prepared me for these moments. I grew up around violence and made not one but two careers out of controlling it.

As a twenty-two-year LAPD veteran, I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun thinking my next move could either save or destroy a life. In situations like these, I’ve learned to think quickly. I push aside the nerves and distractions and just act.

It’s the same in mixed martial arts. Making fast, clean decisions is paramount, and not everyone is cut out for that. It takes a certain temperament, an ability to stay focused in pressure-filled situations.

How did I learn this? I think it has everything to do with Ron McCarthy, my dad, the man who made me who I am. Ever since I can remember, he’s been my idol. Through my young eyes, he was my Incredible Hulk, Bruce Lee, Spider-Man, and “Smokin’” Joe Frazier all rolled into one. He’s the most fearless man I know, and he taught me how to go after life and live on my own terms.

That’s how he did it from the hardest of beginnings. He was born in Oregon in 1937 and raised in Winslow, Arizona. Far from the quaint scene of Americana described in the Eagles song “Take It Easy,” the dust bowl town greets visitors with a big “Welcome to Winslow” sign and then, after what feels like five feet, sends them off with a “Thank You for Visiting.” Apparently those famous lyrics didn’t apply to my dad either. His childhood was far from easy.

His father, my grandfather Joseph McCarthy, had a wife and five kids, whom he gave up to be with the woman who gave birth to his son, my dad. Supposedly she was very beautiful and had a penchant for marrying rich men, which my grandfather, the owner of a small-town car dealership, certainly was not. She soon left my grandfather, who returned to his wife and five kids with his two-year-old in tow.

Be it by accident or suicide, my grandfather killed himself, I’m told, while cleaning a gun that went off and shot him in the stomach.

My grandfather’s wife cared for my dad until his biological mother came back for him when he was two and a half. The McCarthy family tried to stop the separation, and afterward they searched for him for years.

When my dad was four years old, his mother abandoned him in a local orphanage and nuns raised him for the next few years, until his maternal grandmother took him in to her Arizona home. He lived with her until he was eleven, when his grandmother died.

His mother returned to take him to Oregon, where she was getting remarried. Along with a new father, he now also had a new older stepbrother, Jack, who would hold him down and spit in his face or throw darts into his back.

My dad, miserable in his new home, ran away at age thirteen to manage on his own in Arizona, living in a boxcar in a local railroad yard and working at a gas station. He wouldn’t see his mother for the next fifteen years.

To this day, I’ve never met my grandmother. I don’t even know her name and have never asked for it. The last time I heard, she’d been married something like seventeen times. I wouldn’t recognize her if I bumped into her on the street.

On his own, my dad couldn’t work to support himself and go to school at the same time, so he dropped out until he met the Lacey family. When a classmate named Terry Lacey told his dad, Tom, about my dad’s predicament, Tom allowed my dad to live with them on two conditions: my dad had to keep going to school and get good grades, and he had to play sports. The Lacey family’s generosity allowed my dad the opportunity to go back for his junior and senior years.

Though he was wiry, my dad was nimble and could play football positions usually reserved for the bigger guys, including defensive end and noseguard. He’d prove himself on the basketball court as well. In both football and basketball, he earned all-state honors.

While Tom’s son, Terry, was an all-state quarterback and earned a scholarship to Notre Dame, my dad won a scholarship to a local college. I suspect my dad was afraid he wasn’t good enough to go to college, however, because he didn’t follow through with it. After graduation, he moved right out of the Lacey’s house. Maybe his overwhelming sense of independence got the better of him.

Hard as nails and not afraid to prove it, my dad decided to enlist with the Marines. When he arrived at the row of recruiting offices, an officer said, “Could you come back tomorrow to sign the paperwork?”

My dad agreed and, having nowhere else to go, slept on a park bench outside all night.

The next morning, a Navy recruiter greeted him. When he learned what my dad was doing, he said, “The Marines representative isn’t coming in today.”

Eyes bleary and stomach rumbling, my dad signed with the Navy instead. The Marines recruiter walked in shortly after with a stunned look on his face.

The military led my dad to my mom, Charlotte Gold, whom he met while he was stationed in Long Beach, California. Two years later, they married. My sister, Sheri, was born a year and a half after that. On October 12, 1962, I came into the world.

For the first few years of my life, my family settled in Lake-wood, California. My father served in the Navy four years and then worked for the local gas company while he tested for a position with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Not only did he get a spot with the LAPD, but he went on to build one of the most distinguished careers in law enforcement. As he rose to the rank of sergeant II over the next twenty-five years, he earned the Medal of Valor for his actions in the 1974 shoot-out with the Symbionese Liberation Army; originated the modern-day Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Unit; protected dignitaries and Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr.; and oversaw the terrorist-related precautions and response team during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.