Let’s Get It On! (31 page)

I don’t feel awkward in the cage; it’s second nature. But when I’m on a TV or film set, I always feel stupid. I’m not what people think I am. I don’t need the fame; I’m not that guy.

Still, it’s always the greatest compliment to feel wanted and a part of something you truly love. SEG was the first company to validate what I did in the sport. After making $750 for my first event, I got a raise around UFC 7 to $1,250 for each event. Remember, at this time, athletic commissions and other regulatory bodies wouldn’t give MMA a second glance, so I was hired and paid directly by the promotion.

When my role expanded to court and media appearances defending the UFC and the sport, I missed more time at the police academy. Around UFC 12, I went to Meyrowitz and told him I couldn’t take any more unpaid time off. To Meyrowitz’s credit, he researched what boxing referees were making for the big championship fights and offered me a $50,000 annual contract. This allowed me to continue working the events to supplement some of the income I was losing from the academy. I was also expected to review and help develop the rules and to generally speak on the sport’s behalf when it was needed.

No other referee got the vote of confidence I did. My good friend Joe Hamilton refereed from the first Ultimate Ultimate event to UFC 16 before he approached Meyrowitz for a raise because he, too, was losing money taking off from the department to work the events for $500 a show. SEG told Joe they couldn’t do it with him, and Joe had no choice but to leave the UFC.

Meyrowitz put a lot of trust in me to always conduct myself in ways that would help the sport. I think he knew I would take a bullet for the sport if I had to. People like that were undoubtedly needed around the promotion after Senator John McCain and Time Warner CEO Leo Hindery effectively pulled the plug on the UFC’s major pay-per-view platforms.

We all marched into UFC 15 “Collision Course,” on October 17, 1997, at Casino Magic in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, with the feeling that the UFC’s days were numbered. We needed only to look around to confirm our suspicions. The event was held in a tent in the casino’s parking lot because there was no facility in the hotel to host it. It was a severe downgrade. Still, about 2,500 hard-core fans showed up to witness another historic night for the sport.

We had the list of rules I had drafted—the ones Hindery had rejected—and we all knew we were on the right track with them. SEG decided to try them out at UFC 15. But why stop there? The perception of bare-knuckled fighting had always plagued the UFC, so SEG also decided to try out specially designed finger-free gloves that would allow fighters to strike and grapple.

The first fighter who’d worn MMA-style gloves was Melton Bowen when he’d fought Steve Jennum in a quarterfinal bout at UFC 4. Dan Severn had experimented with an early prototype in his fight against Ken Shamrock at UFC 9, as had a few other fighters after him. However, it was definitely Tank Abbott who popularized wearing gloves inside of the Octagon. The gloves were much thinner than those used for boxing, had a small gel-like padding in the knuckle area, and left the fingers free for grabbing and completing holds and chokes. They resembled weightlifting or even cycling gloves more than anything else. They weren’t necessarily designed to protect the opponent’s face but to protect the fighter’s knuckles and allow him to strike more.

Gloves would become an important safety addition. After the fighters tried them out at UFC 15, SEG would make them mandatory for every event, and I became heavily involved in their ongoing development.

With a set of rules and mandatory glove use now in place, this was one of the pivotal moments for the UFC. Revisionist history might try to convince you that changes like this didn’t happen for another few years, but I can tell you this is when the UFC truly started feeling a sense of accountability and ran toward regulation. Many people involved with the UFC spent a lot of time and effort beginning to educate the commissions about the sport during this time without getting any credit for it.

UFC 15 was the first event to be sanctioned and regulated by a recognized governmental body, in this case the Mississippi Athletic Commission under the leadership of Billy Lyons. It was the first time I was licensed as a referee.

The most memorable fight at UFC 15 was the heavyweight bout between Brazilian phenom Vitor Belfort and four-time Olympic wrestling alternate Randy Couture, who was fresh off his heavyweight tournament win at UFC 13.

When I found out UFC matchmaker Art Davie was scheduling this fight, I told him it was stupid. “Why would you do that to the guy who just won your tournament?” I said. “Couture’s a wrestler. Give him some time to learn the sport so he can fight Belfort down the road.”

Throwing Couture in with Belfort, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, would lead to Couture losing by submission. It seemed to me that SEG was wasting a guy who had solid credentials and potential to be promotable later.

Davie said, “That’s the point.” Belfort would take out Couture, the tournament champion, and then face the winner of the heavyweight title match between Maurice Smith and Dan Severn, also on that night’s card.

Davie and I were the first in a long line of doubters of Couture’s talents. Little did we know Couture would go on to become one of the most decorated athletes the sport had ever seen and remain a relevant competitor into his late forties.

If Belfort was the surefire favorite, he didn’t do himself any favors prior to the fight. The night before, he was a mess. He called the UFC boardroom and asked to speak with me regarding the rules, so I went upstairs to his hotel room.

I found Belfort sitting there with his girlfriend, and he was seriously concerned.

“What’s the problem?” I said.

“He’s a wrestler,” Belfort said. “He likes to hold, so if he’s on top of me on the ground, where can he elbow?”

Belfort wasn’t helpless from his back by any means, but he seemed preoccupied with what Couture could do to him—not exactly the frame of mind you’d want a competitor to be in the night before a fight.

Finally, I said, “Just go out there and do what you do best.” I left his hotel room thinking,
Oh my God, this guy is going to lose.

If there could be an exact opposite of what I’d seen in Belfort, Couture was it. When he entered the cage the next night, he was the epitome of confidence.

I walked to his corner and gave him the same speech I give all the fighters: “This is your corner, and this is where I need you to be for me to start the fight. I’m going to ask you if you’re ready, and I’m going to ask your opponent if he’s ready, and once I get an okay from the both of you, I’m going to tell you, ‘Let’s get it on.’ That’s your time to do your thing. Protect yourself at all times, and obey my commands, and if I tell you to stop, I need you to stop. Do you have any questions about anything?”

Couture shook his head. I returned to center cage and looked at the small entrance ramp SEG had built for the fighters. We waited. And waited. And waited. Belfort never appeared.

After about ten minutes, a UFC employee climbed onto the Octagon’s lip and whispered through the chain link, “Belfort won’t come out of his dressing room.”

I left the cage and went outside to the holding area, where each fighter had a camper. I climbed up into Belfort’s, where his team was mulling around, but Belfort was in the bathroom. “What’s wrong with him?” I said to his cornerman.

“He’s having stomach problems.”

Loudly enough for Belfort to hear, I told his corner, “He has two minutes to get himself in the cage, or the fight will be forfeited to Couture.”

After the event, the native Brazilian would be quoted as saying in broken English that he had worms, which became the butt of many jokes at the time.

What Belfort really had was a bad case of nerves, which was understandable. The situation reminded me how vulnerable these fighters, seen as ultimate combat machines, could be.

I was certainly sensitive to Belfort’s condition, but the pay-per-view was running live. The commentators were doing their best to stall, but they could say only so many times that Belfort was using mental warfare to psych Couture out.

Belfort suddenly appeared on the ramp and walked to the cage. He had no reason to be intimidated. He was the better striker and a far superior ground practitioner. Where Couture had the advantage was in the wrestling, and isn’t it ironic that wrestling is where the key moments played out?

A tested wrestler on the ultracompetitive international circuit for years, Couture had mastered subtle upper body movements, which made him especially strong in the clinch. I watched him force Belfort, a formidable striker, into playing the wrestling game. Couture softened up Belfort before taking him down and pounding out the stoppage after eight minutes. It was the first of many upsets we’d all see from Couture. And it was the first time I really understood the young Belfort’s weakness: his mental game.

In the evening’s other main bout, Dan Severn didn’t make it to his fight with Maurice Smith for the UFC heavyweight title. A week before UFC 15, Severn had fought Kimo Leopoldo for a new promotion in Japan called Pride Fighting Championships and had hurt his hand.

Tank Abbott was called in to replace Severn, and Smith bludgeoned Abbott’s legs with damaging kicks for eight minutes until Abbott called it quits.

Smith would end up defending his title against Couture at the next event, which would be held in Japan, while Pride Fighting Championships would become a significant feature on MMA’s horizon.

Before the UFC traveled halfway around the world for its next event, it had some housecleaning to do. Art Davie, who had been around since UFC 1 and served as the show’s matchmaker, was fired for going behind Meyrowitz’s back to start a new MMA promotion called Thunderdome, which never got off the ground. Davie was replaced by John Perretti, a martial artist and movie stunt coordinator who’d worked for Battlecade: Extreme Fighting.

Meyrowitz asked me to accompany him, Abbott, and Belfort on a trip to Japan to promote UFC “Ultimate Japan,” the promotion’s eighteenth event, scheduled to take place two months later on December 21, 1997, inside the Yokohama Arena. It made sense to travel to a country where judo, not baseball, was the national pastime. Variations of mixed martial arts had been alive and well in Japan since the 1980s with promotions like Shooto and later Pancrase.

When we got off the plane, a few photographers were waiting to meet us. I recognized Susumu Nagao, who’d photographed every event since UFC 2. Nagao’s pictures had appeared in the mainstream newspapers and magazines that covered the sport in Japan, so we were somewhat recognizable to the fans there.

Abbott made his presence known by shouting, “I am Godzillaaaaaa,” at the top of his lungs for the startled commuters. Then he chased the photographers around the airport.

SEG was copromoting the event with a Japanese organization, so we met a few of their executives for dinner. I remember only one of the gentlemen’s names: Mr. Koji. It took us about ten minutes to settle in while the Japanese businessmen contemplated and switched up our seating arrangement around the table, an important detail in their culture. Belfort introduced me to sushi that night.