Let’s Get It On! (40 page)

I noticed a real shift in both fighters’ demeanors when they came out for the third round. Though Penn had an early lead, Pulver used his newfound motivation to go after his opponent and win the final fifteen minutes to keep his title.

Fights are like that. They can turn on a dime, and a mental catalyst can be just as powerful as a landed punch or submission.

In a time of fast-paced growth, I made my second major refereeing blunder. It was at UFC 37 “High Impact” on May 10, 2002, at the CenturyTel Center in Bossier City, Louisiana. Middleweight champion Murilo Bustamante caught Olympic wrestling silver medalist Matt Lindland in a tight armbar in the first round, and I interceded when I thought I saw Lindland tapping out.

“I wasn’t tapping, John,” Lindland said as I separated them.

In that moment, I made another big mistake: I doubted my call.

While 8,000 vocal Louisiana fans looked on, instead of being decisive and sticking to my first call, I decided to restart the bout.

At the time, I didn’t have the ability to restart the fight from the grounded position the fighters had been in; I had to stand them up and restart them from their corners. That was completely unfair to Bustamante, who’d been on the verge of winning the fight on the mat, but I did it anyway and immediately felt terrible about it.

Despite my intervention, the right man found the win that night. In the third round, Bustamante trapped Lindland’s neck with a guillotine choke, and Lindland clearly tapped out this time.

When I left the cage, Elaine said something she rarely does about my refereeing: “You screwed up.”

In my heart, I knew she was right.

When I reviewed the video, I saw I’d been right the first time and Lindland had tapped out. I’d been duped, but the blame was on me for caving on my original call. Referees don’t always make the correct calls, but they need to stand by them in that moment no matter what. I had to make sure I never got caught up in that type of situation again.

UFC 38 “Brawl at the Hall,” the promotion’s first venture into England, was held in London’s 5,000-seat Royal Albert Hall. MMA had a small but loyal fan base in the United Kingdom, and a couple smaller local promotions were grooming talent. The UFC had also secured a minor TV deal in the United Kingdom to air past events, something not yet achieved in the United States.

The Royal Albert Hall was far different from any other UFC venue to date. It was essentially an opera house, with red velvet curtains and box seats on all sides. Not exactly what you’d picture when you think of fighting. I know it had never been intended to hold fights, but it really felt like the Roman days to me. A day before the show, several of us stood in the middle of the Octagon and yelled out, “Are you not entertained?” Silly, yes, but still pretty cool.

Of the matches, Ian Freeman’s victory over Frank Mir was probably the most potent. Having appeared at UFC 24, 26, and 27, Freeman, a native of Sunderland, was the most recognized fighter from the United Kingdom. Freeman went into the bout knowing his father was ill, but his corner, friends, and family decided to not tell him his father had passed away the day of the event. Freeman used all of his stirring emotion to take out Mir with a flurry of first-round punches on the ground, earning his biggest career win. The crowd went nuts for him.

The event also featured the rematch of the controversial UFC 34 encounter between Matt Hughes and Carlos Newton. However, there was no doubt this time around. Hughes walked through Newton and got a fourth-round stoppage.

Many were surprised by Hughes’ domination, but sometimes the fans forget that outside of the cage fighters balance complex lives just like everybody else. This was a clear case of two fighters moving in different directions. Hughes was coming into his own as a fighter and honing a style that worked for him. Newton had been in the game so long and was pursuing a medical degree and other interests at the same time. Fighting wasn’t his first priority anymore.

I did attend Zuffa’s after party at a trendy nightclub in London and left about a minute before the now infamous brawl broke out in the street between Lee Murray and Tito Ortiz and their drunken entourages. After that night, Zuffa decided not to host its own after parties. Fighters and alcohol didn’t seem to mix too well.

Though Zuffa had now held eleven quality events in nineteen months, it didn’t seem the UFC was making substantial strides. They had spent millions on a magazine ad campaign, tried to coax the mainstream press to cover them, and even taken an event halfway around the world to England. However, the pay-per-view numbers for the first eleven events under Zuffa’s watch were reported to be under 100,000 buys each, with some rumored to be 30,000 or lower. It was time to try something different.

Dana White had told me a couple days before UFC 40 that Tank Abbott would be returning to fight at UFC 41, and Zuffa managed to keep the MMA press from finding out. When Abbott appeared at the top of the ramp at UFC 40 and swaggered down with his salt-and-pepper goatee and leather jacket, the audience was shocked.

My sons, Ron and Johnny, with former UFC welterweight champion Carlos Newton in their best Dragon Ball Z poses

Some time had passed since Abbott had been in the UFC, and I didn’t have a strong opinion about his return either way. Times had changed, and the UFC was overcoming a lot of the stigma I’d felt Abbott had helped feed during his SEG days, but if it would get people to tune in, why not? I knew he wouldn’t win against good fighters, and Zuffa and the audience would see that when they watched him fight.

UFC 40 “Vendetta,” held on November 22, 2002, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, launched the sport’s first true rivalry of the Zuffa era. The brash and outspoken Tito Ortiz took on Ken Shamrock in a flashback to their UFC 19 encounter when Ortiz had beaten Shamrock’s prized student Guy Mezger and donned the “Gay Mezger Is My Bitch” T-shirt.

The bad blood built up in the days before the show. At the press conference, Shamrock uttered the now famous line, “I’m going to beat you into a living death,” and kicked a chair Ortiz’s way, which Dana caught midair. It was a pretty nice catch for someone who never expected a chair to come flying his way.

At the weigh-ins, I was asked to stand between these passionate showmen. I got the impression everyone else was afraid to do it. When they lunged at one another, I had to wedge between them.