Uncaged (24 page)

Then it was over. Only twenty-one seconds had passed. I did a little victory lap and then went over to his corner to make sure he was OK. He was. The Gracies did their usual thing. They said the fight shouldn't have been stopped, or that it was stopped too early. They said the fight was fake. But there wasn't anything to say about that. They had thrown in the towel; the ref had stopped the fight. It ended too fast, but it ended on their terms.

For me, it was a huge victory. I broke my hand, but otherwise it was a giant moment. San Jose, my hometown, became the mecca of mixed martial arts in California. I was an immediate superstar. The opportunities for MMA fighters exploded.

Doing ringside commentary was Phil Baroni. He sounded excited about the fight, at the start, because he was hoping to fight one of us himself. “I might be fighting the winner real soon,” he said. But then the fight was over. He said, “They say he's the best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be.” It sounded like a compliment. But then he added, “I don't believe it.” He was eager to fight
me
now. So that was the beginning of another feud.

But first I had to fight another Gracie.

It took a while to set up. After the Cesar Gracie fight, there was a lot of heat, but we still couldn't get a TV deal. We knew that TV was where the money was. It didn't make sense to keep fighting live shows in small markets, even when it was my hometown. The industry was obviously going to television. So for a year, I tried to make a TV deal, and Scott tried to make a TV deal, and we sort of languished. I had been contacted several times already by Dana White and the UFC. Now they contacted me again, and flew me in for a meeting. But it was the same pitch I'd already heard, and it was bullshit. Their deal was they'd give you a bunch of money and you'd fight exclusively for the UFC. You had to sign everything over. You had no rights. And when you were done, you would leave and that would be it, you're done forever. It was a crap deal. I had bigger things in mind for my brand. I wanted to build the sport. My interest was in promoting the martial artists, in telling their stories, in expanding the brand beyond just two guys fighting.

The UFC was interested in applying the WWE model to the sport. I didn't like it, and they took offense. Dana White is
still
pissed at me, and he never misses an opportunity to say something bad about me. That's how that feud started.

A new suitor came along then, a company called World Fighter. They said they had a lot of money. They said they had a deal with Showtime to put fights on TV. So I said, “Let's do a contract.” They offered me a huge deal, with massive guarantees. The first year was $2 million, the second year was $3 million. No one was doing that kind of money. The biggest deal I knew of was $350,000. So this deal made huge news in the MMA business.

Scott Coker, my contact at Strikeforce, didn't object to my signing with them. I figured they might or might not make it, but if they did, I would take Scott with me. So we agreed to do it. We liked these guys a lot. But they couldn't produce the Showtime deal
after all. They had no TV deal. Five months later, around the end of 2006, we got a call from another company.
They
had Showtime. I called the guys we had our deal with and said, “What's up?” They told me it was true, that they couldn't produce Showtime. I said, “We don't have a deal if you don't have Showtime.” They agreed. We called the other guys and made a deal, and signed a contract to fight Renzo Gracie.

The other guys were ProElite, with their EliteXC MMA series. We were scheduled to fight the first Showtime fight. We went and met with the Elite guys. They were amazing. They were the nicest guys in the world, and they didn't know a thing about MMA. They had all kinds of money—$30 million from their original IPO. They had gobs of cash but no information about fighting. I went in and did my spiel and expressed my concerns. I said, “I like you guys, but you don't know what you're doing.” They were very nice. They listened. We were all friends when it was over. I picked up my stuff and left.

But when I got home I found out I'd left with someone else's notebook. Inside were all the numbers for the executive compensation packages. It was insane. I took that to the president of the company and asked him what it was all about. He went to his executives and said, “He's onto us, guys. He knows we don't know what we're doing!” So I made a new pitch. I told them how to run the business, where the real costs were and what the industry standards were for pay and percentages. They seemed interested, but we had a fight scheduled already, for Showtime. There was no getting around it. It was promoted as a big fight. Showtime was happy. Elite was happy. But ProElite and I immediately starting butting heads. Legal letters started going back and forth. It started to get ugly. I had all kinds of concerns. Elite's attitude was, “Yeah, whatever. We gotta get you fighting.” I was distracted by the lawsuits and negative media about the Elite deal. The fans didn't know what was going on and thought I had screwed over my partner Scott Coker, but I started training.

I knew a few things about Renzo. I knew he was tough on the ground and that he understood striking but that he didn't have any power. I knew he had limited cardio and didn't have a good chin. He didn't have the whiskers—the ability to take a punch to the chin. Some guys do and some guys don't. They can't take a hit on what I call the lever or the handle. It's the ladle that shakes the Jell-O. A sharp strike to the chin really shakes your brain up. Some guys take that and take it again. You can just plow them and they don't seem bothered. Other guys shy away, or run away. Those guys don't have a good chin.

So I had that going in. I also knew Renzo was an older guy, and wealthy. He was very successful. He was tough, but I didn't think he was going to go in there and take a terrible beating just for the money, or just for the win. With that information in my mind, I decided I wanted to make it a fast and dangerous fight that would force him to fatigue. I was going to try to add striking inside the grappling. He understood striking enough to get away from me but not enough to hurt me. I though if I could try to hurt him for ten minutes, I could take him. I didn't think he could go fast for longer than ten minutes. He would get tired and go flat, and I could knock him out.

I had cut weight seriously for the first time. I was down by about seven pounds. Mentally and physically I went in feeling fantastic. I was weirded out by the lawsuits and negative media, but when I walked in there I was 100 percent sure I was going to kick this guy's ass.

The fight was called EliteXC Destiny and was held at the DeSoto Civic Center in Southaven, Mississippi. The main card aired on Showtime. The undercard was streamed over the ProElite website.

The main card was strong. Gina Carano fought Julie Kedzie. Wesley Corriera fought Antonio Silva. Charles Bennett knocked out K. J. Koons. Joey Villasenor beat David Loiseau. And then it was time for me to fight Renzo.

The fight started just like I wanted it to. I forced him to strike and wrestle with me at a very fast pace. He got me into a side mount early on, against the side of the cage. He was hanging on and I was banging him on the head and in the sides, and dropping a lot of knees into his ribs. He spent a huge amount of energy just holding me down, but he didn't get anywhere with it. I told him so. I started talking to him. I said, “I feel you! You're getting tired! I can hear you breathing!” He didn't answer.

Elite had instituted something new in MMA. They had a stand-up rule. After two guys had been on the ground a while, they had to break apart and stand up. After Renzo had me in the side mount hold, the whistle blew and the ref told us to get to our feet. I got up and did a quick half-lap, with one fist in the air. I felt great!

I took control of the round. I took the center of the ring and started pushing Renzo back. He ducked a punch, into a sharp kick. He tried to land a punch and got a knee to the chin. It wasn't going his way at all. I kept advancing and moving in on him. He was retreating, backpedaling the whole way.

We went down again. Renzo got another side mount. I almost got the knee bar. The fight might have ended right there. He was holding me down but paying a huge price for it, taking knees to his ribs and unable to do anything but hang on. He dropped one punch on me, but then the buzzer sounded and the round was over.

Round two started. We came out and touched gloves, and it was back on. We sparred around. I pushed him back. I landed a sharp right, and he looked a little stunned. I felt a little heavy in the calves because I was really trying to stay on my toes and keep pushing him. There were several exchanges, and I could really felt myself landing on him. I knew this was going to work. Everything was going perfectly according to plan.

Then we went down again, and he got that side mount going. I started dropping knees into his ribs again. I could feel the life leaking
out of him. He was exhausted. I didn't think it was going to take very long to finish him.

Then I saw how. Renzo was using his arms to hold me down, and he was completely exposed. I slammed a knee into his shoulder and the back of his head, which landed perfectly. So I did it again. It felt perfect. I felt Renzo go slack. He seemed totally stunned. Then the ref said, “Stop!” Renzo rolled off me, clutching his head. He started groaning. I didn't know what was going on. The announcers didn't either. They were asking, “Wait, what do we have going here?” Then we all found out. I had thrown an illegal knee. Apparently it was illegal to knee someone in the back of the head.

I didn't know what to do. There had been a rules meeting before the fight. I hadn't attended it but sent Maurice in my stead so I could sleep. I thought that I knew the rules of MMA—I had helped create them. I had asked the EliteXC guys about rules changes. They said, “Mr. Shamrock, you can do whatever you want.”

Renzo was on his knees. The ringside doctor got in there and checked for a concussion. The ref took my arm and raised it and turned me around the arena. I think the crowd thought I had won. They started cheering. Then it became clear the ref was taking a point off or something, and the crowd started booing. I looked at my corner. I put my hands up, pretending to pray, and said, “Do something!”

In Mississippi, there wasn't a real fight commission. There was just one guy. This was the first fight in the state. They didn't know what they were doing.
I
certainly didn't know what they were doing. I had been fighting for ten years without losing, and now it looked like I was going to lose this fight on a technicality.

Renzo stayed on his knees. It still wasn't clear what was going to happen. The ref told Renzo, “You have five minutes to recover. You have five minutes before you have to make a decision.” So we were going to keep fighting! Renzo was wobbling on one knee, trying to get up—or pretending to try to get up.

Then the announcer came out and said that Renzo had won due to disqualification, due to “an intentional foul.” There was some booing from the crowd. I clapped for Renzo, along with everyone else, but the look on my face—”Are you kidding me?”—said it all.

Renzo was doing the drunk dance, acting all hurt. I didn't believe it. I don't believe it now. He wasn't hurt; he quit. He was tired, and he quit.

So when the ring announcer asked me what I was thinking, I said, “I thought we came here to
fight.
That's what I was doing. I don't know what happened…. Apparently I kneed him in the head on the ground. I guess I'm old school. I come to
fight.
We do what we gotta do to be a winner. I'm sorry I hurt the guy. I would have liked to stand up and knock him out. I was telling him the whole time, ‘I'm gonna stand you up and knock you out,' and I think he starting believing it. That knee kind of convinced him to leave.”

The ring announcer asked if, at the time, I had known what was happening.

“No!” I said. “I was just fighting! … I popped him with the left knee and then I popped him again. I mean, I barely hit the guy! God bless him, but, obviously he took the foul and he got the win. Like I said, I'm old school. We're here to fight!”

The ref explained that he was required to take a point off me, due to the illegal blow. Then, because Renzo said he was unable to continue, he had to call the fight in his favor.

Renzo wouldn't come out. Cesar came out, instead—Cesar, whose ass I had kicked in my last fight. “We have rules in these fights,” he said. “These aren't bar fights…. You can't kick to the back of the head in the United States. That's just the rule, and everybody's aware of the rule.” He said Renzo had been taken to the hospital with a concussion.

When the announcer asked me if I'd like a rematch, I said, “Are you kidding me? I wasn't even sweating! I was telling Renzo I was
going to tire him out and knock him out…. But … my bad. I'm sorry. I'll take the loss. It's not my first, but it's my first in ten years.”

Cesar observed that Renzo had won the first round and was on his way to winning the second. The crowd started booing. When the announcer asked me what was next, I said, “Apparently I gotta go to the rules meeting.” I repeated that I had come to fight, that I'd had a good strategy for beating Renzo, and that it had been working perfectly. “I guess I broke the new rules! … I hate to lose like this, and to disappoint the fans. I know they would have wanted me to knock him out…. The family rivalry goes on, and I'll be glad to fight
any
of them.”

Hours later, someone interviewed Renzo. He said he was fine. He said he had been nauseated and had blurry vision. He had felt dizzy, trying to get up. But he hadn't blacked out. He said that I'd felt he was dominating the fight and was looking for a way out. He said the fight was easy. “It was mine—all the way,” he said. “It was a walk in the park!”