Let’s Get It On! (22 page)

I was mic’d at every UFC event and hated it.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

—General George S. Patton

When I was sworn in as a Los Angeles police officer, I took an oath to protect and serve my community. For me that boiled down to one thing: I protected good people. Fighters were good people too. However, the rules laid out by the UFC didn’t allow me to protect them. And if I couldn’t do that, what was the point of being a referee?

When I saw Rorion at the gym again shortly afterward, I’d already made up my mind. “I’m never going to referee another UFC event again,” I said.

“Why?” Rorion asked.

The answer was simple: “You’re going to get somebody killed.”

I could see the surprise on Rorion’s face, but I didn’t think I was overreacting at all. I’d already seen a lot in my life. I knew what real fights were and how far they could go. I’d gotten jumped by a group of people while trying to defend a friend, and I understood what it was like to reach a point when your mind says,
You can’t win this; you’re done.
The human body can take a lot of punishment, but the brain eventually shuts off.

As an officer, I’d seen people get stomped to death, and if you’ve ever seen this yourself, you don’t forget it. The head crushes and deforms, and the scary thing is that it doesn’t take a ton of pressure for it to happen. I didn’t want to stand there in the cage dreading that if I let it go just one more blow, that might happen. I couldn’t stand by as a fighter reached his breaking point and his corner refused to throw the towel. I wouldn’t stand there and let that happen.

“Look, you care about your brother, and I understand that, but these other guys don’t understand what they’re getting into. They believe they’re these awesome martial artists, their corners think they’re going to kill people, and they get punched in the face one time and fold like a cheap tent. They won’t tap out because their brains are too scrambled. And their corners won’t throw in the towel because they’re just too fucking stupid. I know someone’s going to get seriously hurt.”

Rorion wasn’t convinced. He was so concerned about making sure early stoppages never happened that he was overlooking the obvious dangers.

“I’m not saying stop the fight because of a cut or the first sign of damage, but I am saying there will be situations when we need to step in.” I said, “A fighter should be able to intelligently defend himself, and when he can’t the fight should be over.”

Rorion said he would mull it over.

I left Rorion’s office knowing I could be replaced easily. Rorion could make a quick phone call and get someone else who’d follow his guidelines to a tee. But as much as I wanted to stay involved with the UFC, going along with what had happened at UFC 2 went against what I believed. Walking away was a decision I could live with.

One thing I had on my side was the public’s immediate reaction to the UFC. While UFC 1 had 86,000 pay-per-view buys, UFC 2 jumped past that with 124,000 purchases. With virtually no marketing, this was just short of a broadcasting miracle. Apparently Rorion was so anxious to put on another show in September that finding another referee wasn’t his highest priority.

When we talked about it again a week later, Rorion proposed that I could stop a fight only if someone either was too hurt to tap out or was already knocked out. In one of the biggest sport-influencing negotiations to ever happen outside the cage, Rorion and I debated terms that we would be comfortable with.

First, he said, “You can stop the fight at certain times.”

However, it was all or nothing for me. “Either I can stop the fight as soon as a fighter can’t intelligently defend himself, or I’m out of here.”

Rorion thought for a moment, then said, “We’ll give it a try.” And “intelligently defending oneself” entered the MMA vernacular.

Another seed was planted about this time that would sprout deep roots and cause issues for the UFC later. The morning of UFC 2, WOW and SEG had managed to score an appearance on ABC’s
Good Morning America.
They sent the promotion’s most familiar face, commentator and former NFL superstar Jim Brown, accompanied by SEG executive Campbell McLaren.

During the show, McLaren uttered one of the stupidest but most famous lines: “You can win by tapout, knockout, or even death.” That sure perked up a lot of ears. Little did anyone know that this controversial sound bite would launch the UFC down a path riddled with political land mines in the near future.

But first there was profit to be made.

With a moneymaker on its hands, WOW and SEG began preparations for UFC 3, and Royce was sent back into training. It didn’t go smoothly for him.

Jiu-jitsu may not be as well-known as basketball or baseball, but it’s just as exerting as any other sport out there. Anyone who’s tried it knows the strains it places on the body while you stretch and bend into different positions.

A few months before the show, Royce hurt his neck badly and stopped training for a good chunk of time. He rested and got back on the mat as fast as he could, but with a few weeks to go, we all wondered if enough time had passed for his body to completely heal.

The show went on, and two nights before UFC 3, in Charlotte, North Carolina—another state with no athletic commission to speak of—I found myself with Royce, Rorion, and their older cousin Carlson Gracie Sr., an accomplished jiu-jitsu black belt and former vale tudo fighter in his own right. The beds in the hotel room had been pushed against the walls, and Royce and I were rolling all over the carpet as Rorion and Carlson gave Royce some last-minute fine-tuning.

Carlson wasn’t pleased with the way Rorion had hoarded the Gracie name in the States, so Rorion would show Royce his way of doing a move, and Carlson, who ran an academy in Chicago, would demonstrate his own version. The two cousins went toe-to-toe here to gain the upper hand while instructing Royce.

While Rorion and Carlson tried to tell Royce what to do, I was stuck in the middle of it as Royce’s grappling dummy. It was a mess.

Things were about to get messier for me.

The next night, Elaine and I had dinner with Guy Mezger and Oleg Taktarov, two fighters being considered for future events. I ordered swordfish, not knowing I was allergic.

That night, I woke up and felt like I was having an asthma attack. I sat up, sucked in some Primatene Mist, and then sat in a chair, but I couldn’t get the feeling to go away.

After two hours, I finally had to wake Elaine.

When she saw the veins popping out of my face, neck, and chest as I strained to get air, she said, “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No, don’t do that,” I said, gasping.

Elaine knew Royce’s fiancée, Marianne, was some kind of a doctor, so she wanted to go find her. I didn’t have the breath or energy to tell her Marianne was a foot doctor.

When Marianne arrived and didn’t know what was wrong with me, she called the paramedics. I was rushed to the local hospital as my body started shutting down. It was now the morning of the event, and I was stuck in an emergency room.

About four hours later, hopped up on some allergy medication and ephedrine, I was released. I was buzzing, and it was awesome. I’d never taken drugs like this, and whatever they’d given me kept me up like a wired rock star. I wouldn’t sleep for two days, which wasn’t an issue—there were fights to get to.

The Grady Cole Center, site of UFC 3 “The American Dream” was supposed to seat 3,500 people, but that didn’t stop WOW and SEG from stuffing 1,500 extra fans into the stands and anywhere else they could fit them.

With North Carolina in its last days of summer, it had to be nearly 100 degrees inside the venue, and it was the humid kind of heat that makes everything stick to you. Under the scorching lights, it felt like 150 degrees. If there was a hell, this was it.

I don’t know how some of the fighters made it through the night. I know I was sweating profusely, and I wasn’t even exerting myself like they had to. “It was like trying to breathe in soup,” Royce would say afterward. I’d say it was more like chili.

Prior to the first fight, I went backstage to meet with all the fighters. I’d been too stupid to think of doing it at UFC 2, but after observing firsthand what had happened with the fighters and their corners, I wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page.

I also wanted everyone to be comfortable with what would happen. This was why I started the ritual of talking to the fighters I’d be officiating beforehand, something I still do to this day. Giving them the chance to ask questions before they pressed into the unknown seemed to ease some of the anxiety.

This wasn’t something Rorion or SEG asked me to do. Maybe part of it was that I was trying to keep myself busy, but mostly it just made sense to me.

UFC 3 showcased a handful of debut fighters along with returnees Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock. The sixteen-man tournament had been a gruesome marathon with too many characters for WOW to handle and for the crowd to follow, so it was back to the eight-man scheme.

I performed my first referee stoppage when Harold Howard bludgeoned Roland Payne with his fist in one of the quarterfinal matches. Payne started to roll for cover before he went out, so I stepped in to make sure he didn’t receive further damage.

“Intelligent defense” was a good term because it put the decision-making responsibility on me, and I had some leeway in my judgment. It was also a hell of a lot better than leaving it up to the corners.

In another quarterfinal, Keith Hackney whaled on Emanuel Yarbrough, a onetime world amateur sumo champion who outweighed Hackney by more than 400 pounds. This was one of the saddest fights I’ve ever had to referee because Yarbrough was a nice man but could hardly move his 618-pound body. Once listed in
Guinness World Records
as the heaviest athlete, Yarbrough is to this day the stoutest man ever to enter the Octagon.

Elaine posing with the promotion’s largest fighter, Emanuel Yarbrough, at UFC

Hackney, a last-minute addition who’d trained in kenpo karate, had come to fight. After circling Yarbrough for a few seconds, Hackney knocked him down with an open-handed slap to the head. Yarbrough toppled, and Hackney rushed in. Yarbrough rose to his knees and pulled his tiny opponent into his refrigerator-sized chest and started assaulting the back of Hackney’s head.

Hackney whipped himself around fast, but Yarbrough wouldn’t let him go that easily. He grabbed and ripped Hackney’s black tank top right off his body. Yarbrough then used his gaining momentum to push Hackney back against the Octagon’s gate, which had the same flip-latch you would see on any backyard fencing. The latch unhinged under the pressure, and Yarbrough pushed Hackney right out of the cage.

We had to stop the bout momentarily, bend the latch’s metal back into place, and restart the pair center cage.

The unexpected restart, the first one I’d ever performed in the Octagon, proved to be a tide turner. Hackney realized quickly he’d fare much better staying out of his opponent’s reach, so Yarbrough plodded around the cage chasing him, chewing on his mouthpiece.

Hackney threw a kick, and Yarbrough caught it, again trying to suck his opponent back into his hippo hug. Hackney threw another haymaker, and Yarbrough went down again, rolling onto his stomach to find refuge from Hackney’s punches. Hackney ended up beating down on the stationary Yarbrough like a kid who’d gotten a drum for Christmas. It was hard to watch a guy who couldn’t get himself back up to a starting position because he was carrying too much weight.