Let’s Get It On! (28 page)

In less than a year, Featherstonhaugh had managed to get a bill introduced and eventually signed by Governor George Pataki that made Ultimate Fighting legal in New York for a short time. However, Meyrowitz had to make an agreement with the politicians involved with the bill to not bring the UFC to New York City and especially not to the famous Madison Square Garden, until there had been multiple events held in the state and everyone felt comfortable with it. SEG booked the upstate arena and got to work promoting the event.

In the meantime, Battlecade: Extreme Fighting, another promotion owned by New York—based movie producer Donald Zuckerman, decided it would swoop in on Madison Square Garden first. Zuckerman hadn’t been part of the UFC’s lobbyist movement and hadn’t made any agreement to keep his show away from New York City, but when Zuckerman announced his show, it affected us all. The news attracted the attention of the press, which welcomed the scandalous headlines, as well as New York State Senator Roy Goodman, who was dead set against Ultimate Fighting.

Goodman described Ultimate Fighting as a “disgraceful, animalistic, and disgusting contest which can result in severe injuries to contestants and sets an abominable example for our youth.” The press, including the influential
New York Times,
ate it up and ran story after story condemning both Battlecade and the UFC.

The uproar caused Governor Pataki to put a stay on the bill he’d signed, and a new bill was drafted to replace it that made a complete about-face on Ultimate Fighting. While the new bill began its route through the state senate and back to the governor, SEG continued to plan UFC 12 in Niagara Falls, knowing the bill wouldn’t get passed in time to shut down the show.

New York wasn’t done yet, though. Floyd Patterson, a former heavyweight boxing champion and the head of the New York State Athletic Commission, had his staff draft and present a 114-page rule book to Meyrowitz that would essentially kill UFC 12 in Buffalo. The rules included mandatory use of boxing gloves and protective headgear and also banned fighters from taking their opponents down or using any ground work. It basically melded the UFC into amateur boxing.

The week of the show, Meyrowitz took his complaints to court and argued that the state had gone back on what the two parties had previously agreed upon. Then we all headed back to Niagara Falls and waited for the judge’s decision, which was handed down at 2:30 p.m. the day before the show.

Since UFC 8 and 9 had survived the court’s scrutiny, Meyrowitz was confident the judge would rule in the UFC’s favor. However, unlike in the previous court battles, the NYSAC now had jurisdiction over Ultimate Fighting because of the first bill that Governor Pataki had signed. The judge ruled that the UFC had to follow whatever regulations the NYSAC presented to them, saying, “If you don’t want to follow the rules, then don’t put on a show here.”

Meyrowitz was flabbergasted, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t had any doubts. There was an exit plan. SEG had booked a small arena in Dothan, Alabama, about ninety miles outside Montgomery earlier that week, just for this situation.

However, no other arrangements had been put in place. Elaine had to scramble to find a way to transport nearly 200 people, including 20 fighters, their corners and entourages, some media, and all of SEG’s employees nearly 1,100 miles south within the next 12 hours.

Elaine rented a Boeing 757 to fly out of Buffalo and land in Montgomery, which was about a two-hour drive from the hotels and venue. She then reserved every room she could find in the area, including ones at the local Super 8 and Motel 6. The fighters would later be dispersed among the hotels, which made for a logistical nightmare when transporting them to and from the arena. In the end, I don’t know how much all of this cost SEG, but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.

While Elaine made these preparations, I was sent around to the fighters’ rooms to tell them they wouldn’t be able to bring all of their cornermen, family members, and other guests on the plane. If people wanted to be at the show, they’d better get a car and take off now so they could make it.

At the airport, the crew added up the poundage for the Octagon, all the cameras and technical equipment necessary to produce the show, as well as the passengers and their luggage, and told SEG they were running dangerously close to the plane’s limit.
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Hearing this, Elaine told the fighters they could now bring one guest. The rest were asked to find a way down to Alabama on their own.

Before we left, the UFC hastily held its first ever weigh-ins in Niagara Falls. Each of the lightweight competitors stood on an ordinary household scale in view of his opponents. There was no crowd and no fanfare. It was decided that the heavyweights wouldn’t have to step on the scales because you could just tell by looking that they were all over 200 pounds.

That night, with everything packed, stowed, and accounted for, we lifted off from Buffalo International Airport around 11:00. I doubt anyone got much sleep on the flight. I know I didn’t. The fighters seemed surprisingly upbeat even with their opponents sitting only a few aisles away. Everyone was pulling together for a common goal: we wanted the show to happen.

We landed about four and a half hours later, and SEG’s crew scattered to set up the Octagon, hang the lights, and in a few hours tend to details they usually had a few days to accomplish.

Not only would SEG have to refund the money from the tickets sold in Niagara Falls, which was substantial because it was a sell-out, but they would also have to give away all of the Dothan tickets.

I was sent to a local Dothan radio station that had been alerted to our arrival in their fair city. I invited fans to come pick up free tickets, and the station was even kind enough to whip up some T-shirts for the fans that said, “Why is the UFC in Dothan, Alabama? Because New York only allows street gangs to whip your ass.”

That night, 6,000 Dothan fans were treated to a decent free show. Mark Coleman continued his reign by neck-cranking Dan Severn into submission in the night’s superfight.
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In the UFC’s first lightweight tournament, Jerry Bohlander, a protégé of Ken Shamrock’s Lion’s Den team, defeated alternate Nick Sanzo with a crucifix neck crank. However, the night really belonged to a nineteen-year-old Brazilian named Vitor Belfort, who stunned Tra Telligman, also a Lion’s Den fighter, in their heavyweight preliminary bout with the fastest hands I’d seen in the Octagon.

The UFC went to Dothan, Alabama, and all I got was this damn T-shirt. Still, it’s one of my favorites.

In the finals, Belfort faced Scott Ferrozzo, who outweighed him by more than 100 pounds. Belfort stopped the flabby Ferrozzo in his tracks with his incredibly accurate fists to win the heavyweight tournament. In total, Belfort had spent two minutes, ten seconds in the cage that night. I took one look at this young, muscular athlete and knew he’d be a star.

Shaken by the drama that was UFC 12, SEG returned to safer territory at the Augusta-Richmond County Civic Center in Augusta, Georgia, for UFC 13 “The Ultimate Force” on May 30, 1997, one of the few places left where the promotion wouldn’t be hassled.

UFC 13 would turn out to be a landmark event because it produced two future superstars of the sport. One was a young protégé of Abbott, Tito Ortiz, and the other was a four-time Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling alternate named Randy Couture.

Quiet and composed, the thirty-three-year-old Couture entered the heavyweight tournament on two weeks’ notice and won both of his fights that evening to become the heavyweight tournament champion.

It was hard to tell what Couture would be able to do as a fighter from his initial two bouts because although both opponents had been bigger than him, neither had been particularly technical. Couture’s wrestling had allowed him to control and dominate, which I’d expected. But Couture would really come into his own as a fighter in his next appearance.

That night, it was easy to recognize another fighter’s potential. The tournament’s one lightweight alternate, Ortiz, walked through opponent Wes Albritton in thirty-one seconds. The rest of the tournament also played out in Ortiz’s favor.

In the first bracket, Lion’s Den fighter Guy Mezger earned a unanimous decision against Chris Leininger to secure his spot in the final match. In the other preliminary bracket, Enson Inoue submitted Royce Alger with an armbar but took a big hit during the bout. Afterward, Inoue’s eye socket swelled up when he blew his nose; he had a small crack in his orbital bone. Dr. Istrico took one look at Inoue and told him he couldn’t fight the next match.

The bleached-blond Ortiz would be called to the finals, but because he was a wrestler in the NCAA collegiate system at California State University Bakersfield at the time, he wasn’t allowed to accept any money for the bout, including the final prize. Ortiz had agreed to fight for free.

Mezger and Ortiz faced off in the finals, and Ortiz was doing quite well with his wrestling skills. He cradled Mezger on the ground and started kneeing him in the head, which opened large cuts on Mezger’s scalp. One sliced an arterial vein, which was like striking oil: blood just started pulsing out with each heartbeat.

Feeling the heat from politicians who were calling the UFC a “barbaric bloodbath,” Meyrowitz had told me before the show to scrutinize any excessive bleeding and to stop the fight if it got bad. With Mezger spouting blood like a fire hydrant, I paused the match and called in Dr. Istrico. Good old Dr. Istrico wasn’t squeamish in the least. He looked at the laceration and said the fight could continue as long as the cut didn’t get worse.

At the time, I was to always restart any fight standing no matter where it had been stopped. I did, which meant Ortiz lost his position on the ground. It was Mezger’s gain for sure. Ortiz shot in for a takedown, and Mezger locked him in a guillotine choke, then sat back and squeezed, forcing Ortiz to tap out.

I knew after the fight that Ortiz hated me because he thought I’d taken the win away from him by restanding the bout after Dr. Istrico had checked Mezger. I’d thought Dr. Istrico would stop the fight, and I hadn’t really had a choice when he’d said it could continue. For better or worse, and in this case it was definitely the latter, I had to follow the scant rules that were in place.

UFC 13 marked another turning point for the promotion, though this one would prove crippling. Senator John McCain, having been elected chairman of the Committee on Commerce, which regulated the cable industry, made sure UFC 13 was the last event to see the light of day on major cable carriers, including Time Warner, TCI, Request, Cablevision Systems, Viewer’s Choice, and others. Overnight, the UFC’s potential viewing audience dwindled from 30 million homes to about 5 million.

Meyrowitz had never planned for this reality. Without pay-per-view buys to sustain the promotion, he turned to the live gate revenue. But Meyrowitz had never set up the UFC to be a spectator event. He didn’t give a shit about the crowd because he was a TV guy; the telecast was all that had mattered to him.

My family experienced this firsthand when my dad took my son Ron to the first Ultimate Ultimate event in December of 1995, and they sat in the front row. It’s hard enough to see into the elevated cage when the fighters hit the ground, but my dad had to contend with a cameraman’s ass blocking his view the entire time. My dad finally approached the cameraman and yanked him off the cage lip.

With budget costs cut, the live experience had only gotten worse since then.

What kept the UFC’s small, devoted following were the fighters. After watching Royce and Brazilian jiu-jitsu dominate the first few events, fans debated when the reign of wrestlers in the UFC would ever come to an end. No one had come close to beating Mark Coleman, but Maurice Smith, a world champion kickboxer, changed that at UFC 14. Smith eventually wore the weary wrestler’s legs down to unseat him with a unanimous decision nod after twenty-one minutes. It was the beginning of a wave of successful strikers to enter the UFC.

No matter what anyone tells you, the UFC was always a work in progress. There was never a time when it wasn’t evolving, including in its rules. Even from UFC 1 to 2, changes had been made. Situations would arise in the cage that would make us realize certain rules had to be implemented to preserve an even playing field. Some rules we saw right away. Others took more reflection.

At Ultimate Ultimate in 1995, I’d watched Oleg Taktarov grab the fence with one hand to pull himself up and away from Marco Ruas, who was trying to take him down. He’d used the fence to change the context of the fight and ended up winning the bout. The cage was there to keep the fighters from falling out, not to aid in leverage. I went to Meyrowitz and the rest of SEG and told them grabbing the fence shouldn’t be allowed, but they didn’t agree with me at first. They loved what Taktarov had done and thought it was a great strategic move.