Let’s Get It On! (37 page)

Ushering in a new chapter for the sport: with UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture, UFC President Dana White, and UFC owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.

—Winston Churchill

Have I ever been afraid? Yeah, on more than one occasion, though it hasn’t been in the Octagon with fighters charging in my direction or in the dark of night during the Los Angeles Riots with bullets whistling past me. No, the scariest moment of my life was watching my son nearly die.

My family and I were vacationing in Kauai, Hawaii, driving back to the hotel after a day on the far side of the island. The ocean was particularly choppy, and the waves were a little higher than usual. My kids wanted to go in the water again before we returned to the hotel, though, so we pulled over at the beach.

While Elaine played in the surf on the beach with Britney and Johnny, I dove in with our eleven-year-old son, Ron, who wanted to swim a little farther out and bodysurf in.

I caught a wave in myself, but when I came up again, Ron was gone. His head popped up above water a few seconds later about 100 yards out. He was stuck in a riptide, which was dragging him out to sea quickly. I told him to swim sideways, horizontally to the shoreline, as I stroked back out to him. By the time I got to him, we were about 250 yards from shore. I grabbed Ron under his arm and around his neck with one arm and paddled back in the direction of land with my other arm. But then we were both swept up in another wave, and I felt him slip out of my grasp underwater.

When I reemerged, Ron was again being towed away from me, coughing up a huge spurt of water that really alarmed me. I was probably in the best shape of my life, but when I got to him a second time, my arms were lead weights. I was dead tired, and Ron had this terrified look on his face. I knew in that moment that if I didn’t do something, my son was going to drown and I wouldn’t be far behind him.

“Ron, I need your help,” I ordered. “You’ve got to swim.”

Ron grabbed me, and again we stroked out of the riptide and toward the shore. We were tossed again, but this time I held on tight. We finally got close enough that I could get my feet underneath me, and I dragged him the rest of the way onto the sand.

Elaine came running to me in hysterics—but not because the sea had nearly swallowed her son and husband. In fact, Elaine had missed our near-death experience because Johnny had sat on a Portuguese man-of-war and been stung.

Ron’s eyes were bloodshot, and my heart rate must have been over 200 beats a second. “That’s fucking interesting,” was all I could muster for Elaine.

It’s a paralyzing feeling to think your child might die, something you can’t understand until it’s happened to you. In that moment, I didn’t have any fear of dying; I just knew I had to act. Either we were both going to make it, or we were both going to die. There were no other choices.

When I teach, I tell every police recruit that fear is natural. If you don’t have fear, then you’re probably stupid. Everybody has fear. It’s what you do when you’re afraid that qualifies who and what you are. I don’t think there’s ever been a hero who wasn’t afraid. Each one just did what was right in the right moment.

I’ve been shot at. I’ve had rounds going off near me. Was I afraid? Sure, but I’ve gotten smart enough to understand that running from a bullet doesn’t work. It’s better to attack where the bullet is coming from and end a dangerous situation. That’s going to give me a better chance of survival.

Fear can be overcome by preparing as much as you can for that critical moment. That’s one key factor that makes police work and MMA refereeing similar. The more knowledge and experience you have in dealing with those split-second decisions, the better you’re going to react. The decisions will already be made for you.

I certainly had no fear about the UFC going out of business. Elaine and I had talked about it many times. We’d left events time and again thinking that show could be the last. I was sad about that because I loved the UFC and the sport, but I wasn’t afraid.

Elaine and I had done our best to prepare for the moment when the UFC wouldn’t be a part of our lives anymore. Over the last twelve years, we’d moved into eight different homes around Southern California, fixed them up ourselves, and flipped them. With Elaine’s knack for interior design, we were able to make $225,000 on one sale.

So, when we’d heard two weeks before UFC 30 that brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta had purchased the UFC from Meyrowitz for $2 million, I was as braced as I could be for what was to come. Dana White, the fight manager and friend to Lorenzo, was appointed president of Zuffa Sports and Entertainment, later shortened to Zuffa LLC, and given a 10 percent share of the company.

The first time I talked to others in the industry about the purchase was on a trip to Kuwait, where I refereed a one-off event called Shidokan Jitsu: “Warriors War 1.” I hadn’t refereed many events outside the UFC, but this was an adventurous opportunity, so I’d accepted the assignment and was flown in with Elaine. A wealthy sheikh also brought some of the better-known fighters, including Matt Hughes, Jose “Pele” Landi-Jons and Carlos Newton, to the Middle East. Oddly, while the fighters were housed in a shit hole, Bruce Buffer, the commentators, I, and others who worked the event were put up in an upscale hotel. A few of us discussed the changes waiting for us back home, but no one really knew what to expect.

In Kuwait with Bruce Buffer, Steven Quadros, Peter “Sugarfoot” Cunningham, and others

There was no guarantee that Zuffa would hire any of us who already worked with the UFC, but we didn’t have much time to worry about it.

One of the first things Zuffa did was fly Elaine, James Werme, Jeff Blatnick, me, and a few other key promotion figures to Las Vegas just before UFC 30. We all stayed at Palace Station, one of the casino hotels owned by the Fertitta family, and were taken out to an Italian restaurant. There, Fertitta briefly spoke about wanting to work with all of us.

I sat next to one of Fertitta’s friends, who said, “Everything the brothers touch turns to gold. They don’t fail at anything.” It was quite an endorsement.

Two weeks after the Zuffa buyout, UFC 30 “The Battle on the Boardwalk” would hit the Jersey shore on February 23, 2001, at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. This would be the transitional event in which SEG passed the reins to Zuffa.

The new UFC employees followed the SEG staff around backstage and on the floor, taking notes in their one-night crash course on running an MMA event.

Even though Zuffa had only a few days to implement changes, right away you could see a difference in the live event production value. Quite a few extra staff members raced around to hang lighting or set up the fireworks display.

One of the more notable changes was Zuffa’s introduction of the raised entrance ramp. A day before the show, I was walking through the arena when Lorenzo Fertitta asked me if I’d like to stop and watch a run-through of Tito Ortiz’s entrance. The ramp was lined with mechanisms that would shoot fireworks and flames as Ortiz walked down it to the cage. Ortiz even had a signature song that started with a synthesizer-created voice blurting out, “Tito is in the house.” It was the most elaborate UFC entrance I’d ever seen, and it sent chills up my spine.

Fertitta was a fairly reserved character, but he couldn’t hide his excitement and aspirations for the UFC and the sport. He told me, “I want to be the one to pay fighters a million dollars. I don’t want to be like the old UFC. They didn’t make stars; they made the UFC the star.”

I was all for the fighters making more money—God knows they deserved it—but I told Fertitta, “The fighters will be only as true to you as you are true to them. If someone comes along that they think is truer, they’ll go to that person. They’re here to make money.”

The night before the event, the fighters were a little giddy, probably because of all the added frills, and decided to have some fun. Tito Ortiz, who had been managed by Dana White, decided to pull a prank on his new bosses. Ortiz had someone from his camp call White and explain in broken English that co-main event fighter Caol Uno had fallen down a hotel escalator and broken his leg. White and Fertitta nearly had side-by-side heart attacks when they heard that one. By the time they figured out what was really going on, the entire staff had had a good laugh about it.

The two championship bouts were the standout performances of UFC 30. Jens Pulver battled his way through five emotional rounds to win the bantamweight, later renamed lightweight, title over Japanese Shooto legend Caol Uno. In the main event, Ortiz slammed Evan Tanner to the canvas at the thirty-second mark, knocking him out cold.

New Jersey Commissioner Larry Hazzard was especially shaken up about the knockout and asked me if what Ortiz had done to Tanner was illegal. We discussed how the move was completely legal and went over a couple of other moments that night. This was the second UFC event that the NJSACB had allowed under the promotion’s rules while they drafted their own for the state.

They were looking closely, as was Zuffa.

In light of the Tanner knockout slam, Zuffa contracted a California-based company to build a new Octagon that would have more give to protect the fighters.

I’d seen some fighters scoping out the Octagon before shows, looking for the spots with the least give. Then, when they’d pick up their opponents, they’d walk to that specific spot and slam them down to inflict the most damage.

An engineer drew up a revised schematic and rebuilt the Octagon with aluminum, eliminating the wooden struts. Extra padding was also added to both the cage posts and the Octagon floor. Zuffa was raising the bar.

There were exactly forty days until the next scheduled UFC event, so Zuffa had to work fast. The company had been created from scratch to run the UFC, so many of the employees were new to promoting. There had been some talk of certain employees crossing over to work for Zuffa, but it was clear that not everyone would be invited to join the new company.

Paula Romero, who’d taken over as event coordinator at UFC 22 after Elaine had left, wanted Zuffa to hire her for more money than she’d made with SEG. However, Zuffa had hired its own coordinator, Lisa Faircloth, to oversee the events.

James Werme, who’d served as a producer since 1995 and had been an on-air roving reporter for the last few SEG shows, was let go.

Following UFC 31, Jeff Blatnick was replaced in the booth after having commentated every event since UFC 4. I felt especially bad for Blatnick because it was clear Dana White didn’t like anything about him, from his looks to his commentating skills. However, Blatnick had been integral to the sport’s growth.

Frank Shamrock, the retired middleweight champion who’d sat in on the play-by-play duties for the last few events, also decided to part ways with Zuffa. There was a falling out over what exactly Shamrock would do with the promotion. I was told that Shamrock wanted to take more of a role on the business end, but Zuffa wanted the retired champion commentating only. Shamrock’s and White’s personalities also seemed to clash, which sped up his exit.

The commentary booth would become a revolving door of auditionees for the next few shows, until Zuffa settled on the duo of Mike Goldberg and comedian and TV actor Joe Rogan in 2002. Rogan, who’d reached national acclaim as host of NBC’s
Fear Factor,
was an avid martial artist himself and had been a backstage interviewer for the UFC in its earlier days.