Let’s Get It On! (38 page)

Joe Silva replaced John Perretti as matchmaker. From his legendary MMA tape collection, he’d sent Meyrowitz copies of fights from Japan and other countries. SEG had paid Silva in free posters and tickets for a few shows, but when they couldn’t afford to do that anymore, commentator Jeff Blatnick had paid Silva to research and write up fighter bio notes Blatnick could refer to during the broadcasts. When Zuffa bought the UFC, I think it was Blatnick who told Fertitta and White they might want to talk to Silva because of his vast fighter knowledge. John Lewis, their Brazilian jiu-jitsu teacher, was supposed to get the matchmaker job, but Zuffa took a chance and went with Silva instead.

As for me, I hoped I wasn’t about to share the same fate as Blatnick, Werme, and Perretti. I’d fought hard for MMA and been through a lot of good and bad with it. The UFC wasn’t perfect, but it was like one of my kids, and I’d always love it unconditionally. I was relieved when I got the call to go work UFC 31.

One more momentous development was about to happen for the sport, though. On April 3, 2001, just a month before UFC 31, Fertitta, White, Silva, Blatnick, IFC promoter Paul Smith, King of the Cage promoter Terry Trebilcock, Pride Fighting Championships representatives Yukino Kanda and Hideki Yamamoto, a few others, and I met at Commissioner Hazzard’s request in Trenton, New Jersey, in a NJSACB conference room. NSAC Executive Director Marc Ratner participated by phone. We were there to discuss and agree upon a set of rules. The meeting lasted about four hours.

The board started with the UFC’s current rules and discussed other hot topics like the use of elbows and knees on the ground. The board’s physician weighed in on everything, giving his medical opinion of whether a move was acceptable within the realm of fighter safety. The doctor nearly had a fit over one fighter kneeing another downed fighter at the IFC show in 2000, and I think we all tried to be reasonable with his dramatics. Zuffa knew the NJSACB would have issues with certain maneuvers, so they’d prepared themselves.

The board was concerned about the slams and throws that were acceptable in MMA, but we’d prepared a DVD that demonstrated all of these moves happening in the 1996 Olympics in the judo, Greco-Roman wrestling, and freestyle wrestling competitions. Nobody could argue with the DVD.

We also discussed weight divisions, and the board expanded the list from three to the eight main weight classes utilized in the sport today. The heavyweight division was a sticking point, though, as it started at 205.1 pounds and had no cutoff. The physician requested that the heavyweight division be capped at 265 pounds and that fighters over that mark fall into a super heavyweight division. This seemed acceptable to all of the United States promoters in the room.

The Japanese representatives from Pride, Kanda and Yamamoto, didn’t say a word the whole time until the subject of clothing and shoes was brought up. On the Japanese MMA scene, gis, leggings, and wrestling shoes were widely accepted, so they wanted them kept in.

However, Commissioner Hazzard was adamantly opposed. “I don’t want shoes in the ring at all,” he said, even after we explained that these were the lighter wrestling shoes. “There will be no gis,” he added. “The fighters will wear shorts, cups, and gloves—that’s it.”

I can’t imagine Pride’s Kanda and Yamamoto were too pleased with this. The new fighter uniform was but another detail that would make it more difficult to bring their product to the United States.

Round duration was another big issue for Pride. While the United States had officially adopted three five-minute rounds as the standard, Japanese MMA preferred a ten-minute first round, then two additional five-minute rounds to allow grapplers more time to work their game. However, the ten-five-five-round system wouldn’t be allowed in New Jersey.

By the end of the meeting, Zuffa had gotten pretty much everything it had hoped for, as the NJSACB didn’t veer too far from what the UFC had already been doing. No kneeing or kicking the head of a downed opponent remained in the new set of Unified Rules, while Pride would continue to allow them in Japan.

In addition, the NJSACB approved four-to-eight-ounce fighter gloves after inspecting a sample of each pair brought to the meeting. NJSACB legal counsel Nick Lembo, whom Hazzard put in charge of MMA regulation in the state, was tasked with getting down all of these rules and changes—what became known as the Unified Rules of MMA.

The sport’s passage in New Jersey made me reflect on how I presented myself on the job. I’d always tried to be as professional as I could, but now I knew I had to watch my fraternization with the fighters.

From the early UFCs until now, I’d rolled and trained with them at events. My thirst for jiu-jitsu hadn’t subsided when I’d left Rorion Gracie’s gym in 1995. I’d continued to study with other respected Southern California black belts like Joe Moreira and Jean Jacques Machado and had worked my way up to brown belt status over the years. As we’d waited for shows, we’d all gravitated to the gyms or workout areas provided in the hotel, exchanged techniques, and goofed around. I’d rolled with anybody who’d wanted to, experiencing the moves I’d have to identify and anticipate while refereeing.

Because everyone at a UFC event shared a common passion, it would also be a normal occurrence for me and Elaine to have dinner with some of the fighters and their camps.

I understood those days were now over. It wasn’t as if rolling with fighters or eating dinner with them would sway me in the cage, but I understood it was up to me to protect the image of fair officiating in the sport. That didn’t mean I had to be stern or cut myself off from everyone, but my interactions had to be on a professional level only.

At the surprise fortieth birthday party my wife threw me—when Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz were still friends

With the newly minted Unified Rules, UFC 31 “Locked & Loaded” was the third in four events to take place at the Trump Taj Mahal and the first run solely by Zuffa. I was challenged as a referee in the main event, a heavyweight title bout between UFC champion Randy Couture and Brazilian striker Pedro Rizzo. I don’t like to throw the word “war” around, but there doesn’t seem to be a more appropriate one to describe this twenty-five-minute battle I saw firsthand. To this day, it’s one of the best fights I’ve ever officiated. It took a lot out of both fighters and presented multiple moments when I was on the verge of intervening.

In the first round, Couture took Rizzo down and stacked him on the fence. Couture unleashed punches and elbows into Rizzo’s guard, opening up the Brazilian’s face. Rizzo wasn’t hard to cut because he had a lot of scar tissue on his face. I didn’t stop it because Rizzo was fighting back; he was trying. I’d told the fighters that if they were at least attempting to move or slow their opponent, whether or not they were successful, I’d let it continue.

I could tell Rizzo knew where he was and his mind was still in it. He couldn’t get out from underneath Couture, but he was fending off a few of the punches and staying alive. Couture kept swinging away till he’d virtually punched himself out by the end of the round.

The next round was a complete turn of the tables, primarily because Couture had used up his gas tank in the first five minutes. Rizzo started connecting some big, damaging leg kicks, which made me wonder how Couture would walk afterward.

After the second round, I went to Couture’s corner and asked if he wanted to continue. I was concerned.

He and his corner said, “We’re good,” a few times, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d gotten his ass handed to him for an entire round. I was trying to give him a way out, but he didn’t take it. Certain fighters can pull it out when they have to, and Couture was that guy in this and a majority of his fights.

In the third round, Couture took Rizzo down again and managed to control positioning for a few crucial moments to get some strength back. It really was the third round that determined the outcome of that fight because Couture was able to get back into the game.

For rounds four and five, they traded uppercuts and hooks, shot and avoided takedowns, and pretty much made each other’s life miserable.

I knew the fight was close, but I thought the judges would give it to Rizzo because of the greater damage he’d inflicted over the course of the fight. However, when the scores were read, Couture was given the nod. I was fine with that and could see how the judges could have gone either way.

I think Couture might have been surprised by it, though. When I raised his hand, he looked confused.

As a small footnote, UFC 31 also marked the debut of a twenty-three-year-old Hawaiian named B. J. Penn on the undercard. Penn took down opponent Joey Gilbert and ground-and-pounded him into submission from back mount as if it were nothing. When the referee stepped in, Penn looked up with the most innocent of expressions. This was Penn’s first professional fight, but you could tell his skill far exceeded that of many of the veterans on the card. Talk about a prodigy.

By UFC 32, I felt optimistic. Some encouraging changes were already happening with both Zuffa and the UFC. Fertitta had opened offices in Las Vegas and had a staff coordinating upcoming UFC events and addressing questions and concerns. Medicals and necessary paperwork were being collected and handled well ahead of the event, leaving less chance for last-minute issues.

Schedules, flights, and hotel rooms were organized and disseminated promptly. Zuffa’s in-house publicity department distributed press releases with updates on each upcoming event and reached out to local and national newspapers and other media outlets to get press covering the shows. The UFC asked me to speak with too many reporters to count, but I never minded. It was an important educational process, and we all had to do our part.

Suddenly the UFC wasn’t a fly-by-night operation anymore. It was obvious that the little details wouldn’t fall through the cracks, but if they did someone would be there to pick them up.

However, not all of Zuffa’s initial changes were successful. For instance, Zuffa dropped considerable dough for a seven-figure advertising campaign featuring fighters like Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture, Pedro Rizzo, Carlos Newton, and Jens Pulver paired with models in a handful of prominent men’s magazines, including
Maxim
and
FHM.
Carmen Electra, who also starred in the ad campaign, was hired as the spokeswoman for the UFC. At a New York City press conference, when asked about her MMA experience, Electra told reporters she’d done Tae Bo. She seemed like a waste of money to me, but I thought maybe Fertitta had more experience in this than I did.

The campaign didn’t even make a dent in boosting public awareness of the UFC or the sport. That was clear from the turnout at the next event.

UFC 32 “Showdown in the Meadowlands,” held at the Continental Airlines Arena, now the IZOD Center, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was underwhelming for a number of reasons. While the event marked the UFC’s return from parking lot tents and run-down community halls to a state-of-the-art venue, Zuffa shot too high, and it was virtually impossible to fill the 20,000-seat arena.

Bernie Dillon, the original chief operating officer for Zuffa, handled the arena layout and priced the tickets, which ran from $25 for the nosebleeds to $300 for cageside seats. It didn’t seem super expensive, but the event sold only a few thousand tickets. Ticket pricing became an immediate issue between Dana White and Dillon, who left Zuffa after a few shows.

The real issue, in my opinion, was the weak main event, which paired Tito Ortiz against Australian grappler Elvis Sinosic. At UFC 30, Sinosic had pulled off a major upset in submitting Jeremy Horn, but he had little fighting experience in the United States and certainly wasn’t ready for headlining status.

The much larger and stronger Ortiz took Sinosic down and hammered him with fists and elbows. Sinosic’s forehead split open almost instantaneously, and the flaps of skin hung from his face. I try to let championship bouts play out as long as possible because there’s so much at stake, but Ortiz destroyed Sinosic to the point that I had to jump in three and a half minutes into the first round.

As Zuffa tried to find its promotional legs, progress was being made in Nevada. From his time as a commissioner, Fertitta had relationships with all of the NSAC’s players, and mixed martial arts was rescheduled to go to the commission for a vote.

I was flown to Reno to see Glenn Carano, the former football player who’d thought MMA was too violent for his tastes. I met him at the casino he owned there and wasn’t shocked to learn he still wasn’t thrilled with the sport.

After a while, when he was fed up with talking about it, he said, “John, I’m never going to like this sport, and it’s not what I consider a good athletic event, but I am friends with Lorenzo Fertitta. He believes in it, and I will vote for it.”