Let’s Get It On! (39 page)

On July 23, 2001, the Nevada State Athletic Commission voted unanimously to regulate mixed martial arts. They also adopted a set of rules nearly identical to the Unified Rules drafted in New Jersey a few months before.

It was obvious Fertitta had a lot of pull in town. Zuffa immediately secured a September 28 date for UFC 33 at the 12,000-seat Mandalay Bay Events Center on the Strip. As if that weren’t enough, Zuffa also negotiated the return of the UFC’s pay-per-views to iN DEMAND and all of the other leading cable providers that had jumped ship in 1997.

In six months, Zuffa had accomplished a number of the goals SEG had been chipping away at for the last few years. Things were changing fast, and I wasn’t immune. MMA was now regulated by two key state bodies. As a referee, I would now report to the commissions, not the promotion, and the days of my officiating events from top to bottom were over.

MMA referees made anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand dollars per event, but I’d been on a $75,000 annual salary with SEG for all the additional work I’d done in drafting its original rules and lobbying and defending the sport in the courtrooms.

Since I’d now be hired to referee through each state commission, Fertitta told me he couldn’t put me on Zuffa’s payroll. Zuffa planned to hold six events a year initially, so it would have been a loss of nearly $70,000 a year for me. It wouldn’t be financially feasible for me to get the time off from the police academy, so I’d have to consider giving up refereeing. It was nobody’s fault. I’d been hired at a time when regulatory bodies had no interest in the sport, but now the sport was evolving.

I was touched and grateful when Zuffa figured out a way to keep me around. Since they felt I’d become fairly synonymous with the UFC, they offered me a yearly licensing contract for my name and likeness, as well as the right to use my catchphrase “Let’s Get It On,” which I’d trademarked through boxing referee Mills Lane in the late 1990s. I’m told Marc Ratner, the NSAC’s executive director, was aware of the arrangement, though he never asked me about it. It was also understood that I’d assist the UFC in educating additional state commissions on the sport.

I was licensed as a referee in Nevada for UFC 33. When it came to combat sports, Las Vegas was considered the preeminent destination. As a young boy by my dad’s side, I’d watched monumental boxing events broadcasted live from Las Vegas. Now I would be a part of it. To say it was a huge moment and victory for me would be an understatement.

UFC 33 “Victory in Vegas” was held on September 28, 2001, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. Refereeing at the event should have been more thrilling, but two weeks earlier two commercial airliners had flown into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. As the nation mourned, we were uncertain if the show would happen at all. Many people were recommending that Zuffa reschedule, but Zuffa decided to go ahead as planned.

The other shoe dropped days later when Vitor Belfort, who was challenging Tito Ortiz for the light heavyweight title in the main event, injured his arm in a freak accident. While training in Brazil, Belfort was pushed into a window next to the ring, sustaining a deep laceration that required surgical repair. Zuffa now had to find a new opponent to take on Ortiz. With little training time, Belarusian fighter Vladimir Matyushenko agreed to step into Belfort’s headlining shoes.

It was Zuffa’s third event since taking over the UFC, and the promotion spared no expense. They bought billboard ads and put the fighters and officials up in the host hotel, which was one of the nicer ones on the Strip. Just as they were at the big boxing events, the weigh-ins were opened to the public and press. Everything within Zuffa’s control was managed with style.

Still, the variables of the night that couldn’t be accounted for were the fights themselves. In an effort to stack the event, three five-round championship bouts were added to the card, and all three fights went their full twenty-five-minute duration as the athletes cautiously fought to not lose. This caused the pay-per-view to run over its time limit, and the broadcast cut out during the main event between Ortiz and Matyushenko.

Despite their best efforts, Zuffa had repeated the mistake SEG had made at UFC 4 in 1994. Many customers asked for refunds, and the event was considered a financial disaster. The fights weren’t considered particularly interesting either. Of the eight bouts offered, six went to anticlimactic decisions.

Zuffa wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet, though.

A few days before UFC 34, the promotion and the NSAC jointly announced another rule change at a press conference in Las Vegas. I was flown out early during fight week to speak at the podium, where I told the press that if a bout stalemated, referees would now be allowed to restart a fight from standing position. This new rule would speed up the action and prevent a fighter from stalling, a major issue at UFC 33.

Back at the police academy, my involvement with the UFC was getting noticed. I had to start my course by allowing the class to get their questions about the UFC out of their systems. I understood people were curious, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Still, I wanted the cadets to concentrate on the more important materials at hand, like learning how to handle violent suspects in life-or-death situations, and they couldn’t do that until they got the UFC off their brains.

When I’d started refereeing for the UFC, the LAPD hadn’t said boo about it, other than asking me to get the appropriate work permits. My superiors all knew what I was doing with the UFC. Even the chief at the time, Bernard Parks, had stopped me once to talk about it. He wanted to attend a UFC, and I said I’d be happy to buy him some tickets.

So after I’d gone unnoticed for years, my LAPD superiors began to recognize me from my UFC appearances, which wasn’t necessarily good for me. One thing you learn with the LAPD is that it’s all about egos, and when someone thinks you have something over them, jealousy will rear its ugly head. People can be vindictive, and if they have power to use against you, sometimes they will. And if they don’t have it, they might go to someone who does, which is what happened to me.

At that time, my dad was working for Safariland, which produced body armor and police duty gear. The company had asked if he could get me to model a new vest in their ads because of my visibility as a UFC referee. The company also wanted to use the slogan “Are you ready?”

I said, “Is it a favor for you, Dad, or for them?”

“For me.”

“Then, of course, I’ll do it.”

I didn’t need to apply for a work permit. I wasn’t getting paid to pose in the ad. Safariland asked me to wear my badge to the shoot, but I told them I couldn’t. LAPD officers were strictly forbidden to wear their badges on film, TV, or in any type of advertising, so I told them I’d get a fake one to wear.

During the shoot, I even requested that I hold a glock, which the LAPD didn’t use at the time. I didn’t want the department associated in any way or for them to think I might be trying to make money off them.

When I put on the vest, I asked the photographer to get the prop badge from my bag for me. As he mounted it to my bulky gear, I couldn’t really see it.

When the ad came out a short time later in a police magazine, someone in the department complained that I shouldn’t be allowed to pose in advertisements. When I was confronted about it, a superior asked why I hadn’t filled out a work permit. I explained that I hadn’t gotten paid for it, but a complaint was filed against me, and an investigation was opened to unearth my evil modeling career.

The next thing I was asked was if I’d worn my badge during the shoot. You couldn’t even see the badge in the ad because it was half cut off by the gear. I told them I hadn’t worn my own badge anyway but a prop one.

“It looks a lot like an LAPD badge,” they said.

I insisted I’d gotten a fake one from a colleague.

I’ll be damned if they didn’t blow that picture up 800 times until they could read the last number on that badge. Sure enough, it matched the one on my own badge.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said when they handed me the picture.

I was accused of lying about the whole thing, and lying could’ve cost me my job.

My accusers treated me like one of their suspects, going after any shred of evidence they could find to prove my guilt. I was “big time” in their eyes, after all, and some of my superiors couldn’t have that.

I finally told my sergeant, Andy Markel, this whole situation was bullshit and nothing more than jealousy. Andy ended up taking over the investigation and made one taped phone call to the photographer who’d shot the ad. The photographer was willing to go on the record stating that he hadn’t noticed two badges in my bag and had pinned the wrong one on me, and the investigation was finally dropped.

The first batch of Zuffa-run UFC events improved on the product immeasurably. The packaging, from its advertising to its pre-fight videos, looked much more professional. The talent was improving quickly as well, but that didn’t immediately translate into pay-per-view buys. As a train-wreck spectacle, the UFC had peaked with nearly 300,000 buys. Now a recognized sport, the UFC barely mustered 50,000 buys for its first few shows.

UFC 35 “Throwdown,” on January 11, 2002, was the first held at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. The main aggressor at this event was a stomach bug, which had fighters, cornermen, and even some of Zuffa’s staff rushing for their toilet bowls the entire weekend.

Everyone had a theory regarding the mystery plague that pillaged UFC 35’s roster. Some of the fighters blamed it on the food cooked by the hotel’s restaurant, ironically named The Octagon, and a few fighters stole their personalized steak knives as payback. Some had come into town with the bug, though, so maybe it had infected the rest that way. Kevin Randleman was sick and irate at the same time, convinced the hotel had poisoned him in some master conspiracy before his big fight against Renato “Babalu” Sobral.

Luckily, I was one of the few not sick. During the event, fighters were running to the bathroom backstage. UFC middleweight champion Dave Menne was one of the sicker fighters and was throwing up till his title defense against Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Murilo Bustamante. A drained and depleted Menne lost the title to Bustamante on second-round punches, but the real story is that a guy who felt like he was going to die went out and fought his heart out and never complained once about the result.

Not all of the fighters got ill. In the main event, a healthy B. J. Penn challenged Jens Pulver for his lightweight crown and won the first two rounds handily. Penn secured an armbar on Pulver at the end of the second round, but just as he extended and locked it in, the bell rang. I believe two things happened in that moment: first, Pulver got pissed off over nearly getting caught; second, Penn, who was fighting for a world championship in his fourth professional bout, lost his spark because the fight literally slipped out of his hands.