Let’s Get It On! (41 page)

The actual fight wasn’t as competitive. Even though Ortiz wasn’t a great striker, he managed to bash Shamrock’s face until it was almost unrecognizable.

At the end of the third round, Shamrock looked my direction. “I can’t see anything, John.”

I walked him to his corner and told Tra Telligman, his lead cornerman, “Your fighter’s having trouble seeing.”

Standing between Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock at the UFC 40 weigh-ins, a job I’m glad UFC President Dana White took over later

I wanted Shamrock’s corner to have the chance to pull him out of the fight, but I had also told the ringside physician what he had said to me. It was time to get him out: the question was which way it was going to happen. Shamrock’s corner called it, saving their man from any more damage. It was a great bout and an honorable ending.

The energy that night was unlike any I’d felt before. Shamrock’s entrance was magic, as always, and the matchup had a “big fight” feel. Something clicked with the TV audience as well. Maybe it was the name recognition of two of the UFC’s pioneers or their genuine dislike for one another, but when the pay-per-view numbers were finally tallied, UFC 40 had gotten 150,000 buys. It was Zuffa’s first commercial success.

My sons were lucky enough to grow up meeting some of the sport’s great stars: here with Jerry Bohlander and Ken Shamrock.

At Zuffa’s second show in Las Vegas with my family. You can see Zuffa was stepping up the production value. (UFC 34 “High Voltage,” November 2001)

We are not retreating
We are advancing in another direction.

—General Douglas MacArthur

With Zuffa desperate to connect with new fans, Abbott would be thrown right into the fire at the promotion’s next event, UFC 41 “Onslaught” on February 28, 2003, at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Bringing back the now thirty-eight-year-old “barstool brawler” didn’t mesh with the UFC’s line that its fighters were world-class athletes trained in multiple martial arts disciplines, but Zuffa needed a hook—fast.

I wondered who they could match Abbott with so he’d have a decent chance. Randy Couture had stood up at UFC 40 to volunteer for the job, but I knew that wouldn’t happen.

Instead, Frank Mir, the twenty-three-year-old grappling enthusiast, was offered Abbott first. Mir had notched back-to-back submission wins before British Ian Freeman had beaten and bloodied him to a first-round finish at UFC 38 in London. He hadn’t taken Freeman’s punches well at all, and that was about all Abbott had, at least for the first couple of minutes before he’d gas out.

I think the match was made because Mir had a good name but couldn’t take strong punching well, which is where Abbott had the best shot. But to me, Mir was the exact type of fighter who would give Abbott problems. He was smart and would not be stupid enough to stand and trade shots with someone like Abbott.

As I suspected, Mir turned out to be a terrible matchup for Abbott. He was big and strong and managed to get Abbott down to the mat early, caught him in an omoplata shoulder lock, then reached down and applied a toe hold that cranked Abbott’s ankle in a violent rotation. With no ground training to know how to get out of it, Abbott tapped out in just forty-six seconds. It was a beautiful double submission that emphasized how far the sport had progressed. However, we all realized after the fact that this wasn’t a smart match if they were trying to bring back an older UFC star to gain some momentum.

Another fighter the UFC was hoping to build at UFC 41 was Ricco Rodriguez, who’d won the vacant heavyweight title over Couture five months earlier at UFC 39. However, Rodriguez wouldn’t hold the belt long at all. Tim Sylvia, a six-feet-eight newcomer, came out of nowhere and knocked down Rodriguez in the first round. As soon as Sylvia hit Rodriguez, you could see the champion didn’t want to stand with him anymore, but he couldn’t get Sylvia down to the mat. From his back, Rodriguez tried an armbar and Sylvia lifted him up and slammed him on his head. It was the beginning of the end for Rodriguez, who never again found the success he’d achieved early in his career.

I also refereed the B. J. Penn versus Caol Uno rematch for the lightweight title vacated by Jens Pulver.
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UFC 41’s championship bout was the culmination of a four-man tournament, and the promotion was eager to get a new 155-pound champion back in the mix. But after five rounds of action, the fight was ruled a draw.

I couldn’t believe one of the judges had given the fight to Uno and another had scored it a draw when Penn had clearly won. To me, it was simply a crime.

Though Abbott’s drawing power had helped UFC 41 sell out the Boardwalk Hall with 11,700 spectators, things didn’t bode well on the pay-per-view front. UFC 40 had been able to break through the 100,000 buy-rate ceiling, but UFC 41 was said to have dipped right back below it, where the numbers would stay for the next handful of shows.

Zuffa continued to Miami, Florida, site of UFC 42 “Sudden Impact,” held on April 25, 2003, at the 16,000-seat American Airlines Arena. It was another sobering night for all of us, with only about half the venue filled with fans. Even O. J. Simpson, notorious at this point for his acquittal in his ex-wife’s murder trial, was able to sneak into the arena undetected and watch the show unfettered in a sea of empty seats.

The Florida State Boxing Commission had insisted on using two of its own referees for the preliminary bouts that night. During the event, one of the local referees watched Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Hermes Franca dislocate Rich Crunkilton’s elbow two times with a straight armlock attempt in their lightweight contest. Franca actually pointed to the dislocated elbow to let the referee know what he’d done, but that didn’t work.

The referee should have been protecting Crunkilton from himself, as he wouldn’t submit, but since he didn’t know what he was looking at, it would’ve been hard to accomplish that. The commission pulled the referee from the rest of the fights he’d been assigned to that night and had me sub for him.

It wouldn’t be the first or last time I’d have to sit cageside and watch a fighter’s safety be compromised. Referees would accept assignments to work MMA shows when they had no idea what the fighters were doing. It upset me every time.

A bout that led to a rule change: Genki Sudo vs. Duane Ludwig at UFC 42 “Sudden Impact” (April 2003)

UFC 42 led to another rule change. Japanese showman Genki Sudo was dominating his fight on the ground against striker Duane Ludwig until I halted the action in round three. I believed Ludwig was taking in too much blood and couldn’t breathe properly. When a doctor deemed the fighter fit to continue, I restarted the pair from the one position I was allowed to: standing. Sudo lost the ground position he’d worked so hard to get, and Ludwig, a champion kickboxer, took full advantage, scoring with late punches and kicks to pull out a controversial split decision, even though Sudo had dominated Ludwig for a good portion of the fight before.

This didn’t make sense to anybody, and fast action was taken. Both the UFC and the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which would oversee the promotion’s next event, instituted a new procedure. The referee would have to remember the fighters’ strategic positions before stopping a bout and bringing a fighter to the doctor for a medical opinion. If the fight continued, the referee could now restart the fighters in the position they’d been stopped in, whether standing or on the ground.

Now, when a referee thought he’d need to stop a bout for a doctor’s check, he’d have to take a quick mental photo of the fighters’ positions. Are they in half guard? Does he have an underhook? We never say that we put the fighters back in their exact positions and locations; it’s approximate. It’s not hard for me to make these mental pictures because I understand the positions and have been in them myself repeated times. The extra effort is worthwhile because it means the Sudo-Ludwig scenario won’t repeat itself.