Let’s Get It On! (45 page)

Outside our home in Agua Dulce with our English bulldog Tapout

Backstage, Liddell was his usual low-key self, but he was ready to go.

Couture is always easy in the locker room, smiling and joking. He never really shows a chink in the armor if he’s carrying in any problems. This night wasn’t any different.

I left both locker rooms unable to predict anything but that it would be a great fight.

It was. The rematch attracted over 12,000 paying fans for a $2.5 million gate, a record for Zuffa at the time. Liddell had his revenge, tagging Couture when he overcommitted to a punch and lost his balance along the fence. Couture was knocked out for the first time in his career, and I was right there to put a stop to any further beating from Liddell.

No matter who won, it was a great ending to the show. It was now clear that the UFC and the sport were heading into a brighter future.

“Skyscrape,” me, Ron, and the one and only Charles “Mask” Lewis

The actual first row seating at a show in Kuwait with manager extraordinaire Monte Cox

They say that seeing is believing, but if you believe it, you will see it!

—Charles “Mask” Lewis Jr.

The most difficult thing about being a mixed martial arts referee is striving for that perfect bout where the fighters do everything right and you do everything right in response. It’s no different than sinking a long putt in golf: you’ll hit it now and then but not every time.

This job is all about stopping the fight at just the right second. I always think of a fight as a triangle with its point at the top. I can’t stop the fight on the right side, where the bout hasn’t completely played out and fans might feel it’s early, or the left side, where I’m letting a fighter take more damage than he should.

I aim for just the right point in time and sometimes hit it perfectly. I can’t overemphasize how important that can be in certain fights. A handful of seconds can determine whether a fighter will be able to leave the cage under his own power. I never felt this more than at UFC 64 “Unstoppable” on October 14, 2006, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, when middleweight champion and former Ohio math teacher Rich Franklin defended his title against Brazilian striker Anderson Silva.

Zuffa had tried for years to bring Silva into the promotion, and when he had finally signed, the former Chute Boxe fighter had annihilated brawler Chris Leben on his feet in forty-nine seconds in his Octagon debut nearly four months earlier.

We all knew the combination of Silva’s speed and accuracy with punches could make him dangerous, but none of us were quite prepared for the way he would handle Franklin.

When Franklin and Silva clinched, I could see right away that Franklin couldn’t get out of the Brazilian’s plumb, a grip in which Silva locked his hands behind Franklin’s neck to keep him close. Now, this was the champion of the world at the time, so you couldn’t say he hadn’t been taught this. In the heat of the moment, Franklin just didn’t respond with an effective countermove. What he’d been taught and what had worked for him in the past weren’t working against the skill level Silva brought to the cage. I think Franklin thought he would be able to muscle his way out of it, but when he tried to weave his hands inside to replumb and establish the dominant position, Silva’s hold was too tight.

Franklin took some huge knee shots to his midsection while he stood helpless in Silva’s grip. Maybe when you’re watching from the outside, a knee to the body doesn’t seem like a big deal. Trust me, it’s a big deal. It knocks the life right out of you.

Every time Franklin wiggled free from Silva’s grip, Silva would just clamp it back on. After a while, I didn’t even look at Silva; I just kept moving to every angle so I wouldn’t lose sight of Franklin’s face.

They always say a fighter has a puncher’s chance, but in instances like these, it’s just a saying. Now it becomes a matter of when a referee can get the fighter out because he’s overwhelmed and can’t protect himself.

That was my job that night. It just happened that it was for the middleweight championship of the world, and nobody had expected a domination like that. I hit the triangle perfectly that night at that point when Franklin went down from a final knee that crushed his nose into his face. Three minutes into the bout, I called it off. If I’d let it go longer, who knows what else Franklin would have left with besides a broken nose.

The right moment isn’t always so clear, and sometimes I’ve let bouts go longer than I should have. It’s never on purpose; I always worry about a fighter taking too much damage. But it’s never an exact science because no two fights are alike.

A bout I think I let go too long was at UFC 63 “Hughes vs. Penn” on September 23, 2006, at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Rashad Evans took on Jason Lambert, and I read that fight all wrong. I gave Lambert too much credit and Evans not enough.

Evans, the winner of season two of
The Ultimate Fighter,
mounted Lambert and began throwing down strikes. Lambert was trying to fire back, but he was absorbing too many shots. He got hurt and went out cold before I registered that it was time to step in. I shouldn’t have let it go that far.

As soon as I walked out of that cage, I was thinking about that fight. I constantly dissect fights like this to figure out where I screwed up, where I should have stopped them, and why I didn’t. I never stop thinking about them.

Every time I run into Lambert, I think of this fight. Even though I’ve refereed Lambert in fights where he’s had great victories, none of those come to mind. Rashad Evans does.

I don’t like to see any athlete get hurt or embarrassed in front of his family, friends, and fans because I stopped a bout too early or too late.

When I step into the cage in search of that perfect fight, I always tell myself to be in the moment. I block everything else out. No cameraman tells me where to stand or to get out of the way, though a few brave ones have tried. I stand where I have the optimum vantage point, and no one else determines where that is.

Most people think they could referee as they sit on their couches and are fed multiple camera angles one after the other. But they really have no idea what it’s like to be the person inside the cage with the fighters. Every bout a referee walks into can be the one that goes desperately wrong.

Everyone on the outside—every fan watching in the arena or from home—has an interest in watching the fight, but that’s as far as it goes. If something goes wrong, they can walk away. They don’t know what it’s like to be the one with two lives in his hands.

I’m always looking for which fighter is starting to win the fight and which one is starting to receive more damage. I’ve learned to stand on the open side of the weaker fighter, where I’ll be able to read them the fastest. I have a signal for doctors when they enter the cage to let them know if I think the fight should be stopped, though it’s always their final decision.

The last thing a referee thinks about in the cage is the fans. If the crowd boos, the crowd boos. Entertaining the audience is not in a referee’s job description, but protecting the fighter is. Everything else is a distraction.

A referee can’t get caught up in the distractions, including his own fears.
Am I going to make the right call? Will I screw up?
These are valid questions, but they can’t dictate my actions. What I have to do is slow things down. I have criteria to follow, and when the time comes I do what I’m supposed to do.

A referee has to try to be selfless. The media always says a good referee is the one you don’t even notice in the cage. Personally, I don’t care whether I’m on TV or in a ballroom refereeing a match where nobody sees me. As long as it’s a good, competitive fight, I’m happy.

Still, just like the fighters, almost every referee wants to do the big fights. Some beg to be in the main event on TV, but they’re not there for the right reasons. When they finally get that fight and feel the pressure, many of them freeze.

I guess one of the greatest fears a referee can have is looking stupid getting hit or even knocked out in the cage. I’ve never thought about that once in there. In this line of work, you’re going to get hit. All the time, I see referees go in for a stoppage and turn their heads or stick their butts into the fighters and fall on them to avoid getting hit. A referee shouldn’t be concerned about getting hurt. He should be making sure the fighter he’s stopping the bout to protect doesn’t get hit again. If he gets hit in the process, then he’s done the right thing. I know the job I signed up for, and I just try to protect my chin.

I also always tell myself that things won’t go the way I want them to. Weird things can happen in a fight, so I have to be ready for anything. In my eighteen years of officiating, I’ve seen a lot, but I’m positive I still haven’t seen it all. I’ve been in the Octagon when fighters have farted, and I’ve had to keep a straight face. I’ve listened to full-blown conversations between fighters as they beat the piss out of one another. I’ve been there midfight when the arena’s lights have gone out, leaving me in the pitch black with two fighters grappling at my feet. I’ve been there when fighters have accidentally soiled their shorts, but everybody had to keep going.

Being a referee isn’t always fun or comfortable. I’ve had to tell fighters to take a shower before bouts because they smelled so bad I believed they’d have an unfair advantage.

A referee won’t always be popular. Everyone will have an opinion about the job I do, whether good or bad. If I have to make a decision or stop the fight for some reason, half the fans will think I did the right thing and the other will think I sucked. Journalists will sometimes write about me, and I’ll wish that for once in their lives they could really just get a clue or be in a referee’s shoes in that flash of a second in the cage. I’ve had to learn to take critiques in stride. I’ll never make everybody happy.

What makes it all rewarding is the relationships I’ve gained. I don’t know if it’s because the rest of the world has always seemed to be against it, but mixed martial arts has always felt like a family to me. I see the managers, agents, cornermen, cutmen, and fighters at show after show and know we all share a common bond.

I cherish my friendships with people like Monte Cox, still the most understatedly powerful manager and one of the funniest SOBs in the business. I met Cox around UFC 13, when he asked me for an autograph for his son. Cox would go on to manage three UFC champions simultaneously and oversee the careers of some of the most famous fighters from Pat Miletich’s camp, like Matt Hughes and Jens Pulver. I enjoyed talking with Cox about the fighters and potential matchups over our meals at the shows. I didn’t always agree with him, but he has a great knack for telling his funny fighter stories. Cox would do just about anything for his fighters. He’s even let some of them live with him and his family while they’ve gotten their starts.