Let’s Get It On! (53 page)

The journey is the reward.

—Chinese proverb

It only took me a day to realize I’d jumped off a cliff I should never have been standing on.

The morning after my retirement match at
The Ultimate Fighter 6,
I sat in Las Vegas with my new bosses at The Fight Network to take a meeting with M-1 Global, a Russian-based fight promotion that had recently teamed up with American partners, including longtime manager and promoter Monte Cox. As a management team, M-1 Global also controlled the business dealings of Fedor Emelianenko, who was considered the world’s greatest heavyweight. After turning down a lucrative offer for Emelianenko to fight in the UFC, M-1 had instead decided to start its own North American fight promotion using Emelianenko as its poster boy.

As the new executive of strategic planning for the channel, I had been the one to bring the two groups together when TFN expressed interest in airing M-1 events. However, one of my bosses turned the entire point of the meeting around and asked M-1 to invest in the network.

Oh my God,
I thought, as I sat there listening.
I gave up doing what I loved for this?
It wasn’t a promising start to the next chapter in my MMA career.

A week later, Elaine and I flew to Montreal for my debut as a cageside commentator at TKO 31 at the Centre Bell. Elaine was excited for me, but I was completely clueless about commentating. I’d been interviewed about the sport countless times over the years, but this was different and I felt like I was being thrown to the wolves.

Sitting on the other side of the chain-link fence felt foreign. I wanted to be the guy on the inside making the decisions, but it wasn’t what I’d been hired for. I certainly wasn’t what you’d call a natural in this new role, and I felt unprepared. Still, I figured I would work, try to get better, and be the best I could be at it.

My broadcast partner, Mauro Ranallo, on the other hand, was a savant at spewing out rapid-fire descriptions that made sense. From the start, Ranallo and TFN executives were encouraging, though I look back now and know I was horrible that first night. Ranallo helpfully told me how to follow his setups and play-by-play analyses.

In the end it was a fun night, but I had a long way to go.

As I moved from commentating duties to shooting promos in the studio, I realized just how hard my new role would be. If you watch TV broadcasts, the announcers have teleprompter screens displaying their scripts, but a start-up company like TFN didn’t have a teleprompter. It was no bother for Ranallo, who could study his script in hand for less than a minute, then jump in front of the camera without looking down at his notes once. For me, though, it was one of those “You expect me to do that?” moments.

If I’m being asked questions about something I know well, that’s simple. But when I stood there with someone feeding me lines I’d never say, I realized I was in the wrong world.

I also understood that I’d been hired for my notoriety in the sport and that a big facet of my job would be to promote the channel. However, I didn’t care much for the spotlight at all.

I’d never refereed because I wanted people to see me, and I’d never fancied myself a commentator or on-camera talent. You have to love what you’re doing to be good at it. That’s where I got it wrong.

My former life as a referee and my new one as an on-air analyst became muddled fairly quickly. I knew TFN had hired me for my officiating and general historical knowledge of the sport, and questions pertaining to this would usually be directed my way. This I expected with the job. What I never anticipated was that the channel would use my expertise as a bargaining chip.

In March, ProElite, another start-up company that began promoting its EliteXC events on Showtime in 2007, approached me to referee its next main event featuring Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson against British fighter James Thompson that May in New Jersey. What was special about this show was that it was going to be the first live MMA event on a major broadcast network, airing on CBS.

One TFN executive wanted me to do it to push the channel, as if I could wear the network’s logo on my referee shirt. Of course, this was a ridiculous notion. I was no longer a referee and knew jumping between officiating and broadcasting would be a conflict of interest. In fact, when I’d previously let the Nevada State Athletic Commission know of my career change, they’d pointed this out to me. I told ProElite I appreciated the opportunity but wouldn’t take the assignment.

The Fight Network came up with other ways to use my visibility. In April, the channel ran a contest where the winner would get two front row seats with me at UFC 83 in Montreal.

It was an odd situation because the UFC wasn’t on good terms with The Fight Network, as the channel had aired the ending of the Randy Couture—Gabriel Gonzaga headliner at UFC 74 without Zuffa’s permission.
¹⁴
When Zuffa found out, it pulled all of TFN’s press credentials and access to its events.

Even though this had happened before I’d joined TFN, I spoke to Dana to see if he’d reinstate them. I knew the chances were slim. Zuffa took this kind of thing seriously, as they should. A Zuffa employee even asked why I’d gone to work for “scumbags,” saying that what TFN had done was like going into his house and raping his wife.

I told the TFN executives they needed to meet with Zuffa in person and apologize for the error. However, TFN didn’t take it seriously, and in the end it cost them big-time. Unable to secure press access to UFC 83, TFN tried to sneak into the event by renting the sports bar inside the Bell Centre, where Ranallo, Randy Couture (who’d been hired by TFN before me), and I hosted our prefight and postfight shows.

After the preshow, I met the contest winner and his girlfriend so we could all watch the main card together. I immediately felt bad for this nice couple, as our seats turned out to be about fifty rows up—the lousiest view I’ve ever had for an MMA event. The worst thing about it was that fans kept approaching me for autographs during the fights. It got so bad that the venue posted security guards at each end of my row. When each fight ended, the guards would let the fans into our row, and I stood there taking pictures the entire time. I felt bad for everyone sitting behind us, but I felt even worse for the couple. They were good sports for sure.

Besides promotional events like these, a couple media tours, one weekly appearance on the network’s radio show with Ranallo, and some radio interviews on other stations to promote the network, I wasn’t given much more to do during my employment with TFN.

I guess the silver lining was that I had more time to develop and refine the curriculum for COMMAND. I pored over fight footage, jotted notes, and continued to add to my PowerPoint presentation. Elaine and I began to host the three-day courses at our own gym, and I was surprised and grateful each time they’d fill up with eager students.

Graduation day for my son Ron from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department: three generations of law enforcement

I also got to spend more time with my family. My two eldest children were now out of high school, and I proudly watched my son Ron graduate with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Class 370 that April.

Still, this wasn’t what I’d signed up for with TFN. I’d taken the job partly because TFN had reminded me of ESPN when it had first launched, and we all saw what ESPN had grown into. Though I wasn’t a fan of professional wrestling, I thought the idea of a twenty-four-hour combat sports network was a good one.

My greatest concern was that TFN wouldn’t have enough work for me, and I knew I needed to stay busy. I’d opened the gym, but that was now up and running on its own, so I could commit the time to the channel. I offered to go up to the Toronto headquarters anytime they needed me, but I was assured there would be plenty for me to do in the States.

Instead, I sat around my office and kept calling to see if anything was happening. I was always told there was a lot coming up or the plans to create a satellite studio in California were moving forward or the channel was just about to break into the United States market, so I waited.

I wanted TFN to succeed, but I couldn’t do much from my gym in Valencia. I started to get the impression that they didn’t have the money to move into the next phase of expansion I’d been brought on to be a part of.

I didn’t like sitting around doing nothing. If you told me I could either have all the money I need for the rest of my life and not work, or work for the rest of my life and earn enough to make ends meet, I’d take the latter. I know that may seem crazy, but I honestly believe staying busy helps in keeping you productive and alive. I see people who retire and stop doing everything, and they just dry up and die. I had to stay busy.

Although TFN continued to underutilize me, there was plenty of activity in the rest of the fight community. With the success of
The Ultimate Fighter
and the UFC’s rising popularity, I was approached by a couple of fledgling fight promotions interested in hiring me. One of them was going to be started by Affliction Clothing, a trendy designer brand that had sponsored many fighters, rock stars, and other sports figures with much success. Affliction had had a falling out with Zuffa over its sponsorship deal, so Affliction had decided to promote its own events and offered me the position of president of Affliction Entertainment.

It was a phenomenal offer with an incredible salary, but in the end I just didn’t believe the business plan was well thought out, so I didn’t accept.

However, this led to conversations between the new promotion and TFN, and by July the network had exclusive Canadian rights to air Affliction’s first event from Anaheim, California. As part of the deal, I was loaned out to Affliction as its color commentator alongside NFL reporter and TV host Jay Glazer and former UFC fighter Frank Trigg. Along with color commentary, I was asked to do the in-ring interviews with the night’s winners after their bouts.

Affliction “Banned” was a grandiose pay-per-view event with an astronomical $3 million dollar—plus fighter payroll to match.
¹⁵
In the main event, Emelianenko swarmed former UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia with punches and submitted his much larger opponent in only thirty-six seconds.

After the quick finish, I found myself where I usually am at these events, standing between two fighters—except this time I had a microphone in my hand. Randy Couture, who’d announced his resignation from the UFC months before in order to pursue a bout with Emelianenko, had stepped into the ring for a brief, respectful exchange with him. At the time, this was the biggest fight that could happen in the sport, so having these two standing next to one another blew the top off the Honda Center that night.

Though my job description in the sport had changed dramatically, I was still being asked to participate in some athletic commission functions. Prior to “Banned,” members of the Association of Boxing Commissions had invited me to be a part of a committee that would review and propose revisions to the existing MMA regulations. The committee presented its findings two weeks before the Affliction show at the annual ABC meeting in Montreal. Part of that presentation had included the introduction of additional weight divisions outside of the eight already widely utilized, which the ABC members voted on and passed by majority.

UFC President Dana White came out shortly after the vote and said his organization wouldn’t acknowledge the additional weight classes. He also pointed to me as the author of the controversial amendment, saying I was trying to change the rules of the sport.

In reality, my name had appeared on the revised MMA guidelines packet along with other names, but I wasn’t the one who’d written in that particular amendment.

In fact, I was in agreement with Dana. I thought adding more weight divisions would dilute the sport, as I thought it had in boxing. During the committee’s review period, I’d suggested only one additional weight class, between light heavyweight and heavyweight. I felt the disparity between the two divisions left fighters who weighed 220 to 230 pounds in a quandary. They had to either gain weight to keep up with some of the bigger behemoths or cut sometimes unrealistic amounts to get under 205 for the light heavyweight class. I suggested a cruiserweight division, or whatever they wanted to call it, for fighters weighing 205 to 230 pounds, and then heavyweight could be limited to 231 to 265 pounds.