Let’s Get It On! (54 page)

No athletic commission would ever consider putting 145-pound champion José Aldo against 205-pound champion Jon Jones, but that was basically what they were doing when they matched someone like Randy Couture against Brock Lesnar, because the weight differential was the same. When you know a fighter like Lesnar weighs in at 265 pounds but by fight night is up to somewhere about 285 pounds, while Couture remains the same 220 pounds he weighed in at the day before, we’re talking a 65-pound difference.

I’d voiced my concerns to the other committee members about the other proposed weight classes I’d thought were unnecessary, but it was decided that the amendment for six additional weight divisions would stay in and be presented for a vote anyway.

After Dana came out at a press conference basically blaming me for these rule changes, I probably could have offered this information to clear things up. However, that would have meant throwing some committee members under the bus, and I didn’t feel that would be in anyone’s best interest.

Publicly, this is where people say things got uncomfortable between me and the UFC. Honestly, though, my relationship with Dana and the UFC had begun to unravel some months before.

As I mentioned, TFN booked me for many radio interviews to promote the channel. During one of those interviews for a Toronto radio station, one of the three hosts started talking about the UFC when Zuffa took it over from SEG. The radio host described how Dana White bought this “diamond in the rough,” ran toward regulation with the state athletic commissions, and changed the rules to make the sport safe.

Some MMA websites called this version of MMA’s history the “Zuffa Myth.” It really wasn’t a myth but a shortened version of what had transpired over time. When Zuffa bought the company, they did run toward regulation, just as they were stating. The problem was that major media outlets only heard this part of the story and didn’t investigate things any further. If they had, they would have seen that the UFC’s previous owners had begun working with athletic commissions since UFC 15.

It’s a fact that the UFC and MMA were first regulated in Mississippi back at UFC 15, long before Zuffa or Dana White owned the promotion. I told the host that UFC 16 and 17 had been sanctioned and regulated by state athletic commissions and that UFC 28 had been sanctioned by Larry Hazzard and the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board in 2000. Again, all of this happened before Zuffa bought the UFC and was the result of the concerted effort of many people behind the scenes who cared very much for the sport.

I then explained how the rules of the sport had evolved over the years and that finally in April of 2001 the NJSACB had brought together many promoters, including Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta, Paul Smith of the IFC, Marc Ratner of the NSAC, and representatives from Japan’s Dream Stage Entertainment (which promoted Pride Fighting Championships), to write down a set of regulations everyone could use.

“This is not what Dana says,” the radio host repeatedly stated throughout my tutorial.

I guess I could have backed down and not bitten, but I’d finally had enough and said, “Well, if that’s what Dana’s telling you, then Dana is lying to you.”

It was stupid of me to say it that way and to fall into the trap the radio host was hoping I would. I didn’t think Dana was lying about anything. He’d just quickly abbreviated everything into one statement, and they’d taken it as fact.

The news got back to Zuffa fast. About two weeks later, I received a phone call from the UFC’s majority owner, Lorenzo Fertitta, who asked me about the interview. I told him what was said and that the radio host was trying to say things that weren’t true. I told him I gave them the facts and that if people asked me about the sport or the UFC, I’d always tell the truth, plain and simple. I didn’t tell Lorenzo this in an adversarial manner; I had and still have enormous respect for him as a businessman and a person. I simply wasn’t going to condense, alter, or cover up the sport’s true history.

After that conversation, I knew my relationship with the UFC had changed forever. I was raised to hit back harder when someone hit me. It might be a great way for a kid or for an adult destined for jail to handle things, but the civilized world is made up of much smarter people than me.

When the UFC pulled away from me, one of the smarter people who tried to advise me was Marc Ratner, who’d retired from the Nevada State Athletic Commission and taken a job as Zuffa’s vice president of regulatory affairs. I’ve always admired and respected Marc as an even-tempered man able to complete just about any task because of how smart he is. I appreciated that Marc never gave up on me.

Corey Schafer, who heads up an MMA and kickboxing sanctioning body called the ISKA, is another one of those guys who’s smarter than me. Corey showed me that just because someone says something about you doesn’t mean you have to react immediately. He taught me to be smart and look at what I’d done that could have brought about this response, analyze it, and then figure out how to make it right for everyone. I have to admit I’m still working on it, but I hope to someday live up to Corey’s example.

It’s taken me a long time to be able to say this, but I now take full responsibility for what happened between me and Zuffa.

Being an analyst for TFN wasn’t easy for me. After every questionable referee stoppage or judges’ decision, my phone would ring off the hook with reporters looking for comments. As a referee, I’d tried not to speak judgmentally about my colleagues. But I wasn’t a referee anymore. I was hired and paid to give my opinions and impressions and was expected to do my job. Doing this without upsetting some people proved difficult.

I also figured that if I spoke truthfully, maybe it would improve things. But when I suggested that some officials were being assigned to MMA events they were vastly under-qualified for, it alienated me with a few athletic commissions.

My time away from refereeing was probably one of the harder periods of my life. I’d cut something out that I’d really enjoyed and taken pride in. I would sit at home and watch events and get angry when a referee would get a call wrong or not remember a rule correctly.

In the fall of 2009, I started to think about returning to refereeing. Then I began to talk to Elaine about it. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to return, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was where I truly belonged.

The Fight Network made it a much easier decision for me in the end. The channel went through a drastic change in leadership, and its cash flow issues only mounted. My paychecks were delayed, then stopped coming altogether. In October of 2009, I resigned from the company.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the California State Athletic Commission for taking me back into the fold as quickly as they did. My return engagement to the cage came at Strikeforce “Destruction” on November 21, 2008, at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.

I don’t mean to sound cliché, but it felt like I’d never left. The other referees, judges, and backstage officials all welcomed me back with enthusiasm as I went about my regular routine that night before the fights started. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to have me around again, which was a good feeling.

Strikeforce was a Bay Area promotion that used a lot of local talent, so I didn’t know every fighter. In the locker rooms, I took a knee to go over the rules with each fighter stretching and warming up on the mat. I tried to make them feel at ease, as I’d always done. If a fighter was nervous and made a joke, I’d come right back with humor. If he seemed a little in awe of the situation, I talked to him until I felt he’d absorbed the instructions.

Then I walked out into the arena and did my job. It wasn’t different from the hundreds of nights I’d refereed before, except for one thing: after one of the bouts, as I went to raise the fighter’s hand, he turned and gave me a big hug. It was totally unexpected. I felt better already.

The welcome back I got in California wasn’t felt everywhere. It became clear over the next few months that the UFC preferred I not referee at their events. When Zuffa took the show abroad and could bring along any officials it wanted, the UFC didn’t call me, which was really no surprise.

There wasn’t much I could do but be grateful for the assignments I did get and perform them as well as I could. Slowly but surely, I began to get calls from a number of jurisdictions new to the game. I found myself traveling to the Midwest, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and even China to referee MMA events of all sizes.

In February of 2009, Strikeforce, that local San Jose promotion that had put on only five or six events a year, signed into a multi-year broadcast deal with Showtime to put on three times as many shows. This made them the closest thing the UFC had to a competitor, and Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker began to request me for his events with the commissions. I was grateful for Scott’s belief in my talents.

By April, I was refereeing my first Strikeforce bout on Showtime. In November, I officiated the main event at Strikeforce/M-1 Global’s “Fedor vs. Rogers” outside Chicago, which broadcasted live on CBS.

This would be my second time refereeing one of Fedor Emelianenko’s fights, something I probably wouldn’t have been able to do had I stayed aligned with the UFC the way I had until 2007.

I’ve had the privilege of refereeing many of the greats in MMA. I’ve admired the way fighters like Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Georges St. Pierre, B. J. Penn, and Anderson Silva have handled themselves in and out of the cage. For them, it isn’t about anger or ego. It’s about competition. No one can go out there and perform well 100 percent of the time, but these guys are all consistent.

Fedor Emelianenko is another fighter I admire. If you’re a boxing referee, you want to say you got to do a Muhammad Ali fight. The equivalent in MMA would be Emelianenko.

During my one-year retirement, I’d actually had the opportunity to grapple with Emelianenko as part of a demonstration for National Geographic Channel’s
Fight Science
series. Scientists wanted to test the fighter’s choking force compared to that of a hungry Burmese python. Before Emelianenko squeezed the test dummy’s neck against his forearm, he got to demonstrate the move on
this dummy
for the cameras. I’d watched Emelianenko establish himself as one of the greatest fighters of the modern era, so I knew there had to be something special about him. With some of the submissions he pulled off, I figured he had to be really strong. And I don’t mean in terms of what he could bench-press; I mean brute strength.