Is This Legal

by Art Davie

  Now, when anyone writes history, either from a personal viewpoint—or more objectively as a journalist or historian—they write through the prism of their perspective. This may include any number of small biases, as well as major axes they want to grind (certainly journalists and historians can be accused of this as well). So, it’s important for you as the reader to get a handle on this writer’s angle—my perspective. In this case, who am I, and where am I coming from in writing this account of the creation of the Ultimate Fighting Championship?

  I can answer this by stating at the outset that, first and foremost, I was a true believer. There was no doubt in my mind that people wanted to have the eternal question answered: Who was really the world’s greatest fighter? Making money was very important to me, but secondary. I felt that the UFC would become a hugely successful franchise, but only if we followed this vision, and kept in search of this answer. Some of the people simply saw the UFC as a means to an end, not as an end in itself—which it always was to me.

  Also, let me again be clear that this is a tell-all book. That means I’m going to let you know what really happened, especially my fuck-ups and the fuck-ups of those who rode with me. When you go this route, you’re bound to step on toes, and paint some of the major players in a less-than-favorable light. So be it.

  I have done my best to give credit where credit is due, even in the case of those who I thought were jerks, thieves and assholes.

  And as you read this book, you’ll discover that some previously unknown people played a major role in contributing to and ultimately helping launch the UFC. It’s my hope that their anonymity will now fade, just as the exaggerated and false claims of others will be exposed. But that is for you to decide. All that I can do is reveal the true story of what really happened—as I lived it.

  But, let me say it again clearly: I did not do it alone. It took the sweat, labor and outright love of many people to make it all happen. I was the chef, who working without a recipe, combined all of the necessary ingredients to turn them into a finished meal. Without these ingredients, nothing would have happened. But without the chef, the ingredients never would have combined into something great.

  This book is everything you wanted to know about how the first Ultimate Fighting Championship came to be, told by the only person who was there from the very beginning: Me.

  — Art Davie, 2014

  PROLOGUE

  THE PEOPLE ARE A MANY-HEADED BEAST

  — HORACE, Epistles, Bk I, epistle i, L, 76

  A peroxide blonde with tits the size of grapefruits corrals me.

  “Hey, honey,” she says to me in a voice that sounds like she mail ordered it from Yazoo City, Mississippi, and seems jarringly out of place here in Colorado.

  “Honey, are you with the show?”

  I look over at her and her boyfriend, who is missing more than a few teeth, and say, “Uh...I’m...uh...just a salesman.”

  She looks confused by this. And the fact that I’m wearing a monkey suit flusters her big time—like I’m the ring announcer or something.

  “Are we gonna see some ass kickin’ tonight?”

  She’s now grabbing at the sleeve of my tuxedo jacket with her pudgy fingers, and continues on.

  “I hope somebody gets fucked up.”

  Her joy-boy grins at me in a slack-jawed, dumb-ass sort of way.

  I want to get as far away from these two as quickly possible. Without making eye contact, I say tersely, with pursed lips, “I just hope no one dies tonight.”

  This stops her cold, and the idiot grin evaporates from the boyfriend’s face.

  I keep moving—continually circling our specially constructed eight-sided fighting area, which is enclosed by chain-link fence, and elevated off the arena floor. I’m obsessively double- and triple-checking for exactly what, I’m not sure.

  Everyone keeps calling it a “ring,” but it’s not a ring, it’s a cage. I just don’t want to refer to this thing as a cage, and make the brutality that I’m certain is about to unfold seem, well, even more brutal to the critics that no doubt will be coming our way. I still have no idea what to call this beautiful monstrosity, but that’s the least of my concerns right now. I don’t even know what to call the sport that we’re about to unleash tonight.

  Standing on the floor, in the center of McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, I can’t believe that my four years of hard work and big dreams are about to become a reality. I also can’t believe that I was able to rent the home of the Denver Nuggets for $4,000. Tonight’s world premiere requires a big stage, and while this isn’t Madison Square Garden or Caesar’s Palace, it’s a very respectable, if slightly worn, NBA building.

  The first two fighters in the tournament are introduced, and the fans, mostly white, young and rowdy, immediately heat up. One of our Pay-Per-View TV commentators, football Hall of Famer Jim Brown, says, “I’m kind of worried about the crowd.” No shit. They’re on the verge of becoming the world’s biggest mosh pit—minus the rhythm and civility. These people have come to see blood, as well as a few broken bones and major concussions for good measure.

  Standing here, despite all of the worries and chaos, I feel like I’ve climbed to base camp on Mt. Everest. I’m juiced on adrenaline, but I know that I have another 9,000 feet to go. It’s been a wild ride for my partners and me. We’re a motley collection of heroes, villains, fools and crazies. And now all of us are poised and waiting.

  Ravenous wolves eyeing a feast of meat and blood have nothing on this crowd. They’re staring intently at these two monsters who are standing opposite each other, and waiting to be unleashed in our opening fight. Absolutely none of us—the fighters included—are exactly sure what is about to occur.

  Depending on your vantage point Teila Tuli is either wearing a kilt, a plaid skirt or some kind of native costume from the Pacific Islands. This big, fat Hawaiian is so massive at 420 pounds, that regular fighting shorts aren’t an option. I should know, because we searched Denver in vain trying to find a pair.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, do you have size 60 waist boxing trunks?”

  He has a neck on him that rivals one of those Tosa fighting dogs from Japan. Tuli is so heavy, he walks bowlegged, and with his feet jutting outwards from carrying his massive girth.

  I was told that he’d been kicked out of sumo in Japan for tossing a reporter through a glass wall or some such hooliganism. When I heard that, I immediately thought, “I like this guy already.”

  I had planned to open up this tournament to every single motherfucker who could fight, whether they had a black belt or a black record. Guys exactly like Tuli. One of my confidants in all of this craziness, the Academy Award nominated screenwriter John Milius, said it to me best, “This is the search for the real Superman.”

  Well, perhaps Superman can come in all shapes and sizes, and maybe wears a Polynesian-looking sarong around his enormous waist, instead of a red cape around his neck.

  Before the fight, Tuli had asked me if he could pick up his opponents, and throw them over the top of the fence and onto the concrete arena floor. He claimed that he’d tossed loads of guys in street brawls back in Hawaii. If someone were stupid enough to get into it with him, Tuli would just pick the dude up, and lob him like a missile. Fight over. The traditional martial arts bozos would never have booked a sumo guy. But this isn’t a traditional martial arts event, not even close. This is the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

  As Tuli waits for the bell, I can see that he’s licking his lips nervously, and sweating like a barnyard pig. Whatever confidence Tuli had, now seems to be leaking out of his pores under the hot, white lights overhead.

  Opposite him, Gerard Gordeau is standing calmly, like a professional assassin. The only thing now missing from this stone-cold Dutchman is his trademark cigarette, dangling from the corner of his mouth. Reminiscent of classic Humphrey Bogart, but with a level of iciness and menace that Bogey could never hope to muster.

  “No problem, Art Davie,” is the emotionle
ss mantra that I always get from him—no matter what I ask.

  In scruffy, well-worn karate pants and no top, Gordeau is a lanky, skinhead-looking Savate champion with badly inked tats. He’s rumored to carry a pistol in his belt, and a razor in his sock back home. I’ve been told by my contacts in the Netherlands that he’s the King of the Streets in Amsterdam—a muscle man for the brothels and the porn show owners. At 6-foot-5 and 216 pounds, Gordeau is all bone and gristle. He’s lean, with razor sharp elbows, and long, ropy muscles. When he enters the fighting area (ring, cage, whatever), Gordeau rapidly thrusts stiff-arm salutes to the four corners of the arena. Fuck! Bob Meyrowitz, the owner of my Pay-Per-View partner, Semaphore Entertainment Group, who is helping to finance this fun, is very proudly Jewish. What can Meyrowitz be thinking now as he watches from his home in New York, after seeing this seeming display of white power, Aryan superiority or whatever the fuck it is—and in our very first bout?

  Our Brazilian referee, Joao Alberto Barreto, gives the two men the signal to fight, and the bell rings. Gordeau immediately claims the center, poised to strike, while Tuli circles to his left, cautiously and seemingly without a real plan. After about 15 seconds, Tuli finally rushes in, head down, like a bull. Gordeau backpedals and pumps jabs that graze Tuli’s massive skull. Then in a flash, Gordeau catches Tuli with a short right uppercut that viciously snaps the Hawaiian’s head back, throws him off balance, and sends him careening into the fence. The crowd noise is a solid wall of sound. I can’t hear my own thoughts.

  The hippo drops hard and awkwardly onto his humongous ass. Gordeau, lightning-quick, steps up and throws a masterful kick to Tuli’s face. It lands flush on his mouth with the sickening sound of a melon being struck by a ball-peen hammer. The power of the blow forces Tuli’s lips back into his teeth, and shears off one of his incisors at the gums, which goes flying past our commentators and into the crowd. Tuli turns his head involuntarily, having just been hit with the equivalent of a baseball bat swung at full force by someone connecting with a fastball. Gordeau, methodical and in full control, doesn’t let his opponent get up. He re-sets his feet, waits for Tuli to turn back towards him, and at the perfectly timed moment, throws a crushing right hand with the knuckles extended, that lands smack on the Hawaiian’s right eyeball. There’s a crimson explosion, as blood streams down Tuli’s chest, and sprays the ref. His face is now a grotesque mask, and his eye is beyond swollen.

  Barreto jumps in with his hands flapping, and he’s signaling time out. Time Out! What the fuck is this time out? This is supposed to be a fight to the finish. Tuli tries to get to his feet, but he moves like a man caught in molasses. Gordeau now smells the kill. He leans forward, and then tries to push the ref away to get at his target again. Barreto stands his ground and backs Gordeau off, but is not at all sure as to what to do next.

  The crowd is on its feet, simultaneously bubbling with excitement and boiling with anger. Stray shrieks of horror and delight fill the sticky air. I yell for the ref to let the fight continue, but he speaks Portuguese, not English. Only the fighter or his corner can stop the fight, not the referee. My business partner Rorion Gracie and I made this perfectly clear in the rules meeting the night before. No exceptions! So what if Tuli’s eye is leaking blood like a broken faucet? This is what the people paid to see—real fighting with real consequences.

  Now all hell breaks loose, and a flood of bodies quickly surrounds the outside of the fence: members of the fighter’s corners, medical personnel, Rorion, me and God knows who else. Barreto keeps talking to Tuli in Portuguese which, of course, draws no reply. I’m not sure that this fallen behemoth would understand English right now. His brains have to be scrambled. Then Rorion starts shouting at the Tuli camp, “Is he ready to go? Is he ready to go?” They all ignore him, avoiding eye contact and staying silent.

  In this mad confusion, I find Tuli’s slightly less enormous brother, and grab him firmly by the arm. “Can he go again?” I bark. “Does he want to keep fighting or not?”

  “No man,” he tells me flatly. “He’s had enough.”

  It’s all over in 26 seconds. Those two savage shots absolutely destroyed the 420-lb. sumo wrestler, and evaporated his will to fight.

  Gordeau’s right hand is broken, and hangs there limply, like a sack of nuts and bolts. The swelling is just starting to occur, and it’s horrific in terms of speed and size. Trust me—hitting a man in the head with a bare fist is like punching a bowling ball. Fragments of Tuli’s shattered tooth are lodged in the pale, white flesh of Gordeau’s right foot. The rest of that displaced incisor is likely still out there, among the emptied beer cups and discarded hot dog wrappers on the McNichols Arena floor.

  Gordeau is unbelievably tough, and he’d better be. His next fight starts in under an hour.

  Everyone is blown away by the savagery of the moment, no one more so than me. Another one of our TV commentators, Bill Wallace, a former kickboxing world champion, goes all pale and stuttering on-air at the sight of Gordeau’s vicious kick to Tuli’s face. Judging from his behavior, he’s never seen a real fight before.

  The owners and execs of our main sponsor, Gold’s Gym, had flown in to Denver from Los Angeles for the event, with their wives in tow. Dressed to the nines in evening clothes, they all looked like they were going to see a Mr. Universe bodybuilding show. I put them in the front row, as close to the action as possible. When Tuli got poleaxed, the shattered ruins of his tooth flew right over their heads. I saw that they were all sick to their stomachs—green at the gills.

  Two of the wives got up and left, right then and there. The entire group was gone by the third fight. Goodbye Gold’s Gym. I never saw them again. That was the end of our sponsorship. But I didn’t even care.

  After that first fight, I knew. We had just spawned something truly special, and unlike anything that anyone had ever seen before. Suddenly without a single doubt or worry, I tell myself right then and there, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is going to be a monster hit. I can smell the bloodlust of young guys all over the planet. This is fucking real, and I fucking love it. And we still have the rest of the tournament to go—the night has just begun. God forgive me!

  CHAPTER 1

  THE VERY BEGINNING

  A GREAT FLAME FOLLOWS A LITTLE SPARK.

  — DANTE, Paradiso, Canto I, L, 34

  SOMETIMES I’m asked if I was ever a fighter.

  The answer is a big “no.”

  I was never a great athlete, serious martial artist, or bad-ass of any kind.

  I wasn’t the sturdiest Marine on a 20-mile hike or the fastest man through the obstacle course. It took me two tries to get a Rifle Marksman’s badge. And while I boxed a bit as a kid, I was no big deal. I didn’t get a belt studying taekwondo with Jhoon Rhee when I was stationed in the service in Washington D.C., and I never could make any real headway with my Muay Thai classes in North Hollywood. But I did have a few experiences with fighting that really shaped my life.

  A lot of guys put on the gloves where I grew up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s. If you were Italian, Jewish or Irish, then you had a father, brother or uncle who boxed. So that meant that you boxed. It was a fact of life. It was inevitable that you got into the ring at some point. My father always told the story of being a teenage 115-lb. bantamweight and thrust into a bout against a kid who weighed 150 lb.

  My old man repeated the story a dozen times to my cousins and me that he took a shellacking in that bout. But he said that he was determined to land just one good punch and when he did, he felt vindicated. Something about stick-to-itiveness and persistence in the face of overwhelming odds was the lesson that he wanted to impart. Tenacity. The story was just the sort of thing that you’d hear from the lips of a movie character in the 1940s—played by the likes of John Garfield or Jimmy Cagney. Anyway, it must have made an impression, because it didn’t take a lot to get me into the Catholic Youth Organization ring at St. Thomas Aquinas where I took my pugilistic lessons in the early 1960s.

&n
bsp; Actually, I wasn’t too bad. The coach said that while I wasn’t particularly fast, I seemed to be a natural counter-puncher. I did feel that as soon as my opponent committed and threw a punch, in that split-second, I could see an opening that (to me) looked huge. In these situations in the gym, I could tag my guy as often as not. Where my skill fell short was if my opponent had very quick reflexes. Anyway, there I was weighing about 145 lb.—a natural welterweight or junior welterweight. My boxing hero was the great world champion Carmine Basilio. I was the same height and weight as the famous Italian-American onion farmer from Conestoga, New York, which gave me both confidence and inspiration.

  As a small guy, I was susceptible to the allure of lifting weights, and I screwed it all up by making the decision to get bigger. I soon discovered a regimen of weight training, and drinking two quarts of milk a day. In Iron Man magazine I had read that I too could bulk up by utilizing only a few exercises done three times a week, like the 20 rep squat, bench press, the bent over row and the behind-the-neck press.

  Here I’m bench pressing 235 lb. in an effort to get bigger. By working out and adding more protein and calories to my diet, I went from 145 lb. to 182 lb. in a few months.

  After four months on this routine, I gained 30 lb. and not all of it muscle. But I could bench press 245 lb., squat a single rep with 360 lb., and thought I was hot shit now that I had bulked up. I wasn’t hot anything, and I had slowed down enough to become a stationary target. Now, I had to box with guys who were 6-feet tall with a 75-inch reach, who weighed 190 lb. before cutting down to 175. This was a formula for disaster, which wasn’t long in coming.

  I got in the ring with a tall, rangy guy who was as fast as a cobra. I couldn’t have hit him if I had a government model .45 with me. I took a beating—a good one. The second disaster came in the gym with a heavyweight, about 6-foot and 210 lb., who invited me to spar with him wearing 16-ounce gloves and headgear. He hit me with a short uppercut to the solar plexus so hard that I didn’t lose consciousness, but I wished I had. I became, for all intents and purposes, paralyzed.