Is This Legal

by Art Davie

  I looked comic in there as I metamorphosed into a mummy, and then just toppled to the canvas, not to rise until my opponent and a trainer lifted me up and dragged my bulked-up carcass back to the corner. There was no stool, but they quickly realized that I couldn’t bend to sit anyway. I had stiffened up like a dried mackerel, so they deposited me flat on my back onto a nearby bench. I had no business being in the ring with anyone who wasn’t a lightweight. After that experience, I took a well-earned sabbatical, and didn’t put the gloves on again until years later.

  My most memorable experience with fighting took place in the summer of 1965, and there were no boxing gloves involved. My father and uncle had bought adjoining cottages on Peconic Bay, out on Long Island, New York in the late 1950s. The place was great, and I spent a lot of golden summers there. The cottages were modest knotty pine little houses, and most of the kids in that world were nice, middle-class morons like me. We fished, swam and ran around like little wild men.

  I had a good pal there named Johnny Nichols, a tall, rangy Irish kid with a wicked sense of humor—a natural comedian. One day he showed up with a thick-necked moose whose name I don’t remember, or perhaps have suppressed. The kid was a classmate of Johnny’s in high school, and was the varsity wrestling stud. Johnny brought him around, and the three of us stood there shooting the shit close to the water’s edge on a hot July afternoon.

  Johnny said, “Hey, Art’s a boxer. He’s been training for the Golden Gloves.”

  It wasn’t entirely true. I was a boxer, sort of, but kept putting off signing up for the Gloves.

  The grappler looked at me from under his pronounced brow ridges and said, “Oh really?”

  He didn’t look too impressed. The guy said that he wrestled at 76 kilos, and that he came in second in the state championships or something. He was four or five inches taller than me, and I was smart enough to realize that his walking around weight, before wrestling season, was probably 185 lb. We got to talking about our respective sports, and then the conversation turned to “what could a wrestler do versus a boxer?” Or maybe it was me, with my big mouth, who said something first. Actually, it was definitely me.

  “Yeah, you know if a boxer like “Hurricane” Carter got in the ring with a wrestler, he’d land a left hook before the wrestler could do anything.”

  I went on and on and on. I should have kept my pie hole shut, because before I knew it, the moose was suggesting that we “spar.” Johnny, my buddy, was having a field day with this, and kept cracking with the jokes. But his thick-necked friend, whose trapezius began at the bottom of his ears and connected directly to his middle deltoids, lunged at me quickly, and said, “Well, what would you do if I went for your legs?”

  I jumped back like I’d been jabbed with a lit cigar. But now my temper and my adrenaline were up.

  “Well, this is what you’d be looking at, boss,” I said as I flicked out three jabs as fast as I could get my fist, shoulder, left arm and chest to cooperate.

  The gauntlet had been thrown. With Johnny the Comedian acting as our improv ref, the wrestler and I squared off. I got set and figured I’d smack him in the nose with a sharp jab—and make sure to twist my fist at the end of the punch for more power. And then I’d hook off the jab. I’d been practicing this move in the gym, and thought I had a potent little combo going for me.

  Of course, the best-laid plans of mice, men and bulked-up silly welterweights are meant to go awry. I threw the left jab alright. The moose was quick and pulled his head just out of range. The next thing I felt was the sensation of my left hook just barely ruffling his crew cut pate as my fist sailed harmlessly over his head. He shot a quick double-leg takedown, and just like that, I was down on the hot sand with 76 plus kilos of muscle and bone on top of me.

  Suddenly the wrestler was squeezing my head between his hard skull and his shoulder, and using the gorilla power of his overdeveloped trapezius muscle. Everything went fuzzy, and without realizing it, I was yelling, “Uncle!” It was all over but the post-fight analysis. Johnny dropped the jokes and was really nice about smoothing things over between us. He said we were both sportsmen, but I didn’t feel like a sportsman. I felt like a fool. We shook hands, and there were a lot of, “No hard feelings,” and, “Nah, you’re good man,” sort of bullshit babble.

  I’d had my ass kicked, but it didn’t hurt—my pride did though. The muscle-head grappler had clearly outmaneuvered me. I felt like a fish out of water. All of my hours in the gym throwing punches counted for nothing as soon as I was flat on my back. I had absolutely no idea how to defend myself once I was taken off of my feet, and out of my element. All I could do was ask myself, “What just happened?”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE WORLD’S BEST FIGHTER

  ALL MEN DREAM: BUT NOT EQUALLY. THOSE WHO DREAM BY NIGHT IN THE DUSTY RECESSES OF THEIR MINDS WAKE IN THE DAY TO FIND THAT IT WAS VANITY: BUT THE DREAMERS OF THE DAY ARE DANGEROUS MEN, FOR THEY MAY ACT THEIR DREAM WITH OPEN EYES, TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE.

  — T.E. LAWRENCE, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

  FOR the record, I was born in Brooklyn, New York, went to Catholic grade school (Good Shepherd), bounced through three high schools in four years (including two years at New York Military Academy where, in the fall and winter of 1962, Donald Trump was my roommate) and bummed my way through one year at St. John’s University and a year at Pace College. Not waiting for the draft, I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1966 and spent three-and-a-half years on active duty, including 11 months and nine days in the Republic of Vietnam. In 1970, I was honorably discharged as a sergeant with the Navy Achievement Medal (with combat ‘V’).

  After the service, I was a car salesman in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. The first car I ever sold was to the Vietnam anti-war Senator from Wisconsin, and founder of Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson. I worked as a field counselor with street gangs for the Youth Services Agency in New York City for two years and ended up owning a car dealership in San Diego (Toyack Motors), one of the first new car discount brokerages in the U.S. I became known in San Diego at that time for a series of commercials I did where I performed my own stunts: jumping from a 10 story building onto an air bag, dangling from a helicopter, being thrown over a parked car, getting set on fire and my big finale, getting shot for real with a .357 magnum while wearing a bulletproof vest. I was always a stubborn, independent individualist who went his own way. Like my father before me—tenacious and a bit of a loner.

  By 1980, I was working for Dennis Webb Advertising in San Diego, who had handled my business when I owned my car dealership. A year later, I was co-owner of an ad agency, Fiocco/Davie Incorporated, which I started with my close friend Mark Fiocco. We were both salesmen who loved to pitch, and who loved the “big idea.” Mark and I decided to part ways when I wanted to move to Los Angeles thinking I could make it big in a bigger market. Mark’s roots and family were in San Diego and he couldn’t see living in Hollywood. Fair enough.

  New York Military Academy with my mother and sister on a visit in 1963. I’m in full dress uniform for a Sunday parade. Note that I have no chevrons on my arm; I’m just a private.

  We dissolved the agency amicably, and I went to work for J&P Marketing, which was a promotion marketing agency. Jim Plumb, the owner and president, had developed package goods manufacturers and distributors as the foundation of his business. Companies like Star-Kist Tuna, New York Seltzer and Wisdom Imports were J&P’s meat and potatoes.

  Wisdom Imports was a liquor and beer distributor that specialized in imported Mexican beer for the U.S. market. Their three big brands were Tecate, Bohemia and Carta Blanca. Our big October promotion for Bohemia was a Halloween campaign called, “Boo-hemia,” which sounded kind of goofy, but was a successful multi-year campaign.

  But by the fall of 1989, Jim had maxed out what he was doing for Wisdom and was concerned he might lose their account. In an effort to inject a level of freshness into their promotion campaigns, Jim brought me along to a meeting with Wisdom and intro
duced me as his “idea guy.”

  “Art’s a real creative type,” Jim told the category manager on our arrival. “This is the man you want to meet.”

  The truth was that I had nothing.

  Jim was taking a shot in the dark by bringing me along, but he figured what the hell, maybe I could spitball something they would like. The Tecate brand’s appeal was focused on young guys in their 20s. After the meeting at Wisdom Imports, Jim told me to sketch out some ideas our agency had not developed before. “Get really creative. Go big,” he instructed. Jim couldn’t afford to lose their business.

  I started thinking about sporting events where we could create some cross-promotional opportunities. I had a precedent in mind. In 1948, Bill Cayton (who later became a noted boxing historian as well as Mike Tyson’s manager) was in the advertising business, and came up with a brilliant idea for a show to sell Vaseline brand hair tonic. It was called “Greatest Fights of the Century,” and featured old boxing matches dating back to the 1890s, repackaged for the post World War II TV audience. The show scored huge ratings and Vaseline sales skyrocketed.

  Being interviewed right before filming a TV commercial for my car dealership. Performing my own stunts, I’m about to be shot with a .357 magnum wearing a bulletproof vest. The piece of tape on my tie was the shooter’s target.

  At the time of the meeting with Wisdom, I was taking weekly instruction at a Muay Thai gym in North Hollywood, having moved on from the ill-fated boxing venture of my youth. Working out there was more than enough to convince me that Thai leg kicks were fucking devastating, and that with my tight hamstrings, I would never be a great kicker.

  It was an outstanding workout though, and it gave me a real appreciation for a sport that I had previously known very little about. During the month of November 1989, I kept obsessively thinking about Wisdom Imports, “The World’s Greatest Fights,” Vaseline, Tecate Beer and the question that I posed to Mr. Muscle-head Grappler 24 years earlier on Peconic Bay, “What would a wrestler do versus a boxer?” Perhaps being at a Muay Thai gym triggered another memory from the 1960s—about one of my fellow Marines and a story he told me that involved an R&R trip to Thailand.

  In 1969, I was stationed at Red Beach in Danang, Vietnam. There, I became friends with Jimmy from Chicago, who had been a star football player in high school. Along with fellow jarhead Tommy from Los Angeles, we’d wander over to the Republic of Korea Marines (called “ROKs”) encampment to watch them do their taekwondo workouts. All three of us loved boxing and thought it was amazing to see these tough little guys go through their highly regimented striking drills. How they would do against a quick boxer in a real fight was a constant topic of debate between the three of us.

  Sergeant Davie at Red Beach, Danang, Vietnam in October 1969.

  Jimmy went to Bangkok on R&R without Tommy or me, and came back to regale us with wild tales of debauchery. Aside from all of his love ’em and leave ’em stories, Jimmy also told us about a nightclub in Bangkok he had gone to with a bunch of other Marines, and the mixed match fight he’d watched there between a Thai boxer and an Indian wrestler. To hear Jimmy tell it, the Indian wrestler outweighed the little Thai guy by at least 40 lb., and they all thought he was going to get slaughtered.

  But with his finely tuned Muay Thai, the local kept using devastating thigh kicks to keep the Indian at bay, and slowly wore him down. Then, he unloaded with his fists and elbows to knock his opponent out. We could not stop talking about this for a month. So maybe a boxer couldn’t beat a wrestler, but it now looked like a Muay Thai fighter could. What about a ROK marine versus a judo black belt from Japan? A karate guy against a huge sumo wrestler? It provoked endless discussions and arguments. Could Bruce Lee beat Muhammad Ali?

  I now wondered if perhaps Wisdom Imports would be interested in answering this question. Maybe, just maybe, this was exactly the type of cross-promotional opportunity that they would love, and would in turn help them sell a lot more Tecate beer. I knew this was a long shot, as Wisdom would have to fund an entirely new sport, instead of just sponsoring an existing event. But Jim Plumb had instructed me to “go big,” so I was doing just that. If pairing fighting with the right product sponsor had struck gold for Bill Cayton, then why not for me?

  I put my secretary, Joy, to work pulling articles for me on fighting, martial arts, boxing, wrestling, kung fu, Sambo—anything at all that I might be able to use. I called on Joe Kaufenberg, known as “T-shirt Joe,” a kickboxing promoter in Los Angeles, and Karyn Turner who promoted kickboxing in Denver, with Coors beer as her sponsor. What I was looking for was anyone who had promoted a mixed match fighting event. Joe and Karyn were very friendly, and both tried to be helpful, but neither had ever considered what I was talking about. What would be the rules? Who would fight? Would this even be allowed?

  One of my main inspirations was Pankration from the Ancient Olympiad, a sport described by scholars as a combination of striking and grappling in which anything outside of eye gouging and biting was allowed. It was introduced into the Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC. Within four Olympics it became wildly successful and quickly joined horseracing as the most popular sport in the entire Ancient Olympiad, dominating the Decathlon, boxing and wrestling.

  This was an epic event which had spawned legendary athletes like Polydamas, a Thessalian who was the victor in the 93rd Olympiad (408 BC), and whose statue graced the Altis, the sacred grove of Zeus. I really loved the idea of bringing the imagery of Antiquity to a present day fighting event.

  I knew that there were a number of modern examples of mixed match fighting, such as Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki, Gene LeBell vs. Milo Savage, and Andre the Giant vs. Chuck Wepner. Regardless if those fights were real (shoots) or fake (works), they did establish a precedent I could study. However, they served as nothing more than oddball one-offs. I was attempting to create an event for Wisdom Imports, which could lead to a viable franchise.

  In my research, I discovered that Japan was quickly gaining traction as the home of strong-style pro wrestling, which blurred the lines between fact and fiction. Fighters would beat the shit out of each other, but the winner was predetermined, except when it was not.

  And, of course, I knew that there were countless backyard, backroom and back-alley, no-holds-barred fights, where literally anything and everything would often be allowed. But these fights were never intended for public consumption, instead staged quietly throughout history for a select few, usually with gambling as the motivating factor.

  As a marine, I had been given some rudimentary hand-to-hand combat instruction at Camp Lejeune in 1967. My memories of this experience prompted me to unearth the survey that the Department of the United States Navy had undertaken in the 1950s to figure out which martial arts would be the most useful for infantry troops in unarmed combat. They hired Joe Begala, who in 1943 as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy had authored Hand-to-Hand Combat, which both the Navy and Marine Corps used as a training manual. In addition to his military service in World War II, Begala was the legendary wrestling coach at Kent State University, who had first taken the job in 1929. In the 1950s survey, Begala looked at combining elements of judo, jiu-jitsu and karate, as well as boxing into a mixed fighting style, which could be used in real life and death situations. But as far as I could tell, no tournaments or events were ever organized using these fighting techniques.

  Pressing on with my research, I found the story of the first great boxing champion, John L. Sullivan and his training with William Muldoon. Of course, I knew all about the Boston Strong Boy, one of pugilism’s all-time greats, but this tale was new to me. In 1889, Sullivan hired Muldoon, a Greco-Roman wrestling champion, physical culturist, and later the first chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, to get him ready for his upcoming London Prize Ring Rules bare-knuckle world title bout against Jake Kilrain. It was Muldoon’s job to whip the drunken, overweight and seemingly washed-up 30-year-old back into championship shape, which at times seemed a near impossibi
lity.

  As part of the conditioning regimen, Muldoon often grappled with Sullivan, and to his shock and utter dismay, Sullivan, who famously claimed that he could “lick any man in the house,” discovered that he was helpless in the clinch and on the ground against the wrestler. Ultimately, the hard work with Muldoon paid off, as Sullivan defeated Kilrain in 75 rounds. Muldoon had known exactly what he was doing all along, despite the naysayers—Sullivan at times included. And Muldoon had also known that to beat the world heavyweight champion of boxing, you have to tie him up, and take him down.

  The man who defeated Sullivan for the heavyweight boxing championship in 1892 was James J. Corbett, known as “Gentleman Jim” for his dress and manners. On multiple occasions, Corbett trained with Ernest Roeber, who held both the European and United States Greco-Roman Wrestling Heavyweight Championship. Despite being known as one of the cleverest boxers of his era, Corbett found that before he could even land a punch, Roeber would easily take him down to the mat, apply a hold, and make him yell “Uncle.” Later Corbett said, “In a mixed match between a boxer and a wrestler, the wrestler will win nine times out of 10.”

  No one that I could find, however, attempted to merge boxing and wrestling into a new hybrid sport, other than the occasional curiosity bout.

  The year before I began developing my pitch for Wisdom Imports, in 1988, I saw the movie Bloodsport, in which Jean-Claude Van Damme fights in a secretive Hong Kong tournament known as the “Kumite.” The film was supposedly based on the real-life experiences of American martial artist Frank Dux. But in digging around, I discovered that if Dux had a black belt in anything, it was self-promotion, and that this supposed “true story” was highly questionable. If there had been a “Kumite,” it was either a full contact karate event, or an underground fighting syndicate held in a few Asian countries. It certainly wasn’t what the movie portrayed: an organized tournament in which fighters from around the world competed while using a wide array of styles and disciplines, sometimes in a battle to the death.