by Art Davie
For starters, despite Rorion’s claim to me that his family was “already famous,” they were known in a few Western states. Namely California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and maybe Colorado, Oregon and New Mexico. And even then, this was a subculture of a subculture of a subculture. The Gracie Jiu-Jitsu followers were fiercely loyal, incredibly proud and very vocal, but they were also few in number.
It was clear to me that Rorion and the entire family greatly over-valued the prominence of the Gracie name in the martial arts world. This was further evidenced by a story that I had heard at the academy about how a few years earlier, Rickson had flown to Japan on his own dime in search of a real fight. He called on promoters, television networks, martial arts organizations; anyone and everyone he could think of to make it happen. Apparently Rickson figured that because of his father’s history with Japanese fighters, and the link of Gracie-Jiu-Jitsu back to Japanese jiu-jitsu, the big-money offers would come flooding in.
A huge part of Hélio’s rise to prominence in Brazil involved three no-holds-barred fights that he had against Japanese opponents in the 1950s. The first two bouts were against Yukio Kato, who was touted as one of the top three judo players in the world. The results were a draw followed by a submission win for Hélio. The third fight, in 1951, took place against Kato’s mentor, Masahiko Kimura, who was widely regarded as the greatest judoka of all time.
Kimura was so confident of victory, he announced to the press that if Hélio could last three minutes in the fight, then he should be considered the winner. Despite weighing 139 lb. to his Japanese opponent’s 210 lb., Hélio surpassed the three-minute mark, reaching the 13th minute before being caught in a Gyaku ude-garami (an arm lock renamed, for obvious reasons, a Kimura). Hélio refused to submit, and with his arm looking in danger of being snapped, older brother Carlos jumped in to stop the fight. The referee then restored order, and attempted to resume the proceedings. But Hélio admitted defeat, giving the hard-earned victory to Kimura.
Even though he had lost, Hélio was hailed as a hero for his skill, determination and sportsmanship. What he had won was the full respect of Kimura, the Japanese fighting delegation and the nation of Brazil.
But three decades later, Rickson learned the hard way that the exploits of his father had either been forgotten by the people of Japan, or never known at all. The Gracie name meant nothing there. No one was interested in either fighting or promoting Rickson. Completely dejected, Rickson finally flew home, having struggled to find anyone in the Japanese fight game who would even talk to him.
The reality was that in the U.S., Japan, and around the world—even in California—there were serious lifelong martial artists who had no clue about Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. It just didn’t register. So to a broad audience, the Gracie Challenge didn’t have any name value.
Plus, I disliked the idea of having the name of the event be the name of one of the fighters in the event. As I was going to have to recruit the 15 guys that I needed to fill out the tournament, I knew that this surely would have reeked of a set up to them. I’m going to be fighting a guy named Gracie in something called the Gracie Challenge with another guy named Gracie as the co-owner of the promotion? No fucking way!
Right there was where Rorion and I differed philosophically. In addition to making lots of money, Rorion’s goal was to publicize Gracie Jiu-Jitsu to the world. For him, my idea was a means to an end. For me, it was going to be the start of a franchise, where we would continually hold tournaments, scouring the earth for the next best of the best. I had been doing Gracie Jiu-Jitsu long enough, and had seen plenty of Gracie Challenges in the back room of the Academy to know that any Gracie brother would likely win—especially if that brother was Rickson.
But I really didn’t care. For this to work, it was going to have to showcase both great fighting styles and great fighters. And now, thinking like a promoter, I knew that having a Gracie win every time out would eventually be bad for business, especially in the beginning. But first things first, we had to get this thing going before I started worrying about how many victories the Gracies would record.
In my mind, these tournaments were going to be a true collision of various martial arts and combat sports, all under one roof—the disparate worlds of fighting coming together. Just like vale tudo, except organized as a promotion—a franchise.
One weekend, I was over at my best friend Les Smith’s place in Laguna Beach for a barbecue. I had taken him and his wife Prentice into my confidence. Even though I now knew that the name wasn’t quite right, I was still calling my project the World’s Best Fighter. As I’m telling them all about the proposed event, Prentice brightened up, looked at me and said, “The War of the Worlds. That’s it Art. Call it the War of the Worlds.” This was of course the title used by H.G. Wells for his classic science fiction novel, first published in 1898; and it struck me as a name that might actually work.
I knew though that there would be the matter of legally obtaining rights to the name. The book had been turned into a movie by Paramount in 1953, and if the film studio didn’t have a legal claim, then the H.G. Wells estate probably did. But I liked Prentice’s idea. Licensing was a problem that I could only hope to deal with when everything else was ready to roll. For now, I decided that this would be my working title, which no one would have a problem with legally. To make things seem a bit more grandiose, I decided to subtitle the event the World Hand-to-Hand Combat Championship.
I also figured that legally it we would be OK to use the War of the Worlds name for the company that Rorion and I were going to need. No way were we doing this under Brajitsu, Inc. That was his company. This would be our company together, which to his credit, Rorion understood from the outset.
Just in case the copyright lawyers did come after us on the name, I decided to make an acronym out of War of the Worlds.
It was catchy and concise, and it obviously worked well as a pun, letting everyone know that we were going to dazzle them. In truth, I really liked it for a company name: W.O.W. Promotions.
I asked Rorion what he thought, and he said that it didn’t matter to him in the least. Whatever name I picked was fine. Rorion was more than happy to leave the details to me. I wasn’t sure if this was trust or disinterest. Either way, I kept moving forward.
Next up, I needed to figure out which fighting styles we should include. Obviously, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu was a given. I thought I would add boxing, kickboxing, judo, wrestling, some type of karate such as Kenpo or Shotokan and Muay Thai. I went to Rorion with my list, and asked him what else we should include. He told me that he didn’t care, because they were all pretty much the same to him.
War of the Worlds—This became the second working title for my martial arts style vs. style event. I borrowed it temporarily from the title of the 19th century H.G. Wells novel.
In others words, if it wasn’t Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, it was shit. He truly believed this, as did Hélio, the rest of the brothers, and virtually every student at the academy. They all knew it from the Gracie Challenge—stand-up fighters, whether they were from boxing, kung fu, or capoeira, didn’t know what to do once they were taken off of their feet. And those with a clinch and grappling base, such as wrestlers, judo players and Sambo practitioners, couldn’t adequately defend themselves from the myriad of submissions that would be coming their way.
I wondered to myself what Rorion would have said if I told him that I wanted someone from a rival Brazilian jiu-jitsu lineage in the field of 16 fighters. I didn’t dare, but I had no doubt Rorion would have dismissed their style as worthless as well. Such was the self-confidence that surrounded the mystique of the unbeatable Gracies.
I then needed to figure out the prize money, not just how much, but how would we pay it out. The questions quickly mounted in my head. Would this be winner-take-all? Would we pay guarantees? Would the dollar amount escalate as a fighter progressed through the tournament, round-by-round?
I liked the idea of $100,000 for the total prize money. Not only was it an e
ye-catching amount, this dollar figure, of course, factored into the legend of the Gracies. In his 1989 Playboy article, Pat Jordan wrote: “Rorion Gracie has made a standing offer to fight anyone in the United States, winner take all, for $100,000. So far he has had no takers—for one simple reason. Rorion’s fights are fights to the finish with no rules.”
The origins of Rorion’s Gracie Challenge dated back to Hélio and his older brother Carlos, initially announcing to Brazil, and to the wider world, that they wanted to test their style in a real fight. For them, it was a matter of honor, not money. Hélio, according to Rorion, once placed an ad in a Rio de Janeiro newspaper that translated to, “If you want a broken arm, call me.”
Public fights in Brazil for money followed, sometimes in front of huge crowds, sometimes even on national television, but the original ethos never changed. And when Rorion and his brothers imported the Gracie Challenge to the backroom of the academy in Torrance, it was a revival of the earliest days of Hélio and Carlos taking on all comers. Tickets and television broadcast rights were never sold, nor even considered. You couldn’t even get in to watch unless you had an inside connection. The closest that the Gracies ever came to directly making money off the Challenge was when a few of the fights were used as part of the two Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in Action tapes. The Gracies were really testing themselves, while simultaneously proving the point that their form of fighting reigned supreme.
I was designing War of the Worlds to be vastly different from the Gracie Challenge in terms of presentation and profit, but I wanted to keep its soul intact.
CHAPTER 6
THE ROAD TO MANDALAY
I’VE A NEATER, SWEETER MAIDEN IN A CLEANER, GREENER LAND! ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY. . .
— RUDYARD KIPLING, Mandalay
LATE that summer, in August 1992, I convinced Rorion to purchase an exhibitor’s booth for Brajitsu, Inc. at the Long Beach International Karate Championship—a huge martial arts tournament first held in 1964 by Kenpo Grandmaster Ed Parker. Many notable full-contact fighters earned their stripes at this event, including Chuck Norris, Billy Blanks, and Rorion’s old nemesis, Benny “the Jet” Urquidez. It’s also where Bruce Lee was originally introduced to the North American martial arts community. As a prelude to this annual tournament, a small martial arts trade show was held, which I knew would be perfect for us.
Rorion and I filled our little booth with Brajitsu, Inc. videos for sale, as well as a TV set and a VCR. We continuously ran the two Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in Action tapes, and they absolutely stopped the show. Huge crowds of people would keep forming in front of the TV, their mouths wide open.
“Look at that.”
“Can you believe this shit?”
“This is unreal!”
Whatever lingering doubt that still remained for me about the potential success of War of the Worlds was put to rest right then and there in Long Beach. This was a fight crowd and they absolutely couldn’t get enough. Those two tapes showing the Gracies whip ass in jiu-jitsu and vale tudo back in Brazil, and in the Gracie Challenges at the academy in Torrance, had completely mesmerized everyone who watched.
Rorion was thrilled that we sold all of the tapes that we brought with us to the booth. I was thrilled for what I was now sure was within my grasp.
After the triumph of Long Beach, I then turned to the business of where to hold our first-ever War of the Worlds. I was determined to make this big—big city, big arena, big crowds, and big-time feel. Holding the debut tournament in a hotel ballroom, National Guard Armory, high school gym or run down theater just wouldn’t work. No matter how great the fights and fighters, it would still feel small-time and cheap.
The problem though was in finding a place that would actually allow us to hold a virtual no-holds-barred event. The big-time boxing states such as Nevada, New York, New Jersey and California had notoriously prickly athletic commissions. And with them came stringent regulations, and fat fees charged for the privilege of overseeing your event, and licensing everyone from the promoters to the fighters to the refs to the timekeepers.
Yet, you couldn’t hold an event without their involvement. All of this bureaucracy and associated costs were why Vince McMahon, Jr., as head of the World Wrestling Federation, lobbied the state of New York for the reclassification of his “sport” to “sports entertainment.” McMahon’s efforts proved successful in 1989, and his wrestlers, refs and staff were suddenly free of governmental oversight, saving his WWF a significant amount of money.
I didn’t have Vince McMahon’s clout or his millions, and I knew that once I explained what War of the Worlds was about, most state athletic commissions would tell me to get lost. There were a lot of reasons for them to say no, with inherent liability and political fallout from a mixed matched fighting event with almost no rules being the primary ones.
From my new base of operations at the Torrance Public Library, I discovered that there were three states in the U.S. that actually allowed bare-knuckle boxing. One of the three was Colorado, which I figured must have been a holdover from its hardscrabble mining and agricultural past. For whatever reason, legally permitting this type of fighting had never gotten wiped off the books.
When I read this, my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. Just a few days before, I was researching Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs), and I found out that Colorado was in the tiny group of states that registered businesses in this category. The perfect match.
I had started a number of small companies in the past through my various entrepreneurial ventures, and from these experiences I had come to learn about the LLC form. Apparently the gas and oil drilling states were pioneers in LLCs, because you could protect investors with such a structure. If a well blew up, there were no doubt going to be scores of lawsuits. The attraction of the LLC was that an investor’s exposure was limited to the size of his investment—and not a penny more. This was perfect for the War of the Worlds. If an investor contributed $10,000—that was the limit of his liability should the company be successfully sued.
Our version of a well blowing up was a fighter getting killed, paralyzed or severely injured. I didn’t think the first two scenarios were likely, but I figured that the third was a given, especially if I matched up two strikers against each other, like a boxer versus a guy from Muay Thai. Someone was probably going to get knocked out in an unbelievably brutal fashion.
I quickly headed back to the Gracie Academy to tell Rorion that through my discoveries, Colorado was the perfect place to register W.O.W. Promotions, and hold our first event. Rorion was pretty well travelled through the U.S. from his Gracie Jiu-Jitsu seminars. But all he remembered about Colorado was that it snowed there, and he hated snow.
“Where would we hold the fights, Arturo?”
“I don’t know, probably somewhere in Denver.”
“I like the idea of the LLC, but I was thinking that maybe we could hold our first event in Brazil. In Rio.”
The city of Rorion’s birth actually made a lot of sense to me. Rio de Janeiro would certainly give War of the Worlds a big-time feel, as well as an exotic aura. As Brazil’s second largest city, it was not only home to millions of potential ticket buyers, it was also a place that understood Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and vale tudo.
Rorion then told me that he knew the guy who would be perfect for us as our in-country promoter, Luiz Oscar Niemeyer.
Known to his friends as Lulu, of which Rorion was one, he was a close relative of the famed Oscar Niemeyer—one of the 20th century’s leading architects who worked on the United Nations Headquarters in New York, as well as most of the government buildings in the city of Brasilia. The Niemeyers were a prominent family who knew the Gracies from when Rorion was still living in Brazil. Rorion had gotten close to Lulu when he was getting a degree at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Lulu was now an established and respected concert promoter in Brazil, serving as General Director/Partner of Mills & Niemeyer Promoçõ
es Ltda, which was based in Rio de Janeiro. The company had become known for staging massive concerts featuring American and British pop and rock stars throughout Brazil. Rorion called Lulu, who told him that he had an upcoming trip to Los Angeles, and that he’d love to sit down with us. It was all coming together now.
The three of us met at the Gracie Academy in October 1992, and I was instantly impressed. Lulu was a terrific guy, and didn’t try to bullshit us about the hurdles that we would face if we held War of the Worlds in Rio, or any city in Brazil. He told Rorion and me, that in his experience, doing concerts in that country was an “adventure.”
“Getting people to attend won’t be a problem. Getting them to pay for tickets, now that will be a big problem. If your gate is 20,000 people, only 5,000 will pay,” he said. “Thousands will be sneaking in by going over, under, or through the security fence. It’s a way of life in Brazil. I always have to take this into account for everything that I promote.”
It was the primary reason, Lulu said, why he was starting to shift his business to other South American countries, mainly Argentina. But I knew from my work in the marketing business that a raucous crowd of 20,000 with only 5,000 paid would look a lot better on TV than an arena with 5,000 paying customers, surrounded by 15,000 empty seats.
Rorion looked intently at his old friend, and kept nodding silently. War of the Worlds live from Rio de Janeiro certainly had a great ring to it. I immediately had visions of meeting a voluptuous, brown-skinned girl with a bubble butt. Despite his candid appraisal of what we’d be facing, Lulu seemed genuinely interested. He saw that there might be a real opportunity, given the Gracies’ popularity in Rio, to stage the event there. We kicked around the idea of doing it in 12 months time: October 1993.
Rorion and I told Lulu that we’d seriously consider holding our first event in Rio, and if we did, he’d of course be our guy. We just weren’t ready to commit to anything yet, including a tentative date. The reality was that we hadn’t even raised a dollar of investment capital.
