by Art Davie
“I do not do what you do. We do not have grappling in K-1. Striking only. Much better,” Ishii said in his halting English.
But despite Ishii’s claims of superiority, Rorion and I understood that with our forthcoming no-holds-barred, all styles welcome fighting tournament, we had scooped Master Ishii and the Japanese.
“This is just like when your dad stole jiu-jitsu from them.” I whispered to Rorion, while elbowing him in the ribs.
“My dad didn’t steal it. He improved it,” Rorion whispered back, then smiled.
We bid farewell to Master Ishii after a big shot breakfast of bacon and eggs at the most expensive hotel in LA, and got back to work.
Later that night, I thought about what Rorion had said, how his dad had improved jiu-jitsu. This was what we were now attempting to do: improve what was already out there in the martial arts and combat sports worlds. We had literally gone back to fighting’s past in an attempt to bring something fresh to the modern world, right here in the U.S. I understood that the Japanese would be worried by our plans. And I also understood that numerous people in our country were worried as well. My wide array of phone calls in the search for fighters had shown me the opposition and ill will that was out there, and coming our way.
It really seemed to me that the martial arts community in America was a backwater. As a nation, we had come late to the party that had started centuries earlier. Instead of tradition, we had been reared on things like the Karate Kid and Kung Fu with David Carradine. The general public was clueless. And martial artists in the U.S. believed the shit they’d read in magazines like Black Belt. Fantasy stuff peddled by charlatans and hustlers. It was a culture of martial arts strip mall gurus who were happy to babysit middle class kids after school, all the while selling the aura of invincibility. On this, Rorion and I were absolutely united. He wanted to expose the flaws in the striking arts, and I wanted to expose the con men. To me, this would be a viable sub-text of our event.
We would not only crown the new king of fighting, we would also reveal the flakes and bullshit artists of the martial arts world.
A sport that I’d long been intrigued by was the Indonesian martial art penjak silat, which to me, looked legit. When I asked Rorion if he had heard of this fighting style, he laughed, and accused me of making it up. Kathy had heard of it though, and told me that through her previous work on the martial arts trade show circuit, she had met Alberto Cerro Leon, a Spaniard who claimed to be the first non-Indonesian penjak silat world champion. Kathy still had his contact information, and I asked her to arrange a meeting. Alberto and his beautiful manager, Eleni, came to the W.O.W. office, and seemed like a pair of European movie stars. If Antonio Banderas and Mike Tyson had their DNA combined, the result would have looked a lot like Alberto.
I made my pitch, emphasizing the $50,000 first prize. But Alberto seemed extremely cautious, and said that he wanted to see how the first event turned out before committing.
“Come on Alberto. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Show the world that you are the real master of the universe.”
But he wasn’t having any of it.
“Perhaps next time my friend,” were his parting words.
I still needed two more, and I was determined that one of those final places would go to a pro boxer. There was a bit of a historical precedent in my thinking, as Hélio had issued a public challenge to World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joe Louis in 1947. Rorion had recounted that story to me more than once during our Friday meetings at the By Brazil restaurant. Even though the idea was quickly dismissed by the Louis camp, it presented a fascinating image in my mind. And fastforwarding five decades, it posed the same question with different participants: Could Royce slip the punches of a powerful and accurate heavyweight, in order to get inside for the takedown?
The dream was Mike Tyson, but “Iron” Mike was serving time in an Indiana penitentiary on a rape conviction. Even if he had been a free man, there was no way that we could have afforded Tyson. Our first place prize money was of course $50,000, and Tyson had reportedly earned $22 million for his 91-second destruction of Michael Spinks in 1988.
I would’ve loved to have had other top heavyweights such as Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe, George Foreman or Lennox Lewis, but because of the money issue, I never pursued them. Even if I could have scrounged up a $100,000 appearance fee—which would have been all of the money in the world to guys like Pat Smith and Kevin Rosier—that sum would have been equivalent to spare change in the couch cushions for those A-list boxers.
But I pressed on, looking down the boxing food chain, as I hustled and made more calls. It quickly became clear to me that boxing people thought martial artists were a joke. Compared to boxers, no martial artist or kickboxer had ever made the kind of money earned by a superstar like Tyson, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard. And to them (and so many others as well), money was the measure of an athlete.
Also, the boxing crowd seemed to feel that their fighters actually took a punch as opposed to the “touch & giggle” scoring systems used in numerous martial arts. In their world, if a guy couldn’t make it as a boxer, then he became a kickboxer. More than one boxing guy laughed me off the phone about the punching power of “black belts.” A trainer at Kronk Gym in Detroit said that I was “chasing rainbows” in trying to find a real boxer to get into the ring with martial artists.
Another boxing trainer told me, “No rated heavyweight is going to waste his time on that shit.”
I heard pretty much the same speech when I called Joe Frazier’s Gym on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. But I was able to make two good contacts there, cut men Leon Tabbs and Sam Solomon (who had been in Sonny Liston’s corner in Miami Beach when he lost to Cassius Clay née Muhammad Ali in 1964). I kept their names handy, feeling that they’d be perfect to work our event.
To me, getting a ranked heavyweight boxer would really excite the fans. And, it would answer the eternal question that helped get me started on this quest: who would win between a boxer and a grappler? I wanted to see how Royce would do against a guy who landed left hooks and right crosses for a living, even though I didn’t say this to Rorion.
I simply had to have a boxer.
Thinking that SEG might provide the cash I needed, I turned to Meyrowitz.
“Would you guys be willing to pay an appearance fee for a boxer?”
“If you can get someone with name value for little or no money,” was his blunt response.
I looked into Randall “Tex” Cobb, the one who had run roughshod on the set of the Milius produced Uncommon Valor until he ran into Reb Brown. He felt to me like an inspired choice.
The guy had been both a professional kickboxer and boxer, best known for his horribly lopsided 15-round, unanimous decision loss to Larry Holmes for the world heavyweight title in 1982. Afterwards, a disgusted Howard Cosell had said that he would never work as a commentator on boxing again. “Tex” then quipped to the press, “If it gets him to stop broadcasting NFL games, I’ll go play football for a week, too.” In addition to Uncommon Valor, “Tex” had acted in a number of other films including Raising Arizona and Fletch Lives, and was a larger than life character.
Mark Gastineau was another possibility. He had racked up 107-and-a-half sacks and five Pro Bowl selections in a 10-year career as a defensive end for the New York Jets. After the NFL, Gastineau extended his fame in 1991 by becoming a pro boxer, and then dating Brigitte Nielsen (ex-wife of Sylvester Stallone and an actress in Rocky IV). He had big hair, and an even bigger ego. Gastineau was the quintessential love-to-hate big-mouth athlete.
And then there was Mitch “Blood” Green, best known for his second fight against Mike Tyson, which took place outside a 24-hour clothing store in Harlem. Their first fight had occurred in 1986—in a boxing ring—with the pre-world champion Tyson defeating Green in a 10-round, unanimous decision. Two years later, Green got his rematch, which resulted in him receiving a closed left eye, and a cut that required five stitches. For his part, Tyson suf
fered a ripped shirt and a fractured right hand from blasting Green in the face. Green filed a $25 million lawsuit against Tyson, and became an instant media darling, as he recounted the street fight, and his hatred of “Iron” Mike. A New York jury eventually awarded Green $45,000, which was $15,000 more than what he’d earned in his first fight against Tyson.
Before I could get too deep into negotiations, Meyrowitz shot them all down, feeling that “Tex”, Gastineau, and Green would want fat guarantees. He reiterated to me that he would consider paying for a boxer, but it had to be a boxer with legitimate credentials in the sport. And one who was willing to fight for peanuts.
Through my numerous calls to the boxing world, I was eventually given the name of Earnest Hart, Jr. as a person who I should contact.
Hart held black belts in a number of martial arts, including Kenpo and taekwondo. And he was a legendary welterweight kickboxer who won his first PKA title at age 21, and was once tabbed as one of the “Top Ten Kickboxers of All Time” by Inside Karate magazine. Hart was fast talking, funny, and he knew boxers, managers and attorneys associated with the sport in his hometown St. Louis.
Hart put me in touch with representatives for James “Bonecrusher” Smith and Leon Spinks, and I went to work. Both Spinks and “Bonecrusher” had been recognized boxing world heavyweight champions, but were now on the downside of their respective careers. Spinks won a gold medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics, and two years later stunned the world by defeating Muhammad Ali in a 15 round split decision to take the WBA and WBC titles. He lost the rematch to Ali the following year, and then proceeded to win just three of his next six fights. It was all downhill from there.
“Bonecrusher” had scored a first round knockout victory against Tim Witherspoon in 1986, which gave him the WBA title. Seven months later “Bonecrusher” was defeated by Mike Tyson, which started him on a four-fight winless streak. He would never be in the world title picture again.
I went back to Meyrowitz and asked him how much he would be willing to pay for one of these former title holders. Even long-faded champions like Spinks and “Bonecrusher” wouldn’t come cheap. Meyrowitz liked the idea, and told me $5,000 as an amount that could work for him. But the $100,000 asking price of both Spinks and “Bonecrusher” didn’t meet this financial criterion, so I kept looking.
I circled back to Earnest Hart who put me in touch with St. Louis-based attorney Phil Adams, who handled a number of boxers, the most prominent of whom was Art “King Arthur” Jimmerson. His nickname made me smile, and think of Milius with his Excalibur talk. I smiled even more when I started researching Jimmerson’s boxing career. At 5-foot-11 and 195 lb., Jimmerson kind of looked like a heavyweight, if you squinted. The guy was good; he’d won the National Golden Gloves middleweight title in 1983, but had the misfortune of ending up as a cruiserweight, the boxing weight class that runs from 176 to 200 pounds.
This is Earnest Hart, Jr. from St. Louis, Missouri, a championship kickboxer and pioneer mixed martial artist, who was instrumental in connecting me with various heavyweight boxers.
Cruiserweights are forever stuck in a boxing financial dead zone, as they’re seen as not as fast and exciting as the smaller guys and not as powerful and awesome as the heavyweights. So you could have a great career in this weight class, and still not reap the rewards of fame and fortune. And this was Jimmerson in a nutshell. His record was 29-5, he was on a 15-fight winning streak, a legit top-10 cruiserweight and in talks to fight the great Tommy “Hitman” Hearns. But he still needed money, and unlike his top-10 heavyweight counterparts, a grand prize of $50,000 was, for him, a lot of money.
We started talking, and true to his sport, Jimmerson wanted an appearance fee. He asked for $30,000, I countered with $10,000, and went around and around until we finally arrived at $17,000. Meyrowitz gave his approval and his cash reluctantly, and then there were seven. To Meyrowitz and the boxing fans like him, this was the Great White Shark of the tournament. But my experience at the Gracie Academy told me that one-dimensional “King Arthur” was likely going to be just another goldfish.
I had often wondered how a world-class wrestler would fare on the ground with one of the Gracies. What they lacked in submissions, they would no doubt make up for with takedowns and positional control. My Mike Tyson in this sport was Alexander Karelin, who the previous summer in Barcelona had won his second consecutive Olympic gold medal in the Greco Roman wrestling superheavyweight division. Between his Olympic triumphs, Karelin had captured three straight world championships. But penetrating the bureaucracy of Russia to bring their sports hero to Denver seemed about as likely as getting Tyson an early release from prison just so he could fight for us.
So instead, I set my sights on the greatest wrestler in the history of the U.S., Dan Gable. After going 181-1 with two NCAA championships, Gable captured gold in freestyle wrestling at the 1972 Summer Olympics without dropping a point. But I wasn’t looking for the 44-year-old coach of the famed University of Iowa’s wrestling program to fight for me, I was looking for Gable to tell me who should. If anyone could get me a world-class wrestler, it was Gable. After numerous, unreturned phone calls, I started leaving messages for his assistant, Tom Brands. But he never called me back, either.
I figured fuck it; I have Shamrock, and while he’s not a straight wrestler, the guy knows how to grapple. So, I moved on.
As for trying to sign a big name from American pro wrestling, the thought entered my mind, and then exited just as quickly. For starters, someone like Hulk Hogan or Ric Flair would have sought big money. Likely not as big as the dollar amount that the top heavyweight boxers would have looked for, but still well out of our budget range. And who knew if any of these guys could actually fight? Unlike Shamrock and even Bart Vale with their strong-style Puroresu matches in Japan, the era of shooters in Western pro wrestling seemed to have died out with old-timers like Lou Thesz and Ed “Strangler” Lewis. Plus, having a star from the WWF or WCW would have announced “work” to the fight public. I didn’t need the aggravation, and I certainly couldn’t pay for it anyway.
Having struck out with Olympic wrestling, I turned my attention to the Olympic sport of taekwondo. The king of that mountain in this country was Herb Perez, who had won the U.S.’s only gold medal in the sport at the 1992 Summer Games. I reached out to Perez and offered him $10,000. I figured that I had to come with something, and that Meyrowitz would never turn down writing a check to an American Olympic hero. But Perez wasn’t interested, and didn’t even counteroffer. I had the feeling that the honchos in Olympic taekwondo were down on his participation in our rough-and-tumble event.
For quite some time, I had been harboring the idea of getting a sumo wrestler. On the mock-up poster that Mike Stanley did for me, sumo was listed as one of the 15 fighting disciplines. I’d seen sumo and found the athletes astonishing, weird and compelling. And they were certainly strong and enormous. Plus, the sport had the air of the exotic about it. I could envision a 400-pound sumo wrestler chasing after Art Jimmerson or lying on top of Royce. That would be a spectacle.
If we really were going to have a wide open tournament featuring all the fighting arts, well then, we’d have to showcase the minor ones too. And sumo, as far as North Americans were concerned, was about as minor as it gets. Apart from the scene in You Only Live Twice where Sean Connery, as James Bond, has a knock-down, drag-out fight in a high-tech office with a sumo wrestler, I knew that most Americans had virtually no exposure to the sport.
I wasn’t sure how a sumo wrestler would do in a real fight, but the sheer audacity of putting one in the tournament got to me. When I ran the idea by Rorion, he didn’t know what to make of it, but said, “Hey, the old man grappled to a draw with Wladek Zbyszko (the famous Polish strongman and wrestler). He weighed 280 lb. So, why not?”
But everyone who I asked told me to forget it: sumo is a very closed subculture, and there is no chance that they’ll let you in. Undeterred, I started calling Japan, and with my Brooklyn accent, it
went nowhere fast. I felt like I was talking to owls, “Who, who, who?”
I did get someone on the phone at a Tokyo newspaper who spoke passable English. But the journalist told me that I was wasting my time.
“You no have luck getting sumo. Sumo is for Japan. Very proud. Understand?”
I remembered reading back at the Torrance Public Library that the sumo leagues in Japan were now recruiting Hawaiians to the sport, and so I decided to change course. I tracked down John Jacques, the honcho of the American Amateur Sumo Association. Jacques was based in California and had substantial credibility in the sport. He was a recruiter for the big sumo organizations in Japan, sending them massive men from the Hawaiian Islands. When I called Jacques and explained to him what I was looking for, he told me to look no further.
“I’ve got a guy, Teila Tuli, who got into the Makushita 2 class. And that’s up there a bit. He’s the real deal, but he ran into a few problems in Japan, and is now back living in Hawaii.”
Jacques told me that he would call Tuli on my behalf, and gauge his interest. At 6-foot-2 and 420 lb., the man known as Takamishu in sumo, and also as Taylor Wily in Hawaii, was a perfect representative of sumo for our tournament, as far as I was concerned.
Tuli had been unbeaten in his first 14 official sumo bouts, winning two consecutive yūshō (tournament championships). While he’d never reached the upper echelon of the sport, Tuli had achieved some semblance of success in Japan, and his credentials were more than solid.
Jacques told me that Tuli wanted $10,000, plus airfare from Honolulu to Denver for his brother and two cousins as well. I countered with $6,000 plus the travel, and we had a deal. As physically imposing as Tuli was, I questioned if he had either the overall fighting skill or conditioning to do anything other than look scary. Was he nothing more than an enormous goldfish? I amazed myself that I was first able to convince Campbell on this idea, and then get Meyrowitz to shell out $6,000 for an unknown quantity like Tuli.
