by Art Davie
“That was hilarious. All the guys going over the hand tape and everything else. I was just hanging back. I had a root canal today, so I’m on medication.”
Afterwards, Kathy, Elaine, Clay and I went for a drink at the Brown House, a famous Denver watering hole and hotel. When we sat down, we noticed that Democratic pollster and commentator, James Carville and his wife, Republican strategist, Mary Matalin were seated nearby. It was that kind of joint. I definitely needed to blow off some steam, as I felt we all did. I started teasing Kathy that since she was doing such a bang up job, I was going to give her a raise.
With that, Clay started pestering me.
“Well, what kind of an offer are you going to make to Kathy? Come on Art. How much?”
I announced that I was going to give Kathy a title, instead of a raise, and she and I kept joking back and forth.
Clay began looking more and more irritated, and said, “Why don’t you two get a room and settle it.”
“You up for that Kathy?” I asked laughing a bit.
“We don’t have time, boss. There’s a staff meeting still on the agenda tonight. How else can I get a promotion if I start missing staff meetings?” she fired back.
It became clear to me that Clay seemed to be attracted to Kathy, just as I was. I could sense that Elaine had picked up on this as well. I finally paid the bill, and we headed back to the hotel for our final meeting of the day, with Clay barely saying a word.
That night as I struggled to get to sleep, I kept thinking about the debacle of our fighters meeting, and how it had completely gone off the tracks.
I’d written the rules and regulations for the Ultimate Fighting Championship with the sole purpose of creating the best and fairest fights possible. I wanted everyone to have an equal chance at victory (and feel they were being treated fairly) whether they came from Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, kung fu, boxing, sumo or whatever. That was the only way that this thing was going to work.
Mixed match fighting had failed to break through to the mainstream because everything always got negotiated to death. I needed to look no further than Antonio Inoki on the mat for 15 rounds against Muhammad Ali in 1976, throwing kicks while on his ass, because the rules made it virtually impossible for him to stand and fight his fight.
My mindset was that a fighter should be able to wear whatever they wanted, as long as it didn’t create a weapon or protection, and do whatever they wanted, as long as it didn’t cross the line of humanity. I was determined that the Ultimate Fighting Championship was going to be a place where absolutely anyone could come in and do their thing, and then see if it really and truly worked.
And then it hit me that this core philosophy of mine was the major reason why so many gyms, managers, organizations, sanctioning bodies and fighters themselves had not hesitated in given me a blunt, “No!” when I approached them. Martial arts and combat sports were pretty much based on your style being dominant, and every other style being worthless—a sham. So many of the guys who I reached out to were the kings of their own little fiefdoms—heroes in their own tiny realms. No one challenged their dominance; to their followers, they were the unbeatable masters.
There was a lot more risk than reward for these guys to be given the chance to show the world that what they did really worked. A loss meant that maybe they weren’t all that they’d claimed. An ass kicking meant that they were pretty much full of shit, and so too was their fighting style. It wasn’t just a matter of pride and reputation, it was a matter of money. Teaching and training your fighting style was ultimately business—and absolutely no one wanted their business labeled as a fraud. I had real admiration for my eight tournament fighters and two alternates. They all had the balls to step up, and despite all of the bitching and debating, were now ready to put themselves on display to the world—consequences be damned.
I concluded that I had almost blown all of this by going along with Rorion being in charge. My own fault. If it wasn’t for Teila Tuli, I felt that the Ultimate Fighting Championship might have been derailed on the eve of the event.
Friday, the day of the fights, arrived early. I set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. to be ready for our early morning staff meeting, but I was awake by 5 a.m. Even before the Ultimate Fighting Championship was set to go live on PPV at 7 p.m. local time in Denver, we had to do the walk through dress rehearsal with all of the fighters that afternoon, supervised by Pillot.
And there was, of course, that matter of our unsigned contract, which I’d been trying not to think about all week. Moss had been battling over the phone daily with Meyrowitz and David, and he didn’t think that there was anything more that we could get. They’d made their concessions big and small, and Moss told me that he felt that it was now time for me to sign. As I saw it, my alternatives were to hold the Ultimate Fighting Championship without SEG broadcasting it that night, postpone it, or cancel it all together. I’d come too far to cancel, and a postponement would only prolong my misery with SEG. After such a move, I doubted that Meyrowitz would welcome me back to the negotiating table anyway.
Legally, I could still hold the event—untelevised—but I knew that it would be a financial disaster to do so. Gone would be our SEG guarantee, and our sponsorship money from Gold’s Gym, as well as our smaller advertiser, Otomix martial arts gear. The fighters had all signed their contracts with the understanding that the event would be aired live across the U.S. on PPV-TV. This would be a serious breach on our part. And I didn’t like my chances of getting us another broadcast partner once word got out that we’d abandoned SEG at the altar on wedding day. With a vengeful Meyrowitz leading the charge, there was no question that word would indeed get out. I knew for sure that we’d be industry poison.
But the leverage that I had was that SEG could not legally broadcast the Ultimate Fighting Championship without a signed contract. Campbell had let that slip. They would have wasted hundreds of hours, and tens of thousands of dollars in getting to this point, with nothing to show for it. And they would badly tarnish if not ruin their reputation with the myriad of cable systems across the country that aired SEG events. I knew that as a content provider in the PPV-TV world, they had to deliver as advertised, or there would be serious hell to pay.
Now in the final stage of this prolonged game of chicken, I was prepared to swerve at the very last second, but my instincts told me that Meyrowitz would veer out of the way first.
Before the start of the day’s 7:30 a.m. meeting, I looked at our fight program which we’d be selling at McNichols Arena for $4 that night. I felt bad for Jenkins, who as my second alternate I figured most likely wouldn’t get to fight in front of his hometown crowd, and also didn’t even make it into the program. By the time he replaced the injured Jim Mullen, we’d already shipped our finished pages to the printer. All we could do was type “WITHDREW!” diagonally in all capital letters across Mullen’s picture and profile.
On page one was a letter of welcome and introduction that I addressed to our McNichols Arena crowd, which stated:
Hundreds of fighters from Asia, the Americas and Europe were reviewed to select the eight brave and skilled men who battle tonight. Many were called, but few were chosen.
I concluded:
See which style is the best on this night and who is the man worthy of the title–THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER!
At the early morning meeting, Campbell let me know that we absolutely had to get the contract signed. He told me that we’d all be fucked if I refused, and that this wasn’t just about me. There were a lot of people who were now involved in this, himself included, and Campbell said that I needed to think about that. I told him that we’d get everyone on the phone later in the day and get everything finalized, but first we needed to get through Pillot’s walk through with the fighters. The contract would work itself out.
Before heading to McNichols Arena for the dress rehearsal, I checked in on Rorion, who along with his dad and brothers, was holding a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu seminar at the hotel. It was open to the public,
and when I arrived, I asked Rorion if he was worried about giving away the family secrets so close to fight time.
“No, Arturo,” he told me. “We have to get the whole world on board.”
Our commentators Jim Brown, Bill Wallace and Kathy Long were there to observe Gracie Jiu-Jitsu up close and in person at the seminar. To her credit, Kathy Long was willing to humble herself, and got on the mat—which was clearly not her fighting domain. She wanted to expand her knowledge as a martial artist, and also get an understanding of what Royce would be trying to utilize that night come fight time.
Rather than join in, Wallace leaned back against a folding table and kept making comments to no one in particular about how he’d successfully counter every move from Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
“I could show you how to reverse that.”
“That would never work in a real fight against me.”
“Let’s see how they’d deal with one of my kicks.”
At one point, I caught Jim Brown staring at Wallace with a look that mixed amusement with disgust.
That afternoon at McNichols Arena, the fighters and their respective camps began to arrive, as Kathy Kidd worked diligently to keep everyone separated, out of fear that the bouts would start early. We had told them the day before that they would need to bring what they would be wearing that night. The plan was for Kathy to show them their dressing rooms, and then let the fighters go inside the octagonal fighting area, which they would all be seeing for the first time. After that, Pillot would have them rehearse their entrance walk, which he needed for timing purposes for the PPV broadcast. I now just hoped that everyone would follow this plan, and make my life easy for a change.
I had originally wanted Tuli to wear his traditional sumo outfit—the mawashi—in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. But Tuli declined, as he was afraid that it would be ripped off, and give the world the sight that I’d seen earlier in his hotel room. Instead, he wanted to wear boxing trunks, but after Kathy’s fruitless search, he settled on some awful Polynesian skirt thing.
Rosier showed me what he was going to wear, and I thought it was a joke. They looked like the bottom half of a pair of white long underwear that had been shrunk in the wash. Jimmerson’s boxing trunks looked great, solid black with his last name across the front waistband in white letters.
I continued checking out the remaining fighters doing their walkthroughs, with Royce going last. When I headed to the van for a ride back to the hotel, Todd Hester came running up to me. Todd was a cool guy who I would often see around the Southern California martial arts scene, and had gotten to know fairly well. He’d flown out to Denver at his own expense, and Rorion had given him an all-access pass.
“Art, you’re not going to believe what I just saw,” he said. “Royce absolutely lost it after rehearsal.”
Todd went on to tell me that after everyone had cleared out, he watched Royce and Rickson walk back into our fighting area. They knelt on the mat facing each other, and Royce just started crying inconsolably. Rickson then tightly embraced his brother, the way a father holds his sobbing child who has just awoken from a terrible nightmare.
What Todd had to say actually didn’t surprise me at all. The crushing pressure of the moment was squarely on the shoulders of Royce, and I seriously doubted that he’d asked for any of this. Without question, this wasn’t about him, it was about his dad, his brothers, his uncle—the entire Gracie family and legacy. At that point, I truly believed that Rorion should have made amends with Rickson, because this was going to be far too much for poor, sweet Royce to bare.
I took the short two-mile ride from McNichols Arena back to the Executive Tower Inn, so that I could change into my tuxedo, and then have the big conference call that I understood was going to decide the fate of our SEG deal, and the night, one way or the other. I was trying to keep my composure, as I knew that this was the decisive battle.
As I now waited in my suite for the phone to ring, I turned to Ethan and said, “We’re doing fine on time. Just get my monkey suit all set to go.”
I then asked him to put the studs in my tuxedo shirt, and pin on the dress service medals I’d been awarded as a Marine in Vietnam.
“What’s with the medals, Art? That’s going to look cheesy.”
“Ethan. Damn it. Just do it!” I was surprised by the sharpness in my voice, and I immediately apologized.
Soon, the phone rang, and I was joined on the line by Moss, who was in his Burbank law office; Meyrowitz and his brother David, who were in New York; and Campbell who was in his room, one floor below me. I lit a Montecristo #2, poured myself a shot of single malt scotch and settled in.
Immediately, I could tell that Meyrowitz was wired, but was trying his hardest to remain calm. Meyrowitz clearly didn’t want to piss me off, but acting like this was against his nature, and I thought it must be killing him.
I wasted no time in laying it all out for Meyrowitz.
“I’m good with everything else Bob, but SEG is going to have to pay all fighter purses after tonight. That’s prize money and guarantees. It’s just part of talent costs. And fighters are the talent for this show.”
The call dragged on and on, extending past the hour mark. We kept going over this issue, with SEG offering to pay varying percentages of the fight purse, none totaling the 100 percent that I demanded. Either Meyrowitz was going to blink first, or I was. This was about the future of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but without tonight, there would be nothing.
Finally, Meyrowitz let out a huge exhale, and then agreed to pay the full cost of all fighter purses for every Ultimate Fighting Championship after this first event.
“OK, Art. You win. Are you happy? I hope you’re fucking happy!”
The contract was faxed to my hotel room, and I signed it at 5:47 p.m.—seventy-three minutes before our on-air time.
I was right on the verge of caving in, but Meyrowitz lost his nerve and caved first. There was no time to celebrate though, as I had to get my ass back to McNichols Arena, and watch my dream now finally become a reality. But then I decided that there was time for one more glass of scotch.
All the work of the last year; all of our grief and struggles were finally coming to this moment. Kathy had set up a car for Rorion and me, and Ethan joined us. I was bubbling over inside with excitement and nerves. I could tell from Ethan’s reactions that he knew Rorion and I were tight. Rorion wasn’t saying much, but the muscles in his jaw kept working. I was manic. What if it all came apart in the last minute? I had the feeling that anything was possible. We were on new ground here. I tried to look cool; I had to. But I felt the tingle that comes from not knowing what’s going to happen next. It was the most exciting feeling in the world. I had a checklist with me, and I knew, that with plenty to do, I’d be busy.
When Ethan and I arrived, I could see that a decent crowd had formed outside the entrance gates and ticket windows. We’d given out almost 1,000 comps, distributing them to our friends, family, acquaintances, and business associates, as well as radio stations, gyms, and martial arts schools around Denver. But there actually seemed to be paying customers there as well.
Once inside, I gave Ethan my briefcase, which I told him was my “baby” for the night. It contained my Glock 17, the fighter contracts, our W.O.W. Promotions checkbook and $3,000 in cash.
“Whatever you do, don’t let my baby out of your sight. Handcuff it to your fucking wrist if you have to.”
“Don’t worry, Art. You always worry, just like my dad.”
My first order of business was to check in at the television production truck, which served as the command center of our live PPV broadcast. Seeing the constellation of monitors and control panels, as well as Pillot ruling the deck like an admiral, made me fill with adrenaline. I looked over at Mark Lucas, our director, and he said to me “break a leg.” I figured that I had finally made it in show business and smiled at him. Pillot and Lucas were live TV veterans, with hours and hours of big shows under their belts, but I
could still sense their excitement. Just like all of us, they were about to step into the great unknown.
I then headed back inside McNichols Arena to see if William “Buzz” Reifman (who was a nurse) and Dr. Joel Cooperman, our emergency medical team, had arrived. I had mandated that all of our fighters were tested for AIDS. The pair were regulars at working boxing events in Denver, and when I found them by the fighting area, I handed the negative test results to Dr. Cooperman.
From there, I went to visit all of the fighters in their dressing rooms.
Frazier looked terrified, and seemed really agitated. I felt like he was already thinking about all of the reasons why he was going to lose, and why it would be our fault.
“How are you doing, Zane?”
“Man, I just hope my breathing problems don’t start up.”
Rosier was joking around, and had a big smile on his face. He was wearing his fighting long underwear, which he had pulled about a foot above his waist, like a 90-year-old man. Somehow they were both baggy and way too tight.
“Are you really going to wear that Kevin? Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?” I asked.
I couldn’t help but like Rosier and his goofy enthusiasm.
Throughout our early conversations, and even when he arrived in Denver, I wasn’t sure that Shamrock realized that the Ultimate Fighting Championship was going to be a full-on shoot. But seeing the intensity on his face told me that he now knew exactly what he was getting into, and that he was ready to roll. In his bright red Pancrase/Puroresu trunks, Shamrock looked like a bodybuilding champion. And I thought he looked like he might be our tournament champion as well.
Gordeau was smoking, and had the demeanor of a man waiting for a city bus to take him on his mundane daily commute.
“Is everything good, Gerard?”
“No problem, Art Davie.”
Royce was with his dad and brothers in the marquee dressing room, which had been given to him by Rorion. It was far and away the biggest, and it was the only one that had a television monitor, on which Royce could watch the live PPV feed. I could only hope that Frazier didn’t see where Royce was housed. Whatever Rickson had said and done during his apparent breakdown earlier in the day seemed to have worked, because Royce looked focused. I couldn’t get very close to him though, as he had a phalanx of Brazilians guarding him like he was the Pope.
