Is This Legal
Page 26
The DJ cranked the music, the bartenders kept everybody’s glass full, and Montecristo #2 cigars were smoked heartily by a number of us.
Just after 3 a.m., I led a conga line on the dance floor, which included Tuli, Rosier and Kathy. Trying so hard to play gracious host, I realized that I had pretty much ignored my Girl Friday all night. I asked her to sit down with me, and I then got us both fresh drinks.
Kathy told me that after the fights had finished, she threw up in the bathroom from all of the stress. This shocked me, as I thought that Kathy was actually immune to stress—as she always seemed so calm and in control.
“You know, you’re a pretty tough guy to work for.”
“I couldn’t have pulled this off without you,” I replied.
We stayed talking until 4 a.m., when I noticed that the party was in its final stages. Rorion and Campbell had long since said their goodbyes, and only a hearty few remained. Kathy and I were laughing and drinking, and she said, “You know you really should go out with me. You know, like on a date. Don’t you like me? I think you do.”
That’s me leading a conga line at 3 a.m. as the festivities at the Masked Ball wound down. Some of the Gracie youngsters got in on the fun, too.
“Would you like to continue this conversation in my room, Kathy?” I replied.
“I would, Art. Very much.”
As we headed to the elevator hand in hand, I paused for a moment, but then kept walking, as I knew that I’d left my mask behind.
AFTERWORD
BY SEAN WHEELOCK
I first saw the poster for the Ultimate Fighting Championship at my gym—a Gold’s Gym in Kansas City, where I was no doubt the scrawniest, youngest and least likely member. It immediately drew me in with its lineup of style vs. style match-ups, listing sports that I had heard of (boxing, karate, sumo, kickboxing) and those that I hadn’t, which sounded incredibly exotic and mysterious (jiu-jitsu, Savate, shoot fighting, taekwondo). As a life-long fan of boxing, pro wrestling, action movies and fistfights in general, how could I resist the tantalizing question that was asked on that poster: “Who Will Be The Ultimate Fighter?”
My mom didn’t even hesitate when I asked her if she’d spend the $14.95 for the Pay-Per-View broadcast. She was my regular benefactor for all things Evander Holyfield and WrestleMania, which cost far more than this out-of-nowhere oddity. Well, not quite out of nowhere. I had read a few articles in fight magazines about these new kinds of bouts that were happening in Japan, which one writer had described as “real pro wrestling.” The names Bart Vale, Volk Han, and Akira Maeda were mentioned, and I was thoroughly mesmerized. But I was also old enough to be skeptical. Real pro wrestling? Seriously?
It hadn’t been that long before that I’d fully bought into the world of kayfabe—the illusion that pro wrestling was indeed real. Every match, every feud, every angle. I was a total mark as a kid, regularly attending Thursday night Central States cards at Memorial Hall in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, and devotedly watching the weekly Georgia Championship Wrestling on WTBS and the monthly WWF shows on USA Network. I believed every second.
Now older and a bit wiser, when I heard about these fights in Japan, and then saw this poster for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, I wasn’t quite convinced. Sure, convinced enough to ask my mom to pony up for an added charge on our Tele-Cable bill, but not fully in.
But still, I had to see for myself. There was literally no way that I was going to miss the chance to watch real fights on live TV. Genuine no-holds-barred throw downs.
On the big night of November 12, 1993—a Friday that I remember clearly—I popped a blank VHS tape into my Sony VCR, hit the record button, and settled in. Unlike all of the boxing and WWF Pay-Per-Views that my mom bought for me, I didn’t invite anybody over for this one. Looking back, I think that I was kind of embarrassed—not that I loved fighting, all of my friends did—but that I may have been suckered in by a full-on work. It was one thing to buy a pro wrestling show, as we all now knew the score on those. But on this, I just wasn’t sure.
My worst fears seemed to be realized as soon as the live Pay-Per-View began, with the incredibly cheesy production values, and the unintentionally hilarious commentary. I was a long way from being a professional broadcaster then, but I already knew that opening a show as the lead announcer did by calling the event the wrong name, and then belching into the microphone, was not a mark of quality.
It got worse when I saw the fighters for the opening bout: an enormously fat Hawaiian guy and a tall, skinny, balding guy. These two looked just like the prelim jobbers of my childhood, who I had seen toil in the Central States circuit. Fuck, I knew it. This was just another pro wrestling show. A complete rip off.
But then something absolutely incredible happened. The enormously fat Hawaiian guy charged at the tall, skinny, balding guy, got clipped by a clean upper cut, and dropped on his ass. In an instant, the tall, skinny, balding guy unloaded a full-on kick to the enormously fat Hawaiian guy’s face. Even in those low-def TV days, I could see a tooth go flying into the crowd on impact. It got even better as the tall, skinny, balding guy re-set, and then threw a hard, clean, bare-fisted punch directly into his now helpless opponent’s eye, which was immediately bloodied.
I had never seen anything like this in my life. No one had, not on live TV anyway. Even Mike Tyson at his baddest-man-on-the-planet-best could not come even remotely close to delivering the level of shock and violence contained in that brutal head kick delivered by the man who I came to know as Gerard Gordeau.
There was no doubt now—this was all real, and in that instant, I was fully hooked. Chaos followed, which made it even better, and even more real, as a scripted show would never have appeared so disorganized and out of control. People poured into the cage, the referee seemed clueless, everyone was arguing, and the enormously fat Hawaiian guy, who I quickly learned was named Teila Tuli, was actually hurt. Really hurt. So hurt in fact that the fight was over, just like that.
In less than 30 seconds, the world had been introduced to the sport that would come to be known as mixed martial arts, but didn’t even have a name on that autumn night. If Art Davie had asked his friend, Academy Award nominated screenwriter John Milius, to script the opening of the first Ultimate Fighting Championship, it couldn’t have gone any better. Cringe-inducing violence, followed by utter pandemonium.
Oh yeah, this was real, this was my new favorite sport, and this was going to alter the direction of my life moving forward. I know three other people who watched this broadcast live on Pay-Per-View as I did, and I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that all of us have gone on to careers in the MMA industry (one of those three is the outstanding fighter and UFC veteran Ben Saunders). There was something so raw, so mesmerizing, and so real about the first Ultimate Fighting Championship that you were either going to be repulsed or captivated. I was, of course, captivated, and I have been ever since.
EPILOGUE
ZEUS DOES NOT BRING ALL MEN’S PLANS TO FULFILLMENT.
— HOMER, XIX, 328
WE did 86,592 Pay-Per-View buys on the first Ultimate Fighting Championship and 286,256 buys at UFC 5. The first UFC was a big hit and the franchise just kept growing. How do you explain the success of the UFC? In succeeding years, the event spawned a new sport (MMA) and an entire industry. Students, teachers, lifestyle clothing companies, gyms, seminars, promotions, amateur and professional fighters are all now part of the scene spawned years ago by the success of the first UFC. It’s amazing. Years later, I discovered a book that does a good job of explaining the phenomenon of the UFC and mixed martial arts, The Black Swan. It describes historical events that come as a surprise, have a major impact and are often rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.
The writer, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is an economist and philosopher, employs the metaphor of the black swan. For a long time people only thought swans were white. Black ones were extremely rare. Taleb explains the role of high profile, hard-to-pr
edict, rare events—beyond the realm of normal expectations in the fields of science, literature, film, technology and politics. He also illuminates the bias that makes people blind to the massive role of the rare event in history. For me, that really describes the UFC and the advent of MMA. Very few believed it was possible and only now, years later, are people trying to understand and explain what happened.
But, after the first UFC, a firestorm erupted. The politicians and newshounds smelled blood and began dogging the event. The political opposition soon found a champion in Arizona Senator John McCain. He became the head cheerleader for the “stop-the-carnage-before-Western-Civilization-comes-to-an-end” movement. McCain called the UFC “human cock fighting” and was soon joined by such media powerhouses as the New York Times. McCain wrote a letter to all fifty U.S. governors asking them to ban the UFC. Mayors in cities, including Denver, where we had staged events, soon found the UFC “objectionable” on moral grounds.
I just buried myself in my work as the event’s promoter, booker and matchmaker.
But the need to hire both civil and criminal attorneys to keep the UFC going as the political and media pressure grew convinced me that we would eventually be squeezed to death. So, after UFC 5 I gave it a lot of thought and made a decision to sell the event to our Pay-Per-View partner, Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG). I had to convince Rorion that it was the right decision.
To Rorion, the UFC was a means to an end. He saw it was a way to gain attention for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and the event had truly supercharged his business. He didn’t want to sell. To me the UFC was an end in itself—a franchise—but I was hearing the wolves howling for our scalps and the monster we had created. I also knew that Rorion was going to pull Royce out of the event because time limits and judges, which I was considering, were poison for the Gracie style. Rorion and I were heading towards a showdown.
The climax came on a sunny afternoon in April 1995. I asked Rorion to come over to the new W.O.W. office. After a few pleasantries, I got down to business. I asked him about Royce and the next UFC. Rorion was non-committal about Royce, but I could tell he was thinking about a hiatus for his kid brother.
And then, I talked about the rule changes I was considering: The referee would be given the authority to restart the fight. If two fighters were entangled in a position on the ground and the action had stagnated, the referee could stop the fight and restart the competitors on their feet. And I was considering gloves, which would allow strikers to hit harder. Rorion knew this spelled the end of the Gracies in the UFC.
As we argued, both of us understood that a line was drawn in the sand. I told Rorion that the political pressure was becoming worse and I did not see it getting any better. And the spectacle we had founded was going to morph into a sport. It was inevitable in my opinion.
Another reason I wanted to sell was that I wasn’t sure that SEG wasn’t screwing us. After five events, I was convinced that Bob Meyrowitz, an experienced concert promoter who knew the ins and outs of live event promotion better than I ever could, was padding expenses. I did not have a lot of proof because SEG always had a good explanation handy and any discrepancies I caught were corrected. But I still had a feeling Meyrowitz just considered Rorion and me talent and not real partners.
We rowed back and forth, and at one point, Rorion had tears in his eyes. I think he felt betrayed by me. But I prevailed and a deal was struck with Meyrowitz. He had always wanted to buy Rorion out. Earlier, he had asked me if that was possible and I said, “No, you can buy W.O.W., but not our individual shares.”
When we distributed the proceeds, Rorion wanted to give our 27 investors, most of whom were his students, more than the 10 percent originally allocated to them. Unhappy with the original split with Rorion, I insisted that any bonus for the investors had to come from him. In the end, I got 40 percent, Rorion received 35 percent and our investors got 25 percent. I felt it was fair to everyone and that I had earned the lion’s share.
Two weeks after the sale of W.O.W.’s assets to SEG was concluded, Meyrowitz called and asked me to come on board as booker and matchmaker. I took over as Commissioner of a new sanctioning body, The Ultimate Fighting Alliance, and began to install the rules necessary to morph the UFC from a spectacle into an actual sport. Meyrowitz and I had not talked about him hiring me at all during the sale, but I knew he would have to hire me. I had created the event.
Meyrowitz was convinced that he and SEG could weather the political storm and was thrilled to be able to buy W.O.W.’s stake. I was glad to sell. I stayed on board as a contract employee—doing the booking/matchmaking and acting as UFA Commissioner for a total of 18 UFC events until January 1998.
When asked later by Tad Friend, a writer doing a story about the UFC for New York Magazine in 1996 why I decided to sell to SEG, I coyly said, “I had a million reasons.”
The curtain call came at a surprise dinner Kathy Kidd had organized for Royce at his favorite restaurant in Redondo Beach in April 1995. I convinced Rorion that we should buy a real samurai sword from Japan, emblazon it with the event logos memorializing Royce’s victories in the UFC and present it to him.
The dinner was bittersweet. I remember Clay McBride, our scribe and investor, was at the bar with his wife. I joined them for a drink. But it was clear that I had become the enemy by forcing the sale to SEG and some hard words were exchanged. A little later, Royce was duly surprised by the party, as he thought he was just joining some friends for dinner. He got misty when we presented him with the sword. It was a sweet moment. But that dinner marked the end of my relationship with Rorion and the Gracies. Nevertheless, the tall, magnetic Brazilian and I have remained on friendly terms over the years, I’m glad to say.
One good thing that came out of the UFC for me was Kathy Kidd. After we sold our share of the UFC to SEG, I began to date her exclusively. She and I were married on New Year’s Eve, 1995. John and Elaine McCarthy were in attendance, but no one else from the UFC came.
Kathy Kidd and I were married on New Year’s Eve 1995. This photo was taken at a restaurant in May 1996 in Henderson, Nevada.
Kathy and I stayed together for several years. She had become my closest friend and we still worked best when we were tackling a business project. One of the ventures we attempted together was a Las Vegas stage production bringing Bruce Lee to life as a hologram. Another project was a proposal to the city fathers to stage a monster laser show and light up the Vegas Strip on New Year’s Eve in 1999. We parted as a married couple in 2002 but have remained close ever since. I still consider her one of my best friends.
In 2001, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta along with Dana White formed a company (Zuffa LLC) and bought the UFC from Bob Meyrowitz. Over the next few years they did a great job moving it into the mainstream. For the 20th anniversary show in November 2013, they invited Meyrowitz, Rorion, Campbell, David Isaacs and me to be their guests. Everyone but Meyrowitz came, and it was grand to be there beside the Octagon once again with Rorion. In the years following my exit from the UFC, I never attended another UFC show or produced another MMA event.
I crossed Chuck Norris’ path again in 2004 when I pitched him a TV pilot called Spear, about a rodeo rider turned bounty hunter. There were a lot of us in his living room that day and during a break, someone mentioned the UFC. Chuck turned to me and, in front of everybody, announced, “I was wrong about that.” It was a generous gesture. For me, besides being a star, Norris turned out to be a gentleman with a lot of class.
For the 20th anniversary, magazine and TV media from three continents approached me to talk about the old days. Interviewers asked me if I ever had any reservations or regrets about selling. Sports Illustrated asked me how I felt about being out of the picture. I told them that I was driving down Sunset Boulevard in LA a few years ago and spied a billboard advertising the UFC. I said, “It’s like being a divorced father and watching someone else raise your kid,” and then I added, “The light changed and I moved on.”
Sean Wheelock, the
play-by-play commentator for the UFC’s main competitor, Bellator, approached me about a book that would tell the story of the first UFC. Sean kept insisting that if I hadn’t started that quest, MMA would never have happened. Several others had approached me over the years about doing a book, but for some reason nothing came of it. The book you are reading now would not have happened if not for this persistent, talented sports commentator and super MMA fan. Sean persevered, much as I had 20 years earlier.
One last thought: I always knew that other than soccer, martial arts are the one truly global sport. Almost every country has some form of it. And everybody on the planet loves a good fight. It’s in our DNA. MMA was destined to become huge.
That about sums it up for me. I’m grateful for what life has delivered. Most people don’t get that much. When I was interviewed by FOX TV in the U.S. for a 20-year retrospective on the UFC, I said, “It was a great ride and a great experience; and I’m sorry I didn’t take the full ride. But down deep, I know that long after I’m gone, MMA will still be around. Few men can say that much of what they do in life will survive them. This will survive me.”
THE STATS
THE ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIP
November 12, 1993
McNichols Sports
Arena Denver, Colorado
Quarterfinals:
Gerard Gordeau def. Teila Tuli, TKO (head kick and punch), 0:26 Round 1 (Referee: Joao Alberto Barreto)
Kevin Rosier def. Zane Frazier, TKO (punches and stomps), 4:20 Round 1 (Referee: Hélio Vigio)