Let’s Get It On! (46 page)

Cutmen like Leon Tabbs and Jacob “Stitch” Duran, fight coordinator Burt Watson, Nevada State Athletic Commission Representative Colleen Murphy, and others are the real people of the sport, the ones who go above and beyond behind the scenes to make it as great as it is. And then, of course, there are the fighters.

I don’t have a favorite fighter. I like them all. I’m not saying that to be impartial. They’re all different, but they all have the balls to step up and do what others are afraid to. What most people don’t understand is the fear involved with going out there. It’s not so much a fear of the fight but of failure. You’re putting yourself out there for everyone to judge you.

When you’re an NFL player and you go out on the field with the rest of your team, you can hide. There’s a chance you’ll be exposed in that play you don’t get right, but most of the game, you’re shielded among the rest of your team.

In fighting, there’s no hiding. All eyes are on you and your opponent. When you’re out there in the cage, with the lights blaring and the crowd cheering and camera bulbs flashing, it’s incredibly stressful. Fighters are surrounded by all these people—trainers, family members, teammates, cornermen, and fans—expecting so much and judging their skill based on this one fight. “You’re only as good as your last fight,” as the popular saying goes.

It’s how fighters handle the pressure that gives me so much respect for them. It also tells me a lot about who they are. I get to see a lot of this firsthand backstage. Some fighters are laughing and joking as if they’ve almost forgotten they’re about to go out in front of thousands to show what they’ve got. Then there are the ones throwing up, not communicating, or standing still while their minds are going a thousand miles an hour. If I could bet on the sport, I’d be a rich man. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left the locker rooms knowing exactly which fighter would win.

Not a lot of people can climb into the cage and lay it all on the line. That’s what makes fighters special. They can.

Maybe because of their hazardous choice of occupation, fighters often have great senses of humor. A lot of them are pranksters, which is something I can appreciate, of course. I’ve had some funny moments with fighters over the years, but I think Scott Smith, a middleweight from California who’s fought for both the UFC and Strikeforce, got me the best.

I was making my usual rounds backstage one night when Smith told me he had a problem. I don’t remember if he was fighting or cornering a teammate that night, but he looked concerned, and my natural response was to help him if I could.

“I think I have a hernia,” Smith told me, “but I don’t want to show the doctors.”

With an entire roomful of cornermen standing around, Smith walked me to the side for a little privacy. There, he pulled out the waistline of his pants and motioned for me to take a peek.

“What do you think?” he asked seriously.

I looked down to see he’d positioned one of his testicles to protrude from his shorts at its maximum density.

The room erupted in laughter. I’d fallen right into it, and, yeah, it was a good one.

Sometimes it’s hard for fans to grasp that fighters are people too. Being around them so much, I really get a sense of who they are, especially after watching them grow up in the cage over years of shows. I’m a referee, and I’m impartial when I step into the cage, but I’ve certainly been touched by fighters and others who have traveled through the sport, some right alongside me.

I was deeply affected by the death of former UFC middleweight champion Evan Tanner, who succumbed to heat exposure while in a California desert in September of 2008. Elaine and I had both watched the quiet but intellectual Tanner struggle with alcoholism when we’d first met him at UFC 18. Tanner would drink heavily at the after parties, sometimes to the point that he wouldn’t remember what he’d done.

One night, Tanner got especially inebriated, picked up Elaine, put her on his shoulder, and refused to put her down. Then he fell and dropped Elaine on her head. We weren’t sure he remembered it until he brought it up in an interview years later while talking about his alcoholism and how embarrassed he was that he’d done that to her. Tanner apologized to Elaine shortly after that.

Still, Tanner was a self-made fighter and a darn good one at that. A loner by nature, he learned jiu-jitsu by watching videos, before later joining the formidable Team Quest with Randy Couture, Matt Lindland, and Dan Henderson in Oregon. We watched Tanner win the UFC middleweight title against David Terrell at UFC 51 only to lose it four months later. Tanner’s journey to a UFC championship title was unique, which is why I think many people were inspired by him. His first teacher was his VHS player, but that didn’t stop him from becoming a champion.

I was also impacted when Charles Lewis Jr., a clothing entrepreneur of the famous Tapout brand, died in a car accident in 2009. Lewis, known as “Mask” because he always wore colorful superhero-like makeup, championed the sport and preached its merits as he sold his Tapout T-shirts from the trunk of his car in event parking lots.

Lewis was an incredibly giving person and became quite close to my family. My youngest son wore Tapout wristbands for nearly a year straight until we ordered him to take them off because they were so filthy, and I know my daughter had a crush on Lewis for quite some time. I even named one of my English bulldogs Tapout. At events, I always knew when Lewis and the Tapout crew were approaching because he’d yell, “Biiiig Joooohn!” from across the crowded room. It always embarrassed me, but I knew I had a true friend in Lewis.

Speaking at Lewis’ memorial was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My friend had been too young and full of life to be gone.

In their own ways, Tanner and Lewis touched many lives in the sport. They both used the same simple term: “Believe.” When I think about the way they both incorporated it in their lives, it tells me a lot. Every time I see that word, I think of these two people. It brings a smile to my face and reminds me,
Just believe. Don’t let people put limits on you. Do what you need to do how you need to do it.

One of the most uplifting fighters I ever got to be around was Justin Eilers, a former Iowa State middle linebacker who’d been recruited to UFC champion Pat Miletich’s Iowa powerhouse gym by his roommate and former UFC lightweight champion Jens Pulver. Eilers was a good athlete and a free spirit and could strike up a friendly conversation with practically anybody.

I had a running joke with Eilers about an incident when he’d gotten a little too intoxicated and wound up making out with a transvestite in a club, something his Miletich teammates ruthlessly ridiculed him for. I would always come into Eilers’ locker room and go over the rules and procedures before the fight in my usual serious manner. I’d finish with the same question I ask every fighter: “Do you have anything else you want to go over or any questions at all?” Once I got the “No, I’m good,” from fighters, I’d leave the locker room. But with Justin, I always had just one more question: “Justin, if it’s a girl from the waist up, does that make it okay?”

He’d always start cussing at me and then laugh, the prefight tension broken. “I’m telling you, she had some of the best tits I’ve ever seen,” he’d say.

At UFC 53 “Heavy Hitters,” held on June 4, 2005, at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Eilers challenged Andrei Arlovski for his heavyweight title. I had to stop the fight prematurely when Eilers fell to the ground cradling his leg. He’d blown out his knee.

It would be the last fight I’d have the privilege to referee him in. The day after Christmas in 2008, Eilers was shot and killed by his stepfather, an ex-sheriff, during a dispute at a family gathering. It was another senseless loss for the MMA world.

Tanner, Lewis, and Eilers all contributed to the sport in their own way. Their individual efforts helped propel the sport to new heights in mid-2005.

On the heels of Couture-Liddell II, UFC 53 was the show where I felt the atmosphere changing at the events. The strangest thing I noticed was that fans were now packing the arena way ahead of the start of the show.

When Forrest Griffin, who was fresh off his win over Stephan Bonnar at
The Ultimate Fighter
finale two months earlier in Las Vegas, made his entrance, he was practically accosted by crazy fans trying to touch him as he made his way to the cage. When Griffin won his fight against Canadian Bill Mahood, the crowd blew the top off the place. Griffin got the kind of reception reserved for Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture, and Chuck Liddell—fighters who had toiled in the UFC for years.

It was clear right then and there that the reality show had already impacted the UFC’s popularity. The promotion often refers to the series as its Trojan horse because it was the vehicle they used to bring mixed martial arts to the uninitiated masses. It wasn’t the live fight show Dana White had envisioned to do the job, but the public’s obsession with reality TV couldn’t have come at a better time for the sport. The story goes that Spike TV head Brian Diamond struck a handshake deal with White and Fertitta for the second season of
TUF
and more live
Fight Night
events in the alleyway behind the Cox Pavilion only minutes after Griffin and Bonnar had knocked the tar out of each other.

Griffin-Bonnar became a “watercooler fight,” the one talked about in offices across the country Monday morning. The ratings were the sport’s highest to date in the United States, with 2.6 million viewers tuning in. The finale was the highest-rated program on both cable and broadcast TV that night for men ages eighteen through thirty-four, which is the coveted demographic for advertisers. Here at UFC 53, more than four years and $40 million later, Zuffa’s purchase of the UFC looked like it might finally turn out to be a worthwhile investment.