Let’s Get It On! (49 page)

Despite the rigorous schedule, I was delighted to be grappling again. A couple months after the gym’s opening, my Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructors Lou Salseda, Mike Ortiz, Todd White, and Felicia Oh jointly awarded me my black belt.

In late December, Zuffa promoted the rematch between former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and his rival Chuck Liddell at UFC 66 over the New Year’s weekend in Las Vegas. The show was said to have gotten 1.05 million pay-per-view buys. It was the first time the promotion had broken the 1 million barrier, and the event garnered nearly twice as many purchases as the previous installment had.

Ortiz lasted into the third round with Liddell this time, but the outcome was still in the Iceman’s favor.

At $50 a pop and with Zuffa supposedly receiving half of that amount for each buy, the promotion would have made over $26 million in pay-per-view dollars alone. Not a bad day’s work in anyone’s book.

With profits like that seemingly possible, in 2007 the market began to flood with new promotions, clothing companies, and other MMA-related businesses that sold everything from gear to mats to cages. It seemed everyone with money thought they could get into the business to make a buck or two, and why not? Zuffa made it look much easier than it really was. Some new MMA businesses did find success, while others weren’t as lucky.

A new group called the World Fighting Alliance was one of the first to realize promoting fights isn’t as elementary as putting a big-named card together. After a handful of shows hosted in nearly empty arenas, the UFC swooped in on the promotion in turmoil and bought out a bunch of the WFA’s more attractive fighter contracts.

UFC 67 “All or Nothing,” held on February 3, 2007, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, was a big night for Dana White and the UFC, as it marked the debut of a couple of those key WFA fighter acquisitions. Quinton “Rampage” Jackson had been with Japan’s Pride Fighting Championships before switching over to the WFA. Lyoto Machida was also under a WFA contract and, although he wasn’t as well-known as Jackson, people who knew the sport were banking on the unbeaten Japanese-Brazilian contender as the future of fighting. Both passed their Octagon debuts with flying colors.

The other big name White was waiting to unleash was Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, the Croatian knockout artist who had defected from Pride just as the foreign promotion stumbled in Japan because of a magazine article linking it to the Yakuza mob. Filipovic went for the bigger payday the UFC was now able to offer, and his first opponent would be the lesser skilled brawler Eddie Sanchez.

NSAC Executive Director Keith Kizer told me I’d originally been scheduled to referee this fight but had been removed because of comments I’d made about the match to other NSAC officials on the set of
The Ultimate Fighter
weeks before. I’d said it wasn’t a matter of who’d win but of which row Cro Cop’s lethal left high kick would launch Sanchez’s head into. It may not have been the right thing to say, but to me there was little doubt that Sanchez was being sent in for nothing more than to fill Cro Cop’s highlight reel.

I don’t blame Kizer for taking me off of the fight. In fact, I thank him for it. I got to referee two more evenly matched bouts, including a rematch between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and kickboxer Marvin Eastman.

In 2000, I’d watched their first fight at a King of the Cage show at the Soboba Casino in Southern California. The fight was a war. Jackson absorbed three hard head kicks from Eastman and kept coming forward. I was amazed by his chin as much as anything. Afterward, I told Jackson, a wrestler with a penchant for stand-up brawls, he had a great future if he kept working hard.

The rematch at UFC 67 was a well-paced affair. Eastman, a Las Vegas prison guard by day, would fight anyone, anywhere, anytime and was stopped only after Jackson nailed him with a knee and follow-up punches. Jackson’s win set him up nicely for a rematch with UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell.

Now that the Las Vegas shows were drawing healthy attendance numbers with some consistency, it was time again to take the show on the road. UFC 68 “The Uprising” on March 3, 2007, was scheduled to coincide with the Arnold Sports Festival weekend at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.

The Arnold Sports Festival is an annual fitness and bodybuilding expo started by Arnold Schwarzenegger that hosts many kinds of competition, from Arnold Classic bodybuilding to table tennis to archery. The festival also attracts over 175,000 sports fans, who can meander through aisles of sports-related product booths and meet their favorite athletes. It was a great opportunity for MMA to get exposure alongside some other popular niche sports.

The Arnolds takes place during the first week of March every year. In 2007 that week, a monster snowstorm was gripping the Midwest, which would make travel to Columbus a challenge for most of us.

The only recurring dream I’ve ever had about the UFC is one in which I’m frantically trying to get to a show and miss it, disappointing the promotion and the people who depend on me to be there. I’ve never been able to let myself be late to an appointment or event because, to me, that would be disrespecting the people I’m working with. I just have to get there, and that’s that. Not being able to is my nightmare, and UFC 68 would be the show where it came to life in excruciating detail.

It started in Las Vegas three nights before UFC 68. I got on a plane with Elaine to Minneapolis and then on to Moline, Iowa. At the time, Elaine had opened her own interior design business and agreed to help manager Monte Cox furnish and decorate his new house in Bettendorf, Iowa. From Moline, we’d fly into Columbus for the show.

The plane was late getting into Minneapolis, and while we were taxiing in, I watched from my window as our next flight, to Moline, departed without us. We spent the night at the airport, and the next morning I was in line to get us on the earliest flight. But the weather seemed to be worsening by the minute, and I was now beginning to worry that I wouldn’t get to Columbus in time.

Screw Moline,
I thought,
and screw whatever Elaine was going to do for Monte.

We booked a flight to Columbus, but the snow was falling heavily. The TVs in the airport blared news of the approaching storm.

Finally, we boarded the plane to Columbus only to sit on the tarmac for three and a half hours as workers deiced the plane and the pilots waited for a break in the bad weather. After another hour, the head pilot’s voice came over the intercom and told us the storm was just too strong. Then the pilot pulled the plane back into the terminal.

I wasn’t in a good mood. At the counter, the attendant told me she’d booked a new flight for us, this one from Minneapolis to Chicago, then to Philadelphia, then back to Detroit, and finally to Columbus.

I looked at her as if she were crazy. “How in the hell can you say you’ll fly me to four different cities when you can’t fly me to one right now?”

I asked for our luggage back and told Elaine to go to the rental car agency. While we’d been on the tarmac, she’d already called to rent a vehicle with four-wheel drive and a GPS.

We were talking about 650 miles to Columbus, so there wasn’t a minute to waste. By the time we had the rental keys, our luggage was still on the plane, so we took off without it. Of course, we got a call thirty minutes into the drive. Our luggage was available, so I went back for it. By now, we were in the heart of a blizzard.

We called Monte, who told us he’d also be driving to UFC 68 and that the weather was fine where he was, so we headed south toward him and the great state of Iowa.

At first, we shared the highway with snowplows. After a while, all I could see was our car and white. We were the only ones stupid enough to be out. I could barely see five feet in front of me as snow whisked past the windshield. It looked like we were hitting warp speed in
Star Trek.

When we made it to the bottom of Minnesota, we may as well have arrived at the end of the world. Highway patrol had closed the interstate, and there was nowhere left to go. Elaine and I pulled in to a truck stop, which had a convenience store, gas, and a Wendy’s.

I was getting more and more irate at the thought that I might miss the show. I called UFC coordinator Burt Watson and left a message. “We’re stuck at the end of the fucking Earth and trying to make our way to Columbus.”

Elaine was waiting in line at the Wendy’s counter when I walked in. She started laughing, which struck me as odd, and told me to look at the guy flipping the burgers. I turned around and saw the clone of one of my favorite movie characters, Fat Bastard. This guy had to be five feet four at most and 380 pounds at least with huge red chops running down the sides of his face. If I weren’t so mad about getting stuck at this twilight zone gas stop, I would’ve laughed.

With the highways closing all around us, Elaine asked some truckers if they knew of any roads that would be open heading toward Iowa. They gave us a new route to take but said the roads would probably be a mess.

We had no other options. We had to keep moving.

When I couldn’t see the road in front of me anymore, I started to follow the light poles as a guide. I was hauling ass because I didn’t want to get stuck. Cars were abandoned in ditches off to the side. I felt bad because I was taking my wife’s life into my own hands, and I apologized for getting her into this mess.

I drove through the night. Everything had turned white: the roads, the sky, the car, my knuckles.

I don’t know how we did it, but we made it to Moline. I dropped off the rental car at the airport, and Monte picked us up and drove us the rest of the way so I could get some rest.

We arrived in Columbus the morning of the show, where a light snow was dusting the city streets. It had taken us sixteen hours to get here. We’d missed the weigh-ins for the first time ever, but I’d made it, which was the most important thing to me.

If I hadn’t, yes, the commission would have handed my fight assignments to another referee and the show would have gone on. But that wasn’t the point for me. What mattered was that I was where I’d said I’d be and wasn’t letting the promotion, the fighters, or the sport down.

Besides my traveling drama, there was another behind-the-scenes issue that made UFC 68 stand out for me.

When I’d heard the main event would match former champion Randy Couture against current heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia, my first thought was that they might assign me that fight. Under different circumstances, this wouldn’t have been a big deal, but Couture had retired for an entire year and we’d actually sparked a friendship. Our families had spent time together, and Couture and I had enjoyed quad riding and other outings in the past few months. I hadn’t thought he’d come out of retirement.

I called Ohio Athletic Commission head Bernie Profato right away to tell him that if he wanted to exclude me from the fight, I understood. I didn’t want any speculation that I’d give an unfair advantage to one fighter. Profato agreed and said he’d assign me to different fights.

I was surprised a few days later when Profato called me back. “I told them what you said, John, but Sylvia’s camp wants you to do the fight.”

I thought about it a moment and agreed to referee if both sides and the commission approved. Yes, I had a relationship with Couture that extended outside the cage, but I also had a longstanding relationship with Sylvia’s manager, Monte Cox. I’d assumed both camps believed this wouldn’t affect my judgment in the Octagon, but it had been my responsibility to at least put it out there.