Let’s Get It On! (23 page)

“Tell me if you want out, and I’ll stop it,” I told Yarbrough over and over, but he didn’t say a word.

Finally, he said, “That’s enough,” and I put an end to the punishment.

In Royce’s quarterfinal bout, he met the dynamic fighter Kimo Leopoldo. The soft-spoken Hawaiian, whose discipline was listed as freestyle, had a foreboding look and a flair for the dramatic. Wide-shouldered, muscled, and heavily tattooed, with a trimmed goatee and hair slicked back into a thin braid that thinned to the bottom like a rat’s tail, Leopoldo trudged through the crowd to the cage dragging a six-foot wooden cross on his back.
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Leopoldo’s use of a prop in his entrance wasn’t the only unique thing he introduced to the UFC. Like a professional wrestler, he also had his manager in his corner. Joe Son, a portly Asian man with a drooping mustache, would later tell reporters that by stepping into the Octagon, Kimo, who was also identified as a minister, had “answered the Lord’s call.”

Not long into Royce and Leopoldo’s battle, they bounced into the door, which swung open. The fighters didn’t separate, so I felt I should let them stay in that position and moved them to another panel as stagehands fidgeted with the latch to get the Octagon gate shut again. Leopoldo and Royce remained on the fence wrestling for control for the next ninety seconds, which told me Leopoldo was strong.

I had more trouble keeping the cornermen in line during this fight than I had reffing Royce and Leopoldo. We allowed a single coach to stand on the apron to instruct his fighter, and they were situated at two opposite panels.

When the gate swung open in front of Royce’s corner, Joe Son decided to leave his designated area and perched himself next to Leopoldo, now backed against the cage, to give his instructions from there.

I barked at Joe Son repeatedly to get off the fence and back to his corner, but he kept sneaking back to the fighters.

Seeing what Joe Son was doing, the elderly Helio decided to inch closer to the men as well. At one point, Royce’s brother Relson was even leaning over the cage screaming directions at Royce.

Disorder was taking over, and all I could do in that moment was contain it as much as I could.

Leopoldo did a good job competing with Royce, far better than the seven other opponents who had come before him at UFC 1 and 2. Leopoldo nearly tugged Royce’s gi off his torso and refused to be taken down. In fact, when Royce finally managed a throw, Leopoldo took Royce’s back as they hit the mat. Leopoldo lost his hook, and Royce shook himself free and reversed to top position. Leopoldo swept Royce and was on top again just as fast.

Royce wasn’t as well-conditioned because of his injury. The lights, his sagging gi, and Leopoldo blanketing him got to him. Though Royce used Leopoldo’s ponytail to control his head effectively, this was the first time I’d seen Royce struggle with anybody. I thought if Leopoldo hadn’t had that ponytail, it might have ended differently, but Royce found an armbar and submitted Leopoldo after four minutes and forty seconds.

It was the most competitive bout I’d seen Royce in, and it set the crowd on fire. I struggled to keep order in the cage, chasing Joe Son away as he began instigating a confrontation with the Gracie corner. I wrangled both men back to the center to raise Royce’s hand, but neither fighter was leaving the Octagon unscathed. Leopoldo was bleeding from a cut on his left eyebrow, while Royce, drained and in a daze, had to be propped up by his brother Relson and carried out of the arena like a lifeless marionette.

Backstage, the Gracie family gathered around Royce like a protective cocoon. Since I was refereeing all of the night’s matches again, I didn’t have the time to check on him, but he later told me his family kept him on his feet and he took a shower and even sucked in some oxygen offered by one of the paramedics on standby.

When Royce reappeared two fights later for his semifinal match against Canadian Harold Howard, he wasn’t the same. He was pasty and listless, though he wasn’t sweating at all. I walked over to his corner and asked if he was okay.

“I can’t see. I see white,” he said weakly.

I called Rorion over and told him, “Your brother’s not right. He shouldn’t fight.”

“Well, what’s wrong with him?” Rorion peered through the chain link at his sibling. “He’s fine. He’s fine.”

“No, he’s not, and you need to go over and take a look at him.”

Royce was exhausted, dehydrated, and certainly in no condition to fight.

Through the cage, Rorion spoke with Royce, who told his brother the same thing he’d told me. Rorion turned back to me and said, “I’m getting the alternate.”

“You can’t do that,” I said.

Royce had already been announced after he’d entered the cage. His corner would have to throw in the towel and forfeit the fight.

Rorion and I debated this for a moment, but I was steadfast. The rules were the rules, and they couldn’t be bent for anyone, including the promoter’s brother. I don’t think Rorion was pleased with me taking a stand like this, but he signed off on it and Royce was taken out and helped backstage, while Howard’s corner flooded the cage to congratulate him.

Eliminating Royce Gracie, the winner of UFC 1 and 2, was a big deal. Leopoldo and Joe Son reentered the Octagon a few minutes later to do their victory lap, goading the audience for support.

I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last I’d see of either of them.

With Royce out of the finals for the first time ever, it was anyone’s game. Truer words were never spoken. Steve Jennum, a Nebraskan police officer who entered the tournament as the second alternate after Ken Shamrock dropped out with an injury, fought Harold Howard fresh in the finals and won the $60,000 prize. Jennum took Howard down and pounded on him until he submitted less than ninety seconds into the fight, an anticlimactic finish to another night of bizarre firsts.

Ironically, I’d been introduced to Jennum a couple days before. I’d taken one look at him and thought,
Dude, what are you doing? Please don’t let this guy get a fight.
Then Jennum won it all. It goes to show you what an idiot I was for judging a book by its cover. Was he the best fighter? No, but he came in and won under the rules put in front of him, so you had to applaud him for his victory.

But wasn’t the UFC all about trying to find the best fighter in the world?

After watching Jennum sail into the finals full steam and injury free, Rorion decided alternates would have to fight like the rest to earn their way into the tournament without an unfair advantage.

I’d also made a mental note that night during Royce and Leopoldo’s match. We couldn’t let the corners have carte blanche around the Octagon ever again. Especially with moving cameramen sharing the apron’s space, I had enough to concentrate on right in front of me. At the next show, we would tape off a red box on each side of the apron and the coach wouldn’t be allowed to leave it for any reason during the fight.

At UFC 4 “Revenge of the Warriors,” held on December 16, 1994, at the Expo Square Pavilion in Tulsa, Oklahoma, three alternate bouts yielded a trio of potential replacements that night should anyone not be able to continue. The Pavilion, which regularly held rodeo events, was packed to the gills with nearly 6,000 fans, another sellout.

UFC 4 had a few familiar faces. Kevin Rosier, the UFC 1 pizza eater, returned to fight newcomer Joe Charles. Two days before the fight, I was with him in the hotel banquet room demonstrating armbars on a bodybuilder friend he’d brought with him. Rosier had asked me for help. However, a handful of minutes does not a jiu-jitsu practitioner make. Charles tapped Rosier out with, of all things, an armbar fourteen seconds into the fight.

In the quarterfinals, Joe Son, Kimo Leopoldo’s unruly manager, squeezed into the tiniest pair of red Speedo briefs he could find and entered the cage himself. I know SEG had hoped the rivalry created between Royce and Leopoldo would play out in a rematch here, but they had to settle for Leopoldo’s bulbous manager. Leopoldo had been enticed by K-1, a Japanese kickboxing promotion, with the promise of more money.

Joe Son, a master of Joe Son Do, of course, was more show than substance. Returnee Keith Hackney eventually got him to the ground and introduced his fist to Joe Son’s groin a few times in full view of the TV cameras. It wasn’t something I would have done, but it wasn’t an illegal move and certainly made for a provocative visual. Joe Son did tap out but not because the groin shots hurt him, as his cup had done a good job protecting his prized jewels; he’d just petered out when Hackney started pushing his Adam’s apple through his neck shortly after the groin attack. Like all who dared enter the Octagon in those early days, maybe Joe Son had balls of steel as well.

In Royce’s quarterfinal match, he choked out debut fighter Ron Van Clief with a rear-naked choke less than four minutes in. At fifty-one years old, Van Clief, a tenth dan in Chinese goju and a five-time world karate champion, was and is to this day the oldest UFC competitor to enter the Octagon.

Arizona State University Hall of Famer and three-time Olympic freestyle wrestling alternate Dan Severn also advanced to the semifinals after a thrilling display in his first bout against muay Thai striker Anthony Macias. The forty-year-old mustached, all-business Severn, the first fighter to wear wrestling shoes in the cage, caught Macias early with a perfectly executed double-leg takedown.

The display delighted commentator Jeff Blatnick, a 1984 Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling gold medalist who’d been brought in with future NBC sportscaster Bruce Beck to fill the broadcast booth with returning Jim Brown.

Severn had his way with Macias, hurling him over his head two times in the fight with violent-looking belly-to-back suplexes, before he took Macias’ back and fumbled around his neck with a makeshift choke until Macias submitted.

I think what was so exciting about Severn’s debut is that the fans were watching real technique, timing, and precision in his movements, and they could really see the difference.

“The Beast” made it to the finals with Royce, where he shot in on Royce and planted him exactly where Royce wanted to be: on his back. Would they ever learn?

Severn attempted to hit Royce, though I doubt he’d ever really thrown hands before; his punches were more like hesitant slaps. Severn was tough, though. There was no doubt about that.

The fight dragged on for nearly sixteen minutes before Royce submitted Severn with a triangle choke, giving Royce his third tournament victory in four UFCs.

There was one problem with UFC 4. While Royce and Severn had battled to the bitter end, SEG’s allotted pay-per-view time slot had run out. Twelve minutes into the fight, subscribers’ TV screens went black. Thousands missed the fight’s conclusion and demanded their money back.

As a result, at UFC 5 “Return of the Beast,” to be held nearly four months later back in Charlotte, North Carolina, WOW and SEG would institute yet more changes. The first was time limits: twenty minutes for the quarterfinal and semifinal matches, thirty minutes for the final bout and the first ever superfight.

The one fight that had eluded the UFC had been the rematch between Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, and the promotion knew it would be the most anticipated fight ever. They decided to take the reins and make it its own nontournament, stand-alone featured fight.

Time limits and a superfight weren’t the only adjustments. The show was also put on a strict timetable that accounted for fighter walkouts, pre- and postfight interviews, and everything in between. Whatever couldn’t be left to chance wouldn’t be.

The first four UFCs had been held over thirteen months, so the schedule hadn’t put much of a strain on our family at all. Elaine helped Kathy Kidd prepare for the events from our home, and we were never gone for more than a week at a time. I accrued overtime at the academy, so I could string a couple days off together or budget my vacation time to cover the missed days. Elaine’s mother or sometimes my dad would watch the kids, and Elaine and I certainly looked forward to our excursions.

For UFC 5, we were heading back to Charlotte, North Carolina. The promotion wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms. Though the state had no athletic commission, the district attorney tried to argue that the event was illegal and couldn’t be held there. WOW and SEG managed to talk their way around this days before the show, but the aversion was a sign of things to come. The UFC was gaining a reputation in mainstream culture, for sure, but I wouldn’t have described it as a positive one with everyone.

WOW decided to add another referee to the roster at UFC 5. Rorion picked Lonnie Foster from Utah, who’d been working out with Pedro Sauer, another established Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt instructor and a friend to the Gracie family. Foster was assigned the two preliminary bouts.

On April 7, 1995, in the first preliminary bout at UFC 5, Dave Beneteau took down Asbel Cancio, mounted him, and whaled down with the wrath of a man who’d been wronged every which way to Sunday. Cancio’s face split open like a piñata, and he tapped the mat frantically, but referee Lonnie Foster was standing on the other side of them and was heinously slow to respond. Cancio must have tapped twenty times before his corner finally threw in the towel, and Foster stepped in.

Cancio flipped to his stomach, and blood just poured out of him onto the light-blue canvas.