Let’s Get It On! (35 page)

At one point, before they’d started paying me again, I’d called the accountant for money I was owed, and he’d asked, “Are you going to send me a bullet, too?” Apparently Tank Abbott had mailed him a bullet with the accountant’s name drawn on it and a note that said, “If I don’t get paid, this is what’s going to happen to you.”

But the biggest blow was yet to come for Elaine and me. After UFC 21, Meyrowitz called her with bad news. “I really want you to work with me, but understand I’m under a lot of pressure here. I need you to work, but I can’t pay you anymore.”

We weren’t completely surprised. When Elaine had started, she’d had all kinds of help running the shows, but those numbers had dwindled. Elaine had been a trooper through the decline. She would occasionally talk to me about how hard it was to get things done. She felt the fighters needed to be taken care of and respected, but the UFC was traveling to shoddy venues with limited support staff, so no one could expect much.

Meyrowitz promised Elaine he’d make it up to her when things got better, but we knew they wouldn’t. The UFC was on its last leg.

I asked Elaine if she wanted me to quit, but we were paying for a house we couldn’t afford, and I was still making $75,000 a year from the UFC.

Elaine left the promotion, and I stayed. Many of the fighters, managers, and cornermen had become like family to Elaine. She cared about them, and she went through a period of depression over it.

Two years later, Elaine was contacted to coordinate a new event called “Battleship,” which was supposed to be held on a military carrier. It never got going, though, and Elaine wouldn’t return to behind-the-scenes work in the sport for nearly ten years.

Aside from not being around the people she adored, Elaine didn’t like the idea of being apart when I went to shows, especially when female fans were fairly open with their adoration. For the sake of our marriage and commitment to one another, we agreed that she would travel with me to every show. Elaine has sat cageside at most of the shows I’ve refereed since.

With the staff disappearing in the UFC’s darkest hours, the fighters stepped up to the plate. Their enthusiasm and passion to evolve into better fighters really kept the sport going. When the UFC lost most of its pay-per-view audience, the athletes kept the die-hard fans interested with their improvement and ingenuity in the cage.

Newspapers or TV programs wouldn’t even mention MMA, but websites like
Martial Arts Worldwide Network, The Combat List, Sherdog,
and
The Underground
began to pop up to cover the sport and its fighters. It was this interest that kept the UFC alive through those lean times.

UFC 22 “Only One Can Be Champion,” held on September 24, 1999, at the Lake Charles Civic Center in Lake Charles, Louisiana, promoted the most anticipated fight of its time: a middleweight championship bout between Frank Shamrock and Tito Ortiz.

Shamrock hadn’t fought in the UFC for eleven months following his neck crank submission victory over John Lober at Ultimate Brazil. In that time, Ortiz had been on a tear in the UFC, taking out Lion’s Den members Jerry Bohlander and Guy Mezger in their rematch. Shamrock-Ortiz, which featured the seasoned veteran versus the young rising threat, seemed to be the obvious matchup now.

Fights rarely live up to their hype, but this one delivered on so many levels. Both fighters had magnetic personalities, were in their physical primes, and were more well-rounded compared to the rest of the field. It was just the right combination for a blockbuster bout.

I had to stay on my toes because both fighters were so active. A diligent Ortiz had the edge on the champion in the first round, taking Shamrock down and pinning him against the cage to ground-and-pound him. Shamrock had an active guard, though, and responded with punches from his back.

In the second round, Shamrock kept his distance and fended off Ortiz with kicks until the wrestler slammed Shamrock to the mat.

Ortiz took Shamrock down again in the third round, but both fighters had great stamina and stayed busy. Shamrock managed to get to his feet and landed a kick and an uppercut before Ortiz took him down again. The time flew in the Octagon.

Shamrock’s game plan implementation was especially impressive. Near the end of each round, with about thirty seconds left, Shamrock’s cornerman Maurice Smith would alert him, and Shamrock would start attacking Ortiz with movement, punches, or anything to elevate Ortiz’s heart rate and make him expend energy. By the end of each round Ortiz was just about maxed out, and at the start of the next he was never fully recovered. It was brilliant. Shamrock ran Ortiz like a racehorse, pushing a pace that finally broke Ortiz and gave Shamrock the advantage.

Shamrock was especially impressive in the fourth round. He looked as fresh as when he’d started fifteen minutes earlier, peppering Ortiz with kicks and punches for two minutes before Ortiz dumped him to the mat again. Ortiz tried to pour on elbows from top position, but Shamrock reversed and got to his feet, where he trapped Ortiz on the fence with a flurry of punches. Ortiz shot and took Shamrock down again, but Shamrock reversed a second time and bludgeoned a turtled Ortiz until I saw Ortiz tap out and stepped in to stop it. It was a commendable performance by both fighters that earned a standing ovation.

As Shamrock and Ortiz stood on either side of me for the winner’s announcement, I told Ortiz, “You fought a great fight, and you’ll be back a better fighter because of it.”

In true Shamrock form, Frank had saved the best for last. To most everyone’s surprise, he told commentator Jeff Blatnick he’d be retiring his belt in the cage that night. Then he laid his middleweight belt on the canvas and walked out the Octagon door.

I’d known ahead of time that this would be Shamrock’s last fight in the UFC. He’d told me beforehand, but of course I didn’t know for sure if he’d go through with it. You never know how a fighter might react after a victory or defeat. Shamrock said he’d run out of challenges in the cage, but the truth was that he felt the UFC didn’t pay enough to make the training and time away from his family worthwhile. Retiring allowed him a loophole to get out of his UFC contract.

Tank Abbott also made an appearance at UFC 22, scaling the cage’s wall for an impromptu prance around the Octagon that sent the crowd reeling. Abbott, in the best shape of his career, had recently signed a contract with the WCW. SEG hadn’t been able to afford even their most popular fighter, so he’d gone off to pro wrestling.

For UFC 23 and 25, SEG brought the show back to Japan, yet neither event was nearly as commercially successful as the first had been. By then, Pride Fighting Championships, which boasted elaborate fight entrances using high-tech lights, music, and video, had become king in Japan. The UFC was just an afterthought. It really hit me as I saw former UFC stars like Vitor Belfort, Mark Coleman, and Mark Kerr, all now fighting for Pride, backstage and in the audience. Pride shows were starting to attract crowds of 20,000 to 30,000 people. Meanwhile, through the fight community stories spread of American fighters bringing home wads of cash stuffed in their underwear and socks. The UFC couldn’t compete with this at all.

It seemed like the ship was sinking when a ray of hope broke through. In February of 2000, the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board dipped its toe into MMA regulation by approving an MMA-style bout at a regional kickboxing show held at the Tropicana in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was called a freestyle grappling exhibition, and the fighters could take bouts to the ground and hit with open-handed strikes. New Jersey was viewed as another leading regulatory body because of the number of boxing events it oversaw in Atlantic City, while New York was also a couple hours away. This was a big break for the sport.