Is This Legal Read online

  Rorion had gotten to know Chuck fairly well from the seminar circuit, but seemed lukewarm on my idea of bringing him in for the broadcast. I kept persisting, and finally Rorion admitted to me that they’d had a slight falling out over money a few years back. Something about Rorion being hired by Chuck to do a seminar for his students, Rorion bringing along a couple of his brothers, and Chuck thinking he had contracted to pay only Rorion, not an entire troop of Gracies.

  It didn’t seem like a big deal to me, so I kept pressing Rorion until he relented. It was finally arranged that we’d drive over to Chuck’s house in Tarzana, and give him our big pitch, with both Rorion and me armed with index cards that contained the key points of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. But when we pulled up to the huge Norris family compound, Rorion turned to me and said, “Let me go in there by myself. I need to talk to him first. Patch it up with him. I think it’s best if I do this by myself. When I need you, I’ll come out and get you. OK?”

  Legendary martial artist and film star Chuck Norris and kickboxing champ Earnest Hart, Jr. Rorion Gracie and I went to Chuck’s house in 1993 to ask him to be a commentator. He declined saying, “Is this legal?” Given our untested idea and his considerable status, I was not surprised or upset.

  I reluctantly agreed to wait in the car, and sat there idly playing with my index card for 30 minutes until a dejected looking Rorion returned.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “Not good, Arturo.”

  “Oh. What happened?”

  “Well I told him all about the event, and the fighters, and the Pay-Per-View, but he just kept shaking his head and asking me, ‘Is this legal?’ He kept asking me that over and over again, ‘Is this legal?’ He just couldn’t get past that, so we finally shook hands and I left.”

  “Wait a minute, Rorion. He kept asking you if it was legal? How many times did Norris ask you this?”

  “Can you believe it? I think he said it at least six times. Every time I made a point that was on the card, he said the same thing,” Rorion replied with a shake of his head and a bemused laugh.

  Apparently, Chuck just couldn’t believe that we would be allowed legally to do what Rorion was telling him that we were going to do. Bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred, virtually-everything-goes fighting. And no way was a superstar like Chuck Norris going to be involved with something that the local police chief, Governor or National Guard probably would rush in to shut down at any minute. This entire illicit affair just wasn’t for him. I understood. If I was in Chuck’s position, I probably would have said the same thing.

  I decided not to mention any of this to Campbell. But I knew that he wanted a “classic All-American tough guy” in the mode of Chuck Norris, to work on the commentary team. Campbell had been going on and on about getting this type, as he felt it would add the right tone to our broadcast. We started going back and forth, offering up names like the actors Charles Bronson and Steven Seagal, retired NFL linebacker greats Sam Huff and Ray Nitschke, even former boxing heavyweight world champion Ingemar Johansson, who was actually Swedish, not American.

  None of those guys—especially Johansson—seemed like the right fit. Then on a call, Campbell told me that he’d had a revelation, “What if we get Jim Brown?” If there was ever a “classic All-American tough guy,” it was Jim Brown. An NFL Hall of Fame running back who left football at age 29 for a full-time film career, Brown was always his own man. He did what he wanted, and said what he felt, consequences be damned. I loved Brown as a player, and I thought he was a solid actor, especially in films like The Dirty Dozen and Ice Station Zebra.

  Campbell was agreeable with our choice of Rod Machado, and I certainly wasn’t going to veto the great Jim Brown. He said to leave things to him, and a few days later, Campbell told me he’d signed Brown for $10,000 to be our play-by-play commentator.

  Brown was going to be the main guy, and Machado was going to have a small role. We still needed one or two color analysts, and this is where I had my own revelation. Bill “Superfoot” Wallace had been on a rant about how kickboxing should only be for men. He’d said this in a number of interviews, and even written a couple of articles in martial arts magazines expressing this view. Wallace had made his name as a top kickboxer and competitor in full-contact karate. He was Black Belt magazine’s Man of the Year in 1978, and had claimed John Belushi as one of his students.

  Firing back publicly at Wallace on behalf of female fighters was Kathy Long, a champion kickboxer, who was Black Belt’s 1991 Woman of the Year. She was very pretty, known by the nickname “The Queen of Mean” and seemed comfortable speaking her mind—at least as far as Bill Wallace was concerned. I thought that they’d create a really entertaining point/counterpoint dynamic on the broadcast, and Campbell agreed.

  After locking in both Wallace and Kathy, Campbell asked me what I thought about using Brian Kilmeade as our reporter on the broadcast. He was a young guy who worked with Jim Brown on his radio show in Southern California, and Campbell felt that the kid had solid potential. That was fine with me, especially since SEG was paying for our stable of commentators, which now numbered five.

  We still needed a ring announcer, though, and I had just the man for Campbell. Back in May when I’d driven out to Denver to set up W.O.W. Promotions as an LLC, I heard a familiar name on the radio. It was Rich “The G Man” Goins, and it was making me crazy trying to figure out how I knew it. Then I recalled that I’d learned about Goins from a promotional stunt he did in 1990 for his radio station KRFX, Denver’s 103.5 FM “The Fox,” which garnered national attention. For 33 days across November and December of that year, Goins camped out atop a billboard, refusing to come down until the Denver Broncos broke their losing streak.

  I knew that having a local radio personality as our ring announcer would be great for ticket sales, as he’d no doubt give us loads of free publicity by continually talking about his upcoming gig in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Campbell loved the idea, even more so that “The G Man” wouldn’t require a flight or hotel room as part of his deal.

  To me, this was going to be as much a rock concert as it was a sporting event, so I didn’t want the usual suspects on the microphone. This certainly wasn’t boxing or pro wrestling, and I felt that we absolutely couldn’t have anybody from those worlds. And I really believed that a top boxing guy like Jim Lampley would feel compelled to demean our fights and fighters at every turn, with constant reminders that this wasn’t the sweet science. We never could have afforded him anyway, nor someone at his level such as Bob Costas, Pat Summerall or Al Michaels. Even if we could have paid them enough money, and convinced them to do the show, (both scenarios I knew were highly unlikely) none of them would have known the first thing about what they were looking at, apart from the punches being thrown.

  Campbell pointed out to me continually that we needed people who actually knew martial arts, even if they didn’t really know broadcasting. With Wallace and Kathy Long, that is exactly what we now had. I could only hope that Brown, with his movie and radio talk show experience, could be the glue to hold the broadcast together.

  I’d been procrastinating on putting together the rules and regulations, but as we hit mid-October, I knew that it had to be done. Rorion wasn’t going to do it, and no one at SEG would have even known where to start. To quote the great pro wrestler and pro wrestling commentator Gorilla Monsoon, Meyrowitz, Campbell and company, “Didn’t know a wrist lock from a wrist watch.”

  Earlier in the summer I had mentioned to Rorion that we needed to create a sanctioning body to govern our fights, not just for the first event, but for all of the events moving forward. Pro boxing had the WBC, WBA and IBF; international wrestling had FILA; and every combat sport and martial art on the planet had a litany of regulatory agencies almost always abbreviated down to three or four letters.

  Because we would face no governmental oversight whatsoever in Colorado, Rorion and I were really in the position of being both judge and jury. This was our e
vent. We owned it, promoted it, and hired the fighters. So we needed to set the rules and regulations, but in an official looking capacity.

  I proposed to Rorion that we create the International Fight Council (IFC), for which he would be Commissioner. It would be a paper company—but it would create an air of authenticity to the fighters as well as to the general public. We talked about eventually getting attorneys, doctors and famous martial artists on board to one day make it a real sanctioning body. For now though, it would just be the two of us.

  I figured that having Rorion listed as the Commissioner would give us the same cache as when I’d listed him as matchmaker in the martial arts magazine ads I had created to find fighters. And just like in that search, I knew that the responsibility of the IFC would actually fall to me, because Rorion just wasn’t interested in such minutiae.

  He’d let his voice be heard on having Royce represent Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, not using a boxing ring for our fighting area, and employing his family friends Vigio and Barreto as our refs. But otherwise, his attitude had pretty much been, “Whatever you think is best, Arturo.”

  So in my untitled role with the non-existent IFC, I set about drafting the rules and regulations for the Ultimate Fighting Championship on my dark blue IBM Selectric II typewriter.

  They read:

  A. Five rounds, five minutes each, two minutes rest between rounds

  B. Fight to be held in a 30-foot octagon

  C. Fighters wear clothing according to their style, as long as it complies with IFC rules. Rorion Gracie, IFC Commissioner and the referees to inspect each fighter prior to event.

  D. Fight can be stopped as follows:

  1. Knockout (standard 10 count)

  2. Submission

  3. Tapping out with the foot or hand on the mat at least three times

  4. Corner man throwing in a towel

  5. Choke-out

  6. Doctor’s intervention

  7. Disqualification

  8. At referee’s discretion (eye gouge, groin shot, biting)

  E. All punches, kicks, knee and elbow strikes, joint locks and/or chokes are permitted.

  F. Target areas for all strikes include head and body with the exception of the eyes and groin.

  G. 6- or 8-ounce boxing gloves or Kempo gloves are optional if a fighter’s art employs closed fist strikes to the face and head, otherwise bare knuckles are permitted.

  1. Taping of wrist must end one inch away from the knuckle. Tape should be placed on top of any wraps.

  2. Shoes–boxing or wrestling shoes allowed if the fighter does not use any kicking.

  3. Types of supports that are permitted (show examples).

  4. No shin guards or arm pads.

  H. Fight shall not be interrupted in the event of a clinch or fall to the mat. Referee will determine when to break if the fight is stalled. If both fighters intentionally stall, they will both be disqualified without pay.

  I. No point system is in effect; fight shall continue into overtime rounds until one fighter is declared the winner.

  1. Overtime–unlimited number of five-minute rounds until winner is declared. Two-minute intermissions.

  J. This is a single-elimination tournament; there are no weight classes.

  In writing the rules, there were three things that I felt were of huge importance. First, the referee could not stop the fight, except in the event of disqualification. I’d seen far too many boxing matches end in controversy because the actions of the ref overshadowed the actions of the fighters. No way did I want an early stoppage or a bad judgment call to start derailing our fights, especially when we’d be using two guys from Brazil who I’d never met, and who didn’t speak English.

  Second, was how our fights could actually end, which I gave serious consideration. I knew from training in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu that the tap out and verbal submission were always great options. And from my lifelong love of boxing, I thought the 10-count for a fallen fighter would work great to determine knockouts. And it was only fair and safe that the fighter’s corner, or in worst-case situations our doctors, could stop the fight—just not the referee. I also knew that we had to have rounds with time limits.

  I couldn’t afford a Hélio Gracie vs. Waldemar Santana-like three-hour, 42-minute grapple fest to ruin the night, with two grounded fighters patiently and non-violently waiting for the smallest of openings to the delight of absolutely no one. By having five-minute rounds, I figured this would give a fighter stuck on the bottom a chance to start again on his feet when the new round began. But technically, these would be fights to the finish, as the number of rounds were uncapped. SEG had given us a hard two hours and 50 minutes for the live PPV broadcast which we absolutely could not exceed. But I figured that none of the fights would go longer than three or four rounds. Or so I hoped, as otherwise, we’d all be fucked.

  And third, I wanted every fighter to be able to use the uniform and equipment of the sport that they were representing. Jimmerson could wear his boxing gloves, Shamrock his wrestling trunks, Royce his gi. This would starkly illustrate the different backgrounds and styles of the fighters, and the uniqueness of our mixed match event. I figured that it would be really unfair for a fighter to be able to kick with shoes, especially to the head, so I wrote that they could be worn so long as kicks weren’t thrown.

  I wasn’t sure about shin guards or elbow pads, as these would be protective devices. If we allowed them, then someone would eventually want to wear amateur boxing headgear. Same thing with taping the knuckles. A boxing glove was sort of neutral, but a properly taped hand would allow a fighter to unload devastating blows with limited damage to his fists. The only thing allowed to be worn for protection would be the cup.

  Originally, I liked the idea of a standardized dress code, which I envisioned as a type of fighting G-string; sort of like the mawashi that is worn in sumo. I wanted to pay homage to ancient Pankration and their nude fighters. When I mentioned this to Rorion, he looked at me in disbelief and said, “My brother won’t be wearing that.” He then laughed and joked about Royce having a “thong” up the crack of his ass. End of discussion, as I knew he was right.

  Despite the tag line that I’d written for our event, I always knew that we had to have rules. I just didn’t want too many. Basic human decency really—no eye gouges, groin strikes or biting. Everything else was fair game. I ran my rules and regulations by Rorion, and he gave them his quick blessing, with no questions asked.

  In late October, Campbell and I had a conversation about some cool giveaways that we could use for our sponsors and selected VIPs. It was decided that W.O.W. would create this merchandise, which we would sell at McNichols Arena. I hired the brother of a Gracie student who lived in Denver, and owned a silk screen business, to create our official Ultimate Fighting Championship apparel. He was into martial arts, and seemed really excited for the opportunity to be involved.

  We went over my order of a couple thousand T-shirts and sweats in different colors and sizes. The guy then told me that for $750, he would also deliver two big, vinyl Ultimate Fighting Championship banners, which could be hung at McNichols Arena.

  I settled on a 30- by 30-foot banner, which I figured we could put up outside the venue, and a 20- by 20-foot one that could be placed above our fighting area, in full view of the television cameras.

  A few days later, Campbell and I came up with the idea to create event jackets, which we conceived of as being solid black in color, with our “Mr. Clean” Ultimate Fighting Championship logo prominently featured on the front. Campbell found a guy in New York who could fill this order, and got one made for himself, Meyrowitz, a few of the top executives at SEG, Rorion, Kathy, Jim Brown and me. Campbell added to the list a couple of extra jackets, and I claimed one for the son of our biggest investor.

  The kid was a student at the Gracie Academy, and we gave it to him as a Bar Mitzvah present, which I knew would impress all of his friends.

  Just as I felt that
everything was finally coming together, our first alternate Jim Mullen called to inform me that he was injured, and thus was going to have to pull out. Mullen was very apologetic, and I believed his story—he didn’t strike me as the type of guy who would be overcome by a bad case of nerves. I contemplated rolling the dice and just going with DeLucia as the only stand-by. But I quickly realized that I couldn’t afford to risk our entire tournament process by not having two injury replacements lined up. It would be Murphy’s Law, and it would no doubt come back to bite me in the ass.

  I phoned Karyn Turner in Denver and told her of my predicament, which had to be resolved immediately. At this point I didn’t need her to find me another Pat Smith, just a warm body, preferably one who was local and thus wouldn’t require a flight and hotel room. The name she came back with was Trent Jenkins. He’d fought in the Sabaki Challenge, just like Smith. But unlike him, he’d never won it. And, unlike Smith, Karyn told me that Jenkins wasn’t an emotional wreck.

  “Look,” she said, “He’s not a great fighter. He’s a journeyman, really. But Trent is right here in Denver, and he’s reliable. Whenever I have a fighter fall out, Trent is a guy I can call on to do the job on short notice. He’s solid that way.”

  I then remembered I had actually spoken to Jenkins back in the summer, after he had sent in his fighter application and $100 check, as requested by one of our magazine ads. He had struck me then as a very bright and articulate guy, but one who lacked the fighting pedigree that I was looking for. But as we now approached zero hour, I was more than happy to give Jenkins this opportunity, and he was more than happy to accept.

  All that was left for me to do now was sign the deal with SEG.