Archive: Jack Encarnacao's Look Back at UFC's 1-5 with Clyde Gentry

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The following podcast is brought to youby GoDaddy dot Com registered new domain name
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nine cents use a promo code Dogone nine nine. The following is a
broadcast from the global authority in MixedMartial Arts. This is a shortwind.

(00:24):
This is a Showdog Radio Network specialreport. You're getting beat down? Why
you're listening to the Savage Dog Show. You're listening to George Jordan Bringer?
All right, eighties time with BruceBuffer, SRN Rewind, Welcome once again

(00:53):
to the Shirtdog Radio Network. Rewind, I'm Jack Encnarcio and glad that you
could join us. Next month.The Ultimate Fighting Championship celebrates twenty years since
its founding in its very first eventNovember twelfth, nineteen ninety three, at
mc nichols Sports Arena in Denver.Undoubtedly, the Mixed Martial Arts media space

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will be filled, chopped full ofmany retrospectives on the history of the UFC,
how it came to, how wegot here, the development of the
fights, the fighters, the sport, and probably many will paint with broad
strokes, skipping over a lot ofthe rich detail that in this sport always
rewards close attention and contemplation. I'vealways said the show is as much about

(01:37):
the past and the future of mixedmartial arts as it is about the present.
And so I want to embark ona pretty lofty mission here to create
dare I say, a definitive audiooral history of the Ultimate Fighting Championship by
talking to people who have done thepainstaking work of collecting and collating interviews,
facts, background context in this spiritof ten ufcs at a time, we're

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going to be bringing on folks whohave been front row, front lines and
covering, observing and taking this sportin from UFC one until today in ten
event installments. And I'll be damnedif we could start this off any better
than to be joined by my veryfirst guest to take a look at UFC
one through ten. His name isClyde Gentry, and he authored what,

(02:22):
in my opinion, is the seminaltext outlining the history of how the Ultimate
Fighting Championship came to be and howit evolved to the point it is today.
First published as No Holds Barred Evolutionself published in two thousand and one,
the book has gone through three differentiterations and publishings since then, most
recently in two thousand and ten,and it's available now from Triumph Books.

(02:43):
Clyde Gentry joins the Shirt Off RadioNetwork rewind for our look back UFC one
through ten and gets us started onthis amazing journey with more detail and perhaps
you've heard up to this point onhow it all came together. Clyde,
thank you so much for being hereand getting us started here on our trek
back through all of these ufcs.Well, thank you, and I really

(03:04):
appreciate that intro. You know,a lot of folks, especially today,
you know, looking and how farthe UFC has come along. You know,
it's really amazing to me just allof the countless hours, blood,
sweat and tears literally and I'm nottalking about what happened inside the octagon that
took to get it to this point. And it's really been an amazing journey

(03:25):
and I'm glad to be part ofit. Some two hundred and forty seven
different separate UFC events to this date, of course, one hundred and sixty
five numbered events, and they celebrateNovember twenty years with UFC one sixty seven
and the Big Welterweight title flight betweenGeorge Saint Pierre and Johnny Hendricks, and
so up to that point and probablya bit passed. We're going to be

(03:45):
looking at the history of the UFCin ten event installments, and UFC one
is where it starts. But wecan't just jump into UFC one, can
we, Claud As your book sowell illustrates, there is so much run
up to putting that show together,so much context that needs to be set
in terms of communicating the American public'sunderstanding of combat at the time, what
they thought if you would have askedthem in nineteen ninety two or nineteen ninety

(04:08):
one, a fight of this typewould look like when styles martial arts styles
clashed, when a lot of mythsbegan to fall by the wayside. The
first thing I want to ask youis to what degree would America have seen
anything like this before, anything likethe UFC. Well, of course,
but but unfortunately it would just bein the movies. You know, obviously

(04:30):
you had blood Sport, and thenof course with video games you had street
fighters, So you know, itwas always kind of somewhere, you know,
in the mainstream idea, and ofcourse you know this dialogus always went
back and forth for eons, youknow, as far as you know,
could could uh you know, BruceLee beat, you know Jack demc you
know, had they been you know, in the in the same era,

(04:51):
at the same time, the samering, you know, and you know,
those types of conversations have always developed, and it's been the type of
thing for you know, locker roombanter, if you will. So I
think that that you know, certainly, the mythology of it and wanting to
see or even just trying to ascertainwhat something like that would look like,

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I think has always been out thereas far as you know, any type
of you know, physicality of that, I think again, you know,
you know, whether it be videogames or movies or that type of thing,
that's really all you basically had upup to that point. Although you
know, in very much occidental formsyou know of chorus. Mixed martial arts
has existed well before the time ofthe UFC, and I'll never forget in

(05:36):
interviewing Ron Van Cleef, you know, he often talked about having these type
of mixed matches, and I alwaysheard a lot of these types of stories
back and forth, but he wasactually one of the very few that actually
sent me something to back it up. And while it wasn't exactly mixed martial
arts, it did really have somesome very interesting concepts. And I'm talking
about the nineteen eighty one Kung FuChampionships in Hong Kong where Ron Van Cliff

(06:00):
actually competed, and it did havea mixture of styles. Of course,
most of them, I think actuallyall of them were stand up, but
they were allowed to pretty much dowhatever they wanted to do. And of
course, just like anything, andyou know that we've seen in a lot
of the earlier ufcs almost every fightwent to the ground and you know,
they stood them back up. Butwhat was interesting about that is, at

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least, you know, there wassomething some kind of record of of you
know, an idea put forth tosay, let's get movie time put against
karate and let's get you know,kung fu, and you know, let's
see you know, what they woulddo against tap keito and those types of
things, and put it into aforum, you know, without you know,
rules really benefiting any specific type ofstand up style. Of course,

(06:46):
jiu jitsu was not part of themix at that time, but again I
thought that was incredibly interesting, especiallydating back during that time. Was there
a lot of groundwork in that eventthat mon Vanclife participated in or was it
all stand up, back up whenyou hit the mat. Almost every single
fight went to the ground, andactually Ron lost his fight where I can't
remember exactly what he was trying todo, but when he went to the
ground, his opponent basically soccer ballkicked his head and completely knocked him out,

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which you know, was legal,and it was a very kind of
strange event. You know, itis really something to see and I have
often kept that tape and kind ofpulled it out for friends because it's really
something pretty interesting. But no,almost every fight did go to the ground
because you know, once again,when you're talking about real combat, you
know, inevitably, unless you knowone is totally getting the upper hand on

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his opponent, it inevitably you knowthere is going to be a grappling component
to it, and of course theygo to the ground, they don't know
what they're doing, and then theyjust get quickly stood back up. And
that was almost with every single fightthat's in that tape, and I thought
that was pretty interesting. It's fascinating. That's a real gem of a tape.
To have. Yeah, Now,as far as America, they wouldn't

(07:55):
have seen anything like this unless forsome reason they went to a closed circuit
screening of Oliver as Anoki or somehowor one of the few in attendants.
When Jean LaBelle faced the boxer MilosSavage in the fifties, there were these
sort of off and on curiosity boutsthat event that occasionally would happen with something
resembling the UFC rules. But beyondthat, this was just a fresh,

(08:18):
raw idea. Oh oh, certainly, I mean, well it was.
It was at least fresh and rawas far as everybody else is concerned.
As far as Horry on Gracie,it was certainly an infomercial, you know,
built too, you know, builtobviously around Gracie jiu Jitsu. I
really kind of credit you Hafner asmuch of anything as being a big part

(08:39):
of the growth of the UFC,because if it weren't for that September nineteen
eighty nine issue a Playboy, theone that our Davy had come across and
found that article that was written abouthorryon Gracie where he talked about these challenges
challenge matches. He never I don'tthink he mentions Benny the jetter ketis specifically

(09:00):
in that article, but that wasreally kind of the impetus for a lot
of the things in that article.Um, they'd had some challenge type matches
before and dojo matches and that typeof thing, and that's really what got
our Davy um, you know,really was just essentially a very entrepreneurial advertising
man back at that point to say, look, this is really something interesting.

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And then when he went and obviouslymet with Horreon and then the two
of them kind of hatched this idea. And then when it finally got back
to seg Cambell McLaren once again,you know, the Playboy article was one
thing that just kind of summed everythingup. So I think that's a very
interesting footnote. I mean, thatone article, and if anybody can kind
of track it down and kind ofread through it, you can see how

(09:45):
you know, the the you know, the wheels would be spending so to
speak, as as far as youknow what this thing could possibly be,
especially for you know, a payper view platform, which at that point
was really you know, just tryingto you know, get its legs outside
of showing concerts. That article,if I'm not mistaken. Clyde entitled bad.
Yes, that's it. That catchesmy eye for sure. I mean,

(10:07):
if I was just perusing and whyArt Davy was perusing the pages of
Playboy, I mean, I'm surehe looked at it for the articles,
right, I'm sure that's why hewas. He was cracking that issue open
um and and well you know,to his credit though, and again if
you look through Playboy, I mean, there's it's it really is a platform
built almost solely on advertising. Infact that the actual material that's gained inside

(10:30):
is such a very slight percentage.So from an advertising perspective, there's actually
a lot of stuff in there,believe it or not. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, if you were in theindustry, absolutely there's probably a lot
too to pick up on and alot of risky stuff going on those pages
from an advertising perspective, if hewas doing advertising for for beer, you
know, and that obviously would havebeen the type of thing that he would
look at as being a platform fortrying to advertise alcohol. But anyway,

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so that is kind of a piecefor national consumption about Horreon and about the
Gracie's and about the challenge matches andvolley tudo, and like you said,
you can almost if you read throughthat piece, have your gears turn in
a similar way Arts would have turnedall those years ago. And so the
seed was planted and they had anoutline, and he had something to go

(11:16):
out there and seek funding to pitch. We've done interviews on this show,
sit down interviews with Horry and Gracie, with Campbell McLaren, with a lot
of formative guys from that time period, and they describe Art Davy and Horrion
going to the gym, pitching theidea to fighters and trying to raise the
capital it would take to get Segsort of across the line to partner up
and fund the first UFC. Andfrom a financial standpoint, there were a

(11:39):
lot of different iterations and WOW Promotionswas formed between Horry and Gracie and Art
Davy, which of course stood forWar of the Worlds. And I think
we'd be remiss, Clyde if wedidn't share with listeners who might not be
aware, you know, how farthey got down the line of calling this
thing War of the Worlds and actuallymodeling it after Greek Pancreasian coliseum or contests

(12:03):
with you know, the big Greekcolumns and a logo that kind of resembled
two marble statues of old style youknow, wrestling and combat techniques. I
mean, this War of the World'sthing was really really went a bit down
the road before they decided to callit the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Well,
it did go through through several differentiterations as far as the name, but

(12:24):
I do have to mention it wasreally the Gracie's in action tapes that's really
what forged the relationship between Art andHorrion, because Art was able to take
those tapes that Horrion had put togetherobviously cuddled through many years with with you
know, different members of the Graciefamily facing off and challenge matches, and
they made a lot of money,and it really got Horrion on board that

(12:46):
Art could really go out and sellthis type of thing. And of course
they used those tapes and those typesof matches to really kind of get people
interested. In fact, Campbell alwaysremarked that there was a particular match with
Horror with Hicks and Gracie on thebeach. You know, that very famous
scene where he squares off with Ican't remember name is Hugo Duarte, Yes,

(13:09):
Hugo Duarte there, very good anduh, you know he remember Campbell
saying, you know, they weresitting in the office just watching that match,
and you know, everybody would justkind of walk around and kind of
crowded around the TV saying, wow, you know, I mean, how
can we find a way to reallybuild something out of this? And you
know, I got it. Istill have to give Bob Meyrowitz a lot
of credit. I mean, obviously, at the end of the day,
he was the one who you know, you know, not only personally funded

(13:31):
it, but when out and gotthe funding as well. But Campbell,
you know, certainly coming from acomedic background and was always looking for kind
of something that would really be interestingand new and fresh, you know,
to kind of get people going.You know, he certainly saw the value
in you know, basically putting thisinto a platform. And and of course,
you know, the big argument hasalways come along and this was something

(13:54):
that Joe Silva almost from day one, you know, wanted to really vocalize,
which was the fact that the UFCwas never set up to be a
sport. It was set up tobe a you know, some kind of
strange drag race or some kind ofyou know, it's just it was supposed
to be a spectacle. That's That'scertainly what it was supposed to be.

(14:16):
And they certainly didn't treat it verymuch like a sport, especially in the
earlier days, you know, especiallytalking about a lot of the kind of
crazy things with having a you know, possible moat you know around the octagon,
or having an electrically charge fence.You know, both of those things
are true, by the way.I mean, they talked about a lot
of different things to really kind ofgloss it up and kind of give it
a very Hollywood type of look.And of course, you know, John

(14:39):
Millius was very much part of thatprocess. So it's interesting, you know
how kind of these people from verydifferent backgrounds were able to kind of cuddle
together a lot of these ideas.You know, that ultimately became the Ultimate
Fighting Championship. And of course you'reabsolutely right, you know, that wasn't
the name that you know, theyfirst started using. They it did go
under several different iterations and in fact, you know a lot of the actual

(15:03):
files and things that I have,um, you know, it does go
through you know a lot of differenttitles, you know, especially when they're
discussing what the name of the eventwould be through faxes and letters and such.
And everybody would remember the big giantchecks presented to tournament winners in the
early UFCS were signed WOW Promotions Warof the Worlds. Yes, yes,
and you know because obviously you know, that was a thing, you know,

(15:24):
I mean, you know, segessentially was licensing you know, the
content from Wow from the very firstfew events, you know, before they
ended up just basically you know,buying Wow out. And of course they
kept Art Devey on as an advisorand matchmaker. But yes, absolutely,
and it's interesting a lot of people, you know, for for many years

(15:46):
didn't really know the connection between Wowand really what that stood for. But
I do remember, you know,when I interviewed Art, you know,
one of the things that he hadsent me was, uh, you know,
that poster that they had put togetherwhere they were to basically have War
the Worlds. I believe it wasin Riodeveneer that they were going to hold
the event, and I had youknow, all the different styles there at

(16:07):
the base of the column and thattype of thing. And you know,
he told me, he said,as far as I know, that's the
only bit of artwork that I knowhe even existed, you know, as
far as that original you know namefor the event, and I was very
very happy to be able to getthat and put it in the book.
Very very good stuff. It's it'swonderful to have that, to see kind
of the visualization of it. Itgives you an idea of how far along

(16:29):
the idea actually was in development beforethe Ultimate Fighting Championship. As we would
come to know, it was reallyset in stone and really fermented in the
minds of the folks who made ithappen. Now, you touched Clyde a
bit on the sort of brainstorming thatwent around the signature fighting surface and creating
the octagon, the eight sided cagewe've known since the very first UFC.

(16:49):
I always wanted to ask you,because this is a subject of significant debate.
Every now and then a new articlewould pop, I know Jake Ross,
and recently didn't one at ESPN dotcom last year where someone new sort
of says, actually I designed theoctagon first, I have these sketches to
prove it, or actually I hadan eight sided cage at a show in
California in nineteen ninety two. Thatwas supposed to be a fight show and

(17:11):
they didn't allow it, so hedid pro wrestling in it. What would
you say is kind of the firstWell, who would you give credit to
knowing as much about it as youdo for actually creating the octagon? What
would you say? You know,I know the gentleman that you're talking about,
and he of course has always beena source of conspiracy theories. I

(17:32):
think he did hold an event insomething that you know, possibly was of
octagonal shape in a cage format.Maybe Horreon did go and visit it at
some point. But as far asI know, Jason Cousins, you know,
he was part of SEG I believehe was actually someone part of John
Millies is as far as his youknow, film group, was actually the

(17:56):
designer who actually put everything together andkind of made everything work. And uh,
you know, I think that mayhave to be one of the one
of the great mysteries that kind ofgoes back and forth. I mean I
did get some information. I dideven make mention of it in the book.
I did talk with Art about it. You know, there's not really
a definite as far as this wasthe very first person who had an octagon.

(18:21):
But as far as you know,you know, really kind of putting
it out there obviously on the onthe on the big stage, and I
think that's kind of where it hasto stand. You know. Obviously,
you know, you have to gowith the UFC, and you have to
go with that first event, andyou have to go with what Jason Cousins
did, and and um obviously buildingupon that and aside from you know,

(18:42):
increasing or actually decreasing the thickness ofthe actual mat um and obviously um,
you know, adding some some footagethere, you know, with a take
habit trying to throw Calworsham the topof the fence. You know, I
mean it's it's uh, it's wentthrough a few changes, but it's looks
very much the same. Obviously they'veplayed with the size of it relative to

(19:03):
that. But you know that that'llalways be a source. You know,
there'll always be somebody out there whowould say, you know, I threw
an event, you know, inone of those types of things, and
I'm not saying that that it didn'thappen. But on the other hand,
you know, when it comes downto really getting the evidence, it was
always one of those things that Ireally pushed for. Uh, you know,
I couldn't get a tape with adate stamp that showed that, so

(19:29):
right, Well, didn't Arc Davissay he was in attendance at this event
we're talking about in California, thathe actually saw that event, was there.
You know, he made some mentionto that, but he said that,
you know, him in Horreon attendedmany different types of events, kind
of looking for what would be thebest flavor, you know, as far
as from a spectator standpoint um,just in terms of sitting in different levels

(19:52):
of the crowd and seeing different typesof events, whether it be you know,
pro wrestling or box of you so. And then you know, obviously
in addition to that, you know, jiu jitsu tournaments and different things of
that nature. So it wouldn't surpriseme. And I know that he's he's
made mention, you know that hesaw something like that. But again it's
it's you know, just seeing somethinglike that. And then obviously you know

(20:15):
what kind of you know, becamethe physicality known as the octagon. I
think you're really two different types ofthings. And I know that, you
know, I I saw some documentationof some lawsuits and stuff going back and
forth, and I know I've spokenwith Paul Smith, you know about this
of different things going on, youknow, as far as people trying to
sue over the octagon and that typeof thing. To me, you know,

(20:37):
I will say this much, andit's one of the things that I
certainly understand from a branding perspective.But on the other hand, when you
talk about a sport, you know, it's not like when you go into
a baseball game. You know,they obviously just they change everything up and
they say, well, we're gonnayou know, we're not gonna have a
diamond, We're gonna have this,and we're gonna create all these different things.
I mean, baseball's baseball, youknow, no matter what you go

(20:59):
in too. And I remember thatwas one of the things that Lorenzo Fertida
said, you know, you know, at the very very beginning, you
know that he really wanted to tryto solidify the sport and have it where
everyone was able to use an octagon. And of course that notion changed,
and you know, obviously it's veryeasy to see why. Again from a
branding perspective, you know, whenyou're talking about an event, and certainly

(21:22):
something that's become the mammoth known asthe UFC. I certainly understand why.
On the other hand, you know, as far as a sport, you
know, that's work can kind ofgo back and forth as to you know,
again trying to create some solidarity withit, you know, in regards
to a few certain things. Obviouslywe have that with the rules and the
gloves, but certainly we could goyou know, even further with that.
But you know, yeah, it'sit is. It is a subject of

(21:47):
debate, and it is something thata lot of people have little interesting pieces
of evidence and testimony about relative tothe formation of the fighting surface. There's
a movie in nineteen eighty with ChuckNorris called The Octagon that was about fighting
people. Certainly didn't look like theUFC cage, but you know, even
the idea of an octagon being associatedwith a fight or martial arts fight was
what was out there in the ether. And there were so many different designs

(22:10):
with mesh and netting and torches,and you mentioned the moats and electrohigh fences
and some of these things just offhandedremarks or suggestions or brainstorming things. Other
things got to the actual design andsketch stage. There's a production designer out
there named Greg Harrison who says hissketches led to the UFC's octagon design,
and he's got the sketches to showit. There's others who say it was

(22:30):
you mentioned Cussin. There was alsoor Cousins. However, he pronounces his
name the I think it's Michael Pilot, right, Pilot, one of the
producers of the original UFC's pilot.Excuse me, Mike Pilot. John Milius
of course gets a lot of credittoo as a guy who who brainstorm this
stuff. And yeah, and sothat must be one of the challenges Clyde,

(22:52):
right, and going back over this, because the basic cliche is that
success has many architects and failure hasnone. Yes, that's that would probably
be the best way to sum itup, especially as far as that goes
no doubt. Now, how aboutthe term mixed martial arts, I mean,
famously, No Holds Barred was actuallythe name assigned to the sport NHB
for short, before really mixed martialarts got a foothold. As how we

(23:15):
refer to this competition and the recentpassing of Jeff Blatnick last year actually brought
this back up a bit because alot of folks were tying it to some
of the terminology Jeff Blatnick was throwingout there and trying to craft some of
the UFC rule set and pitch itto governments and cable companies and be a
face of the UFC on that end. But I also see in your book
that you have a belief of factsor piece of paperworker documentational correspondence from our

(23:38):
Davy in discussing what was called theIFC, which is basically the first oversight
body of the UFC. It existedfrom the very beginning. It basically was
our davy. It was. Itwasn't really an independent authority at all,
but it existed to at least ostensiblyregulate these fights. And there's a piece
of paper where he says the ideahere is to not only oversee medical examination

(24:00):
and referees and things, but toquote regulate and oversee the development of the
new full contact mixed martial arts endquote. How about it there? It
is, Well, there's a coupleof different ways to look at it.
And I do remember going to alot of the events in what I call
kind of the the Dark Ages.This is when the sport was relegated,

(24:21):
uh, you know, to basicallyjust smaller venues. The guys were paid
very very little money was off payper view. And I remember walking around
and I was talking about No HoldsBarred, and I remember Jeff Blatten it
coming over to me and not chastisingme, but he's saying, you know,
you know, we can never growwith that name. You know,
we've got to have something you knowthat that obviously stands for kind of the

(24:44):
greater good and not no Holds Barred, because it's not no Holds Barred.
And I said, well, youknow, I understand, you know,
I understood the whole point. Buteven back then, it's not like people
were making that declination between you know, mixed martial arts. Of course,
you know, pancrease was really big, and so I think only get no
Holds Barred. People knew that thatwas the the rougher you know, ultimate

(25:04):
fighting type style versus the you know, open hand you know type of style
that was used in Japan. Inaddition to the other incarnations you know that
would come about in rings and someof the other events and occidental events in
Japan. And elsewhere where the ruleswere different and they weren't quite as hard
or hard edged as a UFC duringthat time, I think a lot of

(25:26):
people kind of bannered back with termslike full contact and uh, you know,
mixed martial arts and what have you. And of course it's it's very
natural, you know, especially ifyou look at UFC two, you know,
with the sixteen man tournament that youknow, again a lot of people
don't know that, you know,really up until a couple a few days
before the event, you know,seg didn't even know that it was going

(25:48):
to be a sixteen man tournament,you know. And it was the fact
that Art had gotten so many lettersfrom so many different styles, uh and
and really wanted to put together thisgrand event with all of these different styles
and play, which you know,kind of like a mad scientist in me
just loves the idea of doing that. Um And I can actually kind of
tell you a funny story from that. But I think if you look at

(26:10):
that one event and you look atall the different styles that are there,
and to say it's a mixed youknow, martial arts event, it's certainly
understandable. But you know, butthe point of it is you know,
it's mixed in terms of you havedifferent singular styles going up against one another.
It's not mixed as in today,where you have a very integrated form
of combat. Right. Um,that's that's relegated. So I think it

(26:32):
didn't quite exist in the way,right, we didn't quite exist in the
way we think of when we saymixed martial arts, I mean an athlete
who has successfully mixed all the martialarts independently in his own body, as
opposed to the only thing that's mixedabout it is there's twelve different styles in
there. That's right, That's right, right. But but you know,
the funny story I was just goingto tell, and I think I mentioned
this in the book, is thefact that, uh, you know,

(26:53):
I remember going to a lot ofthose events and talking with Bob Meierwitz and
I I you know, I oftenasked him, you know why he didn't,
you know, show the broadcast fromUFC two, And he laughed at
me and he said, well,you know, he goes, I know,
we shot the matches, but wenever actually shot a broadcast of that.
And I said, I have it. You know, it's been kind
of circulating around. There's actually afull broadcast from beginning to end, just

(27:17):
like you would see on the payper view, And he said, there's
no way You've got to be misinformedor that's impossible. So I actually sent
him the tape and he called meand he was like, I can't believe
it. He said, I hadno idea that this even existed. And
I think it was really just testamentto the fact of what SEG wanted to
do, because they very well justcould have sent everyone home. You know,

(27:37):
in that event, I released alot of the the players you know
that kind of made up the sixteen, not the you know, the final
group that you ended up seeing inthe pay per view. But I think
it was testament to the fact thatthey wanted to see how this would work
and how this would be put together. And of course the matches ended so
quickly in that first event, youknow, they weren't quite ready for some
of the some of the folks werewilling to kind of let it go out.

(28:00):
I always remember that very first matchwith Johnny Rhodes, you know,
and Big John McCarthy having to pullthe pants up. Um you know,
I was while they basically laid onthe ground, neither neither man, you
know, really knowing what to do. But you know that was all part
of you know, the growing process, and I think it's, uh,
it's interesting. Of course that's alsothe event you know that John m John

(28:23):
McCain and a lot of the detractorsof the UFC certainly used, you know,
showing that you know, the refereecouldn't break up the fight and a
lot of things that were going on, and um, you know that was
that was always another very interesting point, just the banter back and forth of
ideas about you know, should weeven have referees at all? You know,
should we just have the fighters stopthemselves, or you know, should

(28:45):
we have only somebody from the outsidebe able to throw in the towel.
So, you know a lot ofthose ideas were still very much in that
you know, creative phase, youknow, even getting into the first few
events about you know, how dowe really want to put this out there?
I maybe we really want to puta blood sport out there. And
I think that's kind of what gotCampbell McLaren in a lot of hot trouble,

(29:07):
you know, you know when hemade the comment, you know that
fights could end you know by thisthis or death and he made that death
comment. You know, that wasreally the one thing that just kind of
you know, put a real bullseye, you know, on the UFC.
And of course from that, youknow, if you look at a
lot of the detractors and a lotof the verbiage you know that they've used
throughout the years that you know,that second event is always one that they

(29:32):
love to point to and show,you know, those those scenes of you
know, Pat's Pat Smith smashing ScottMorris and what have you, you know,
pointing the fact of how barbaric thisthing is. So yeah, no
shortage of fodder. And the secondUFC and over and the first UFCUM was
very difficult to find fighters for.The UFC was in the position of scouring
the world with no real tape orprecedent to show people as to what it

(29:56):
actually is that they'd be participating inand signing up for. By the time
UFC two comes along, everybody hadseen it, everybody had sized it up.
Everybody watching, particularly martial artists,thought that they could do that no
problem, and so they had waymore applicants than they needed for UFC two.
Un Thus, the situation you outlinedwhere there were just so many fighters
invited to participate, that they hadall these matches that couldn't even fit into

(30:17):
the pay per view window and wentahead with a double sized tournament. But
that's a bit ahead of us.We have to start, as is only
appropriate now that that context and tableis set with the Ultimate Fighting Championship number
one, November twelve, nineteen ninetythree, about twenty eight hundred in attendance
at McNicol Sports Arena, Denver,Colorado. And before we jump into the
fights and the fighters, well,let's talk about the fighters and them coming

(30:40):
together for rules meetings beforehand and justthis wild and wacky scene. There was
just this sense of unpredictability in theair, Clyde, and you illustrated so
well and select anecdotes really nicely inyour book to kind of paint a picture
of what it's like with these competitors. Gerard Goudau, Taylor Tooley, Kevin
Roger, Sane, Frasier Hoist,Gracie Ark Jimmerson, Ken Shamrock and Pat

(31:03):
Smith milling about, some arguing overthe rules, some keeping quiet, like
almost in a creepy way to themselves. Others, you know, just saying
famously, as Tellia Tooley said thatthe sumo only one shot in the UFC.
You know, I'm here to fight, I don't know, and I'll
see you tomorrow. And everyone kindof shut up about there, about all
of their different grumblings and all theirdifferent gripes about the rules set put us

(31:26):
there before the first UFC as theseguys arrive in Denver and try to figure
out what it was that they signedup for the scene that took shape.
Well, of course, you know, Ken Shamrock actually had just competed I
think, you know, literally acouple of nights before in pancreas in Japan,
so of course he had jet lagand of course learning you know,

(31:48):
through Fanaki and everything else. Hehad some idea I think, you know,
at least in his head as faras some of the logistics of probably
what would happen, but I thinkkind of the real tell Tell signed And
this was something that Claim McBride reallybrought to the table. He was kind
of the you know, basically thefirst scribe, you know, and there
was very very little media at thevery first UFC, and most people didn't

(32:10):
understand really what it was about.And Claim McBride was a seasoned writer and
uh, he really you know obviouslykind of put a lot of the materials
together, and he talked about youknow, just you know, the night
before of kind of driving all thefighters to the Octagon and having them you
know, just kind of sense out, you know, basically where they're going
to be doing battle. And Ialways thought that was interesting because you know,

(32:32):
none of them really knew what tomake of it, and they all
had kind of their different way oflooking at it. I mean, obviously
Hois, you know, certainly hadthe advantage, you know, and obviously
having a Hickson and Hoiler there,um, you know, with him and
training with him, and obviously youknow, of course he did spend some
time in the in in the octagon, um, you know, just kind
of get a feel for it andeverything else. And of course it was

(32:53):
always a big surprise, you knowto Art. You know, Art always
naturally thought that Hickson was going tobe, you know, the fighter representing
the Gracie family. And of coursethere was a fallout you know between Hickson
and Horreon. Most people know aboutthat, and you know Clay was one
who you know, he was astudent, he was a student you know
of Gracie Jiu jitsu, and hewas very adamant about the fact that,

(33:15):
you know, he said, don'tlet you know, anybody tell you different.
I mean, Hickson really was theone who was supposed to be in
there. There was no doubt aboutthat, and obviously was a source of
contention between him and Horreon and Alio, you know, the father about you
know, how do we go aboutdoing this, And of course that ended
up being a fallout, you know, in Hickson ended up gaining fame in
Japan, you know, least duringthat point. So you know, Art

(33:37):
was really actually very surprised about aboutyou know, Hoist because he saw him
as this kid who would you know, kind of show up, you know,
on Saturdays, get money from Horreonto go out and play with his
friends in the beach. You know. He never really saw him as being
some kind of great fighter, andI think, honestly that's really what,
at least in my opinion, reallykind of drove people toward the UFC.

(33:57):
It actually worked the way Horreon wanted, but actually in a different sense because
I think that you know, asas as Americans and really just like anybody
else, you know, when youwatch a TV show or a movie or
anything, you want to see somebodyyou can identify with. You want to
see the underdog, You want tosee the everyman. You know, It's
it's very very easy to see somebig, hulking giant who's got all these

(34:19):
you know, massive awards and youknow, all this kind of stuff,
go out there and just blow everybodyaway. But to see hoys Um,
you know, had who had avery slight build, Um, you know,
had had a different type of charismaabout him, somebody that you kind
of wanted to go for, Um, just because he kind of took things
a little bit different matter. Hewasn't uh you know, kind of saying
he was you know, multiple blackbelts and all these different forms, and

(34:42):
he fought all this and done allthat. You know, he went in
there and did his thing, AndI think that every man quality, it's
really what kind of got everyone sointerested in the UFC. And then,
of course, as a secondary componentto that, obviously Brazilian jiu jitsu,
which is, you know, oneof the you know, hands down,
you know, aside from any thingthat Bruce Lee has ever brought to martial
arts, I mean, Brazilian jiujitsu. You know, there's not anything

(35:05):
else it's even come close to touching, you know, basically what we call
martial arts today or how we evenlook at it. I mean, of
course there was a jiu jitsu corneru jitsu school almost in every corner today,
but outside of that, and obviouslywith Ken you know, if you
look at Pat Smith, you knowthat was someone that our Davy had seen
some tape on to We're a friendto his in Denver, Colorado, and

(35:27):
I believe even saw some tape ofhim knocking somebody out and was quite happy
with that. And of course theother part of it was he had a
very rambunctious, you know, kindof violent attitude. He was getting into
it with some referees and other things, so kind of looked at him as
as as basically a tough customer youwant. Gerard Gardau, he was actually
kind of on the end of hismartial arts career as far as you know,

(35:51):
competing inside the ring. He wasdoing a lot of stiff worked matches
with the karamida and rings and doinga lot of things in Japan. But
certainly was you know, a martialartist, true and true, and certainly
had done his competition bit just probablyyou know, several years earlier before he
actually got into the UFCUM. JasonDeLucia, though, is actually one who

(36:14):
did compete in the UFC, andthe very first one is as basically a
prelimb match, if you will.He was always an interesting story because he
was, you know, this kidfrom Boston who had read everything about,
you know, the Gracie Challenge andhe basically had set out actually initially to
go and challenge Stephen Seagal and hehad basically squandered all of his money.

(36:35):
He was living on a friend's youknow, couch at the time in California.
He was trying everything he could totry to draw out Stephen Seagal for
a match, and when that didn'thappen, he learned about the Gracis and
of course that match is actually inthe Gracie's in Action tape. But when
he went out there and got submittedby Hoyce, uh, you know,
which actually made it into one ofthose tapes, he was adamant about getting

(36:58):
into the UFC. So that's kindof how he got at least that shot.
You know that if he could winthat match, then he would earn
himself to be in UFC two,which which he actually is. I don't
want to miss this chance clad righthere at interesting really quickly, because let
history know from this point forward,if you didn't know, now you know
Gordeau kicking Tully in the face andknocking his teeth tooth out is not the

(37:20):
first UFC fight. Before they wenton the air that night, Jason DeLucia,
the aforementioned, defeated Trent Jenkins witha rear naked choke, tapped him
out. They threw some flashy jumpingspin kicks, much like you would expect
if you had the context that peoplehad in nineteen ninety three of what a
martial arts versus martial arts fight wouldlook like. A lot of spinning kicks
in the movies you talked about.They did a little of that, and
ultimately DeLucia exercising a bit of thejiu jitsu that he picked up from his

(37:44):
studies and from actually running into HoystGracie even before he fought in the UFC.
So at fifty two seconds the submission, DeLucia defeats Trent Jenkins. Jenkins,
excuse me, and we're off andrunning, and I believe you were
going to jump to another UFC oneparticipant there. Yeah, I mean I
actually it's a it's a couple ofthem, and they kind of go hand
in hand because it's always about youknow, it's just like anything else.

(38:07):
And especially with a lot of alot of the martial artists that we're trying
to get into the UFC that youalways wanted to you know, not only
picture them as bigger than life,but hope that that, um, you
know when they finally get in there, that they were going to be that,
and they were they were going togo out and do those types of
things. So with you know,Kevin Rogier, you know, they got
this tape of this very muscled up, you know, in shape guy.

(38:28):
Um, not really any tape perse, but they saw pictures. I
think I even had one of them, uh in the book actually the picture
itself, you know, the onethat they picked him from, and uh,
you know saw a list of hisblack belts and different things like that,
and was like, hey, thisis this guy is great. He
certainly fits the bill. Well thenwhen he shows up, they're like,
well, wait a minute, thisguy had about thirty or forty pounds,

(38:51):
Um, you know in all thewrong ways. You know, this is
not the guy that we brought inhere, and uh, he basically showed
up and I think even Campbell remarkedthat, you know, he came in
and ordered a Heineken and a pizza, and you know it was just you
know, glad to be part ofthe mix. But certainly it was not
somebody that they had wanted to certainlyrepresent, you know, karate or anything
of that nature. You know,in that first event, all of a

(39:13):
sudden he saw him in the gymwith a Heineken and a pizza. Oh
okay, in the gym, butyeah, and you know, and then
you have Zane Frasier, you know, who obviously had you know, out
of anybody that I've ever met,anybody that I've ever interviewed, I mean,
this this guy really has does youknow, he does have a fantastic

(39:35):
gift for gab and he'll certainly talkyour ear off, and if you've never
seen any tape on him, youwould just swear up and down that this
guy is probably you know, avery formidable fighter. He can go in
there and take care of business.And of course, you know, even
after the UFC, and you know, there's been many bouts where he'd go
in there and you know, hejust he didn't really last very long.
Um. And of course his wholeyou know, claim to fame, you

(39:57):
know, if you will, isthat he had you know, be up
Frank Dukes and you know from whatI from what I can gather, you
know, there was a tussle betweenthe two of them, and there was
some type of a lawsuit, youknow, when Frank Dukes had worked in
concert with Frank with you know,Zane had worked in concert with Frank Dukes
at one point. And then hetold me, and this was back in
two thousand, you know that ourDavy had seen this, you know,

(40:21):
transpire in front of him and basicallyhad made the point of you know,
well, god, you know,if you can beat the blood the blood
sport guy, then you know you'redefinitely in the UFC. And I,
you know, that had been inthe book, you know, for the
first three iterations, and I rememberfor that fourth one, I really kind
of sat down with Art and wewent through some different things, and I
remember him coming back to me saying, you know, I don't know where

(40:42):
you heard any of that, butI've got to say it's it's all Bobby
Cock. You know, I neverwent that I never saw him do anything.
It was basically a you know,he had competed in some karate event
that Horreon had known about it.It was just a note from Horreon,
and that's how it basically got intothe event. And obviously, you know,
you saw what happened. Um,you know, seeing the two of
them go out, and it justit kind of it does make me laugh.

(41:06):
I mean, it really really does. There was a confrontation though,
because there was a lawsuit filed byNo no, no, I'm just saying
that, Uh, it's it's obviouslynow more than just debatable that that you
know, that was the reason whyHart had picked him and put him in
the event. Yeah. Yeah,I do not envy your task, Clyde
and embarking back in two thousand toget the truth out of people who had

(41:30):
participated in the sport. They're allopen books. But men are a lot
of them really clever and subtle withthe spin, you know, especially those
early folks who just had all thesemythologies built up around them. Um,
these were some type A personalities andin the very beginning they were they were
difficult nuts to crack. They allhad kind of false and uh and what

(41:51):
how should I say, pumped upbackgrounds and and a lot of mystical fantasy
around them. It was must havebeen difficult. No, no, it's
was. And that was actually anote from from Joe Silva, you know
when I first started on this,I think, which actually was a lot
of part of ninety eight. Youknow, when I actually started doing the
interviews, remember him telling me,you know, it's really difficult. You

(42:14):
can't just do thirty or forty interviews. You really have to go and pretty
much interview anybody you come across totry to piece together the story because everyone's
going to give you, you know, different pieces that obviously make them look
good. And of course that's true. But now you're talking about you know,
characters that you know, many ofwhich have been living inside the pages
of these martial arts magazines for somany years and what have you. So

(42:36):
of course they had to even buildthings up even even bigger, I think,
aside from Zane Frasier, the onethat and let me just tell you,
I mean a lot of the interviewsthat I got, you know,
like with Johnny Rhodes and so onand so forth, I practically just tracked
them down. I went through um, you know, the Internet actually at
that point it was actually a littlebit still even archaic, So I was
actually just calling up the operator.I was doing everything I could just try

(43:00):
to track down old numbers, andsometimes I remember, even with Johnny Rhodes,
I actually called two or three otherJohnny Rhodes and Nevada before I actually
got the one. Kind of interestingbut so much fun. Yeah, yeah,
that was fun. Art Jemmerson wasanother one, and he was somebody
that he was really really upset Ithink with the way everything went down with

(43:21):
the UFC. And what was interestingwas, you know, he had to
have his manager on the phone whenwe did this interview, and you know,
this is the guy that wasn't evencompeting at the time. Even though
after that interview he even went andfought a few times. He lost every
time, by the way, Butwhen we did that interview, he was
so upset because he basically really hadno idea of what he was getting into.

(43:43):
He had not he basically was supposedto be training for a boxing match.
And what you know. His storywas a friend of his had gotten
a lot of money given him partof that to kind of work some you
know bs job he really wasn't trainingall that much. And even though he
did have, you know, onpaper, you know, very much a
reason to bring him in as aboxer. You know, he really just

(44:05):
kind of showed up with a verylax of daisical kind of attitude. And
uh, I remember you know,Art telling me, you know, when
he was walking, you know,to the octagon and he saw the one
glove. You know, he absolutelyjust went bonkers over the whole idea.
In fact, even the one evenyou know, the fact that he had
one glove. What was the factthat I believe Art's brother Arted send him

(44:25):
out to go get him a pairof boxing gloves, and Art just basically
made that I'm sorry, Art Davyhad his brother go out and get Art
Jimmerson a pair of boxing gloves.But at the end of the day,
you know, actually making his wayto the octagon, he felt, you
know, because there's going to begrappling and other stuff, I'm only just
going to wrap you know, onehand and just go out with one hand,
you know, wrapped that way.And he basically just did not want

(44:49):
to get hurt. He didn't wantto get injured at all. And if
actually you're reading the book, ifmemory serves me correct, you know,
at the first side of anything evenhappening, you know, they tried to
throw the towel you know, overthe fence and it actually got stuck to
part of the fence so the refereecouldn't see it. And that's just kind
of how that whole thing went down. It was very, very awkward,
and it was only because Art basicallyhad no desire really to be in there.

(45:15):
He didn't know what to really expect, and he was really pissed off
about that and he felt that thatyou know, for whatever reason, you
know, really completely destroyed his career, which you know, it kind of
you know, begs the question ofhow many boxing aficionados were really watching that
trying to pay attention if this wouldhave any you know, anything to do
with his, uh, you know, his return to boxing. On the

(45:36):
other hand, it's like, obviouslyhe took money to come in and perform
at an event, he knew itwas going to be on pay per view,
at least knew that much, andobviously just didn't put in the work
or the time to really truly understandanything. I think he tried to roll
around with somebody, you know,basically the week of the event, you
know, when he showed up andkind of understood what was going on.
But you know, I remember Arttelling me, you know, he said,

(45:57):
as far as you know where Iwas going to put my money,
it was Kim Shamrock, he said. When he saw him walk in there,
he was like, man, thisguy's gonna just take everything. And
of course, you know, Kenhad the charisma he had to build,
He had that kind of all Americanlook to him, obviously had the micability
from doing you know, pro wrestlingand obviously doing stuff in Japan, and
you know, I mean it's itwould be very easy to make that assumption

(46:17):
as well, you know, certainlyfrom the outside of that sure and Arch
Timerson. Of course, ultimately Clydewent through with the fight because they put
a pretty handsome payday down to preventhim from pulling out. He was guaranteed
a good hefty sum, which kindof piqued his interest in the first place.
Then wanted out, then decided thiswasn't what he expected if he knew

(46:39):
what to expect at all, andthey sweetened the pod a little bit,
and he thought, well, I'llgo out there and I'll preserve myself at
the first sign of trouble for thisfight with Thomas Hitman, hearns which was
on the table when he accepted theUFC offer but ultimately never materialized in and
of itself. No, absolutely true, and in fact that that definitely makes

(46:59):
him remember or the fact that whenhis uh, his manager was on the
phone, and again, you know, at that point, I just I
really just kind of wonder if itreally was his manager, just you know,
his friend or somebody just trying tosay that I remember it was.
It took a while to finally getthe two of them on there, but
you know, it obviously did comedown and money, and it was one
of those things of just having tokind of go back and forth, you

(47:20):
know, trying to you know,obviously sweeten the deal. But at the
end of the day, you know, he obviously was unprepared. He didn't
want to get injured or have anythingto do with it. I think.
I think the other part of itwas he brought his girlfriend and and actually
other members of his family there,if I if I remember, and it
really just didn't want any part ofit. And so again it was all
about you know, kind of justgetting that first event under you know,

(47:40):
everybody's feet. It's the same thingwith like Tayley Tooley. You know,
one of the reasons he got inthere, obviously they wanted somebody from sumo.
He was actually the other the onlyother fighter that they paid a premium
for outside of our Jimmerson, Andit was only because not only did he
have a sumo background, but hewas also known as being kind of a
rough customer and kind of getting intoarguments and pushing matches and so on and

(48:02):
so forth. You know, they'rein the Hawaii and so they they felt,
you know, this is this guy'syou know, I hate to throw
it out there, but he's TaylorMade. The real name is Taylor Wiley's.
You know, Taylor Made for comingto an event like this. But
honestly, you know, no onereally knew truly what to expect. I
mean, you had even even fromthe standpoint of Hoist. You know,

(48:23):
he can say all day that youknow, obviously he always knew of what
was going to happen. But thebottom line is, you know, it's
not like he had been in youknow, as many challenge matches as as
Hickson or Hoiler or what have you. Obviously he's been around it all of
his life, but it was stilla very different type of event, you
know, with the lights and thecamera and the whole spectacle of it,
and then of course bringing in alot of folks that you know, you

(48:45):
really didn't know, you know,exactly what they were going to turn out
to be. You know, youdidn't know, you know, especially you
know, jumping head like a likea UFC three, like with Chemo,
you know, and some of theother colorful characters that you would see in
the events. You just flat outdidn't know what you were going to be
involved with. Yeah, it reallywas a roll of the dice. It
was a weight and see what thehell's going to happen approach, And it

(49:06):
was interesting Clyde to hear Campbell McLarenon the program a few months ago kind
of describe having to keep it alltogether like he knew what was going to
happen, you know, to tryto pretend that he was kind of the
ringleader, the authority figure who hadanswers to all of these fighters questions,
and he really didn't. He knewjust as little as they did about what
was actually about to happen out there. And I think that really manifested itself

(49:29):
in the rules meeting, I touchedon it a bit. There's that famous
scene where the aforementioned Tully stands upwhile everybody's bickering over what they can and
can do, what kind of handwraps they can wear, and all this
kind of stuff, and Tully makesthe declaration that I'm here to fight.
I'll see you tomorrow, and everyonekind of gets shown up by that and
pipes down before we jump into theactual action of UFC. One paint that
picture for us, because this isa room full of fighters who are basically

(49:52):
talking about what it is they areand aren't going to be able to do
to survive in there. Well,I think one of the biggest parts of
that is obviously Horreon was running themeeting, and as far as the fighters
are concerned, they were basically told, you know, as far as your
attire and anything that you do asa fighter, it's got to be germane
to your specific style, and sothat's what kind of created some of the

(50:15):
arguments. I know that Zane Frazierand Horreon really got into it as far
as wrapping the hands um and obviouslysome of the other questions you know,
I try to really pull that outof you know, the the very you
know, folks who were involved withthe event as best I could. Obviously
I was not there. I mean, that would have been a godsend to
even be part of something like thatand actually be in the room with them,

(50:37):
But I try to tail it asmuch as I could. I think
it was really just a sense thatyou know, people got the feeling that
of course, you know, Horreonat the end of the day was basically
running the fight you know, departmentof the actual show, and you know,
Hooice is part of that. SoI think everybody kind of knew,
you know, there there is youknow, while not anything is typically disingenuous,

(51:00):
but on the other hand, youknow, they were like, okay,
you know, what's up with thiskid? You know, why is
it that that all of us arehere, we're looking over at hoists and
you know, we don't we don'tget we don't really understand what it is.
And of course they're about to findout, you know what Brazilian jiu
jitsu and obviously you know Horion wentwho's went to great links to defend the

(51:22):
name of Gracie jiu jitsu. Hisown, you know, in variant style
of that. But but anyway,I think there was just this feeling of
you know, certainly unknown, andI think kind of where everything came together.
And this is where claim McBride reallystepped in, as he said,
you know, aside from the rulesmeeting and just talking about different things of
that nature, it was really justseeing the octagon, you know, with
no audience, nobody there. Everybody'skind of walking around and just kind of

(51:45):
sensing, you know, what exactlythey're going to be getting involved in and
seeing that type of of of arena, you know, if you will,
for where they're going to be doingcombat it which it was very surreal for
them to be part of something likethat because none of them had ever up
in and done anything like that.Of course, with Ken, you know,
he had some brief you know,amateur boxing, and of course it's
spent a lot of time doing professionalwrestling, so you know, he knew

(52:08):
the same thing, you know,dealing with the rings as everybody else,
you know, as far as dealingwith the ring and of course you know,
if you look at Pat Smith,there's Ain Fraser and doing karate tournaments
and that type of thing still somethinglike this was very, very foreign to
them, as it was to everybodyelse. And I think the only person
who probably did get you know,you know, an upper hand at least

(52:29):
to kind of check out and beable to work with it. Um you
know, obviously was Hois you know, and just you know the nature of
the beast of having Horion run thefight department of the show. Yeah,
there was a mystery around Hoist.He was kind of a wallflowers. I've
seen it described throughout that fight weekand throughout the day before. He he
didn't he wasn't menacing, he wasn'toutspoken, he wasn't really saying anything.

(52:51):
You could easily confuse him for aguy who wasn't even fighting. And so
there was, as you mentioned,Clyde, this kind of looking askance at
Hoist Gracie, like what is thisguy even gonna offer? Like what is
this going to be? It washe was a subject of curiosity, but
not a subject of fear, thatis until he started to flex some of
the chokeholds in different submission locks thatnone of these guys could really see coming.
Ken Shamrock included, as we'll talkabout. So before we jump into

(53:14):
the fights, let's just run downthe results of UFC one. It was
an eight man tournament quarterfinals and thefirst fight we've already touched on at Girard
Gordoaux kicks Telliatuli in the face afterthe Sumo attempts to rush him sort of
gets tripped up, kicked in theface, big crushing right hand. The
tooth goes flying through the cage fenceinto the audience and it's over at twenty
six seconds, and that's the firstUFC fight. Then Kevin Roger defeats Zane

(53:37):
Frasier at four twenty with punches justabsolutely going crazy, very much resembled an
unrefined, all out brawl. Didthat fight and hurt himself in that fight
as a matter of fact, andcame back later to lose to Girard Gordoaux.
But next to his hoist Gracie defeatingour Jimmerson. We talked about getting
the mount Jimmerson tapping. That wasat two minutes eighteen seconds. Ken Shamrock

(53:57):
beats Pat Smith, dropping to aheelhook. Smith taps, not quite sure
what he's caught in. In aminute forty nine, then we go to
the semifinals. Gordeout defeats Roger ViaTko fifty nine seconds after laying on the
punishment and stomping him in the face. Tawell comes in and it's over.
Wise Gracie taps Ken Shamrock with arare naked choke using his geese sleeve that
Shamrock really wasn't ready for fifty sevenseconds of the fight, and then in

(54:20):
the finale hoist Gracie defeats Gerard Gordieauone minute forty four seconds, taking his
back, getting to red naked chokeand holding it on extra long because he
felt like Gordoau I might try towiggle out of saying he tapped if he
released too early. He had thatissue just the fight before with Ken Shamrock,
who didn't dispute that he tapped.But certainly there was confusion when Hoyce
released the choke there and the refereedidn't quite get the message. So there's

(54:42):
the results. There's UFC one Gordeauxversus truly the reason why hoys held onto
the choke for so long, andagain I'm trying to go back. It's
been some years since I looked atit, but I believe Gordeau was biting
him. Yeah, yeah, hewanted it was a payback too. It
was a degree of payback as well. And then the other interesting thing about
Gordeaux, I mean, and thiswas one of the things that they really
couldn't understand what to do, isyou know, he had a couple of

(55:06):
Tailey Tooley's teeth lodged in his foot, and it was one of those things
where they were like, I couldn'tbelieve he was actually going to go back
out there and fight, you know, in that second and third event,
and he said he actually spent abouttwo or three months in the hospital back
in Holland when he got back becauseof an infection over that. And so
it was his testament of just youknow, at the end of the day,

(55:27):
he's still a tough customer, youknow. And actually he was,
I know, he was working doingsome bouncing at some different bars and different
you know things like that. Probablynot in the best places to be are
on Amsterdam when they actually called himin for the fight. But yeah,
that was another interesting thing, andthe fact that he actually went back out
there, not just once, butyou know, even a second time,

(55:50):
you know, after what had happenedwith Tayley Tooley. I gotta hit this
really quickly, Clyde, because that'ssuch a legendary moment. And so when
we had Horion on, when wehad Campbell on, we asked them about
the tooth and the foot, andI was surprised it made the cut for
the final book because there isn't alot of believers out there that that was
actually the case, that that's abit of historical embellishment. But you kept
it in every addition to the book. I'm sure you're aware that him actually

(56:10):
having tooth and bet at a toothor teeth and betted in his foot is
question, but you talked to Gordeoudirectly and you believe it to be the
case. Yeah. I mean,you know, obviously Campbell was doing his
thing, and of course you knowHorion was doing his thing as well,
and I mean they were all kindof going back and forth. Um,
you know, but I did haveseveral conversations obviously with your Gerard personally,

(56:32):
um and Art mentioned it, andI believe even claim McBride, you know,
said something to the matter. Nowwhether it was you know, was
it two or three? Was itone? I mean, you know that's
that might be one of those thingsagain, you know, but I tried
as best I could to cover mybases, and I certainly did ask about
that if something like that had happened. Um, I think even I asked

(56:53):
some of the other fighters about it. Some of the other ones even had
mentioned that it was something that tookplace, so you know, actually was
speaking with the man himself, andthe fact that he was you know,
you gotta you gotta understand, especiallywith Girard, he was one of those
you know, very matter of fact, you know kind of folks, very
quiet, you know, didn't reallysay anything too much outside of just you

(57:13):
know, answering the question. SoI uh, I certainly with all of
that information and play, I tookthat, um you know, it faced
value and I stand behind it.Very good stuff. Good good, yeah,
good Anya. And um, whatabout that fight because it was sort
of there wasn't a tap, therewasn't anything conclusive, and it was the

(57:35):
first televised UFC fight, and itwas a strange thing to wrap your head
around. The Gordeaux totally finished.It was like no one really could resolve
in their heads what happened and whythe fight was over. I think again,
there wasn't a whole lot of youknow, instruction really given to the
referees. And that was the otherthing I made mention in the book about,

(57:57):
you know, how Horrion had wentto Um, you know, one
of the different Brazilian jiu jitsu federationsto get a couple of different referees,
and I think it was a senseof you know, no one really knew
how I mean, how do youscore it, how do you referee?
And how do you stop it?I mean, how do you know if
someone's taken enough? And you know, it was another situation where you know,
they didn't really speak English, youknow, and they're there in the
cage. Something goes on, itlooks like you can't continue, you know.

(58:22):
It was again growing pains, growingpains certainly, I mean Tayley Tuley,
I know, wanted to continue fightingobviously. You know, it was
just it was one of those thingsthat happened. I think it was just
kind of a you know, ifyou look at all the different variables at
play um, you know, itwas just a sense of you know again

(58:43):
virgin territory. Yeah, and therewere rounds in that first UFC tell us
about that, well, you know, they wanted to have rounds and it
was another another thing that they hadkind of agreed on, you know,
very early on, as far asjust basically setting up, you know,
some systematic rules of you know,how is this thing going to go about?
And of course, especially for TV, you know, when everybody's very
acclimated to rounds anyway, so thewhole idea of we're just going to have

(59:06):
a fight to see how it goesobviously wouldn't play out well for TV.
And of course, you know,that was always another thing to kind of
counteract with what Horreon wanted to do. I mean, Horreon did want to
have matches that would just basically goon, you know, forever, because
that's how they would do things inBrazil, and that's how they would do
things, certainly with a lot ofthe you know, the early challenge matches,

(59:27):
because it might take take a while, you know for Hoist or one
of his brethren to get someone downto the ground to actually tap them out
and uh, you know finish it. So I think they had to instill
you know, some sense of youknow, hey, you know, we
got to keep this thing on pace, you know, especially for a pay
per view event. We've got toobviously look at you know, the rounds.

(59:47):
You know what that entails, youknow, so that we're not going
to run over because at the endof the day, it's not just a
bunch of matches, you know,it's actually leading to something. And so
I think that's where rounds obviously cameinto play. Now, the broadcast,
famously or perhaps infamously begins with BillSuperfoot Wallace introducing us to the Ultimate Fighting
Challenge and belching into the microphone andtripping over his words and pronouncing the R

(01:00:13):
in hooice and calling Art Jimmerson aboxing person as opposed to a boxer.
He said, it's an octagonal shapedoctagon. And he said at one point,
Payne Hurts, what a choice forthe very first UFC play by play
man, talk about how Superfoot gotselected and how ultimately he came to really
butt heads with the UFC after hisone and done appearance. Well, and

(01:00:34):
that's the thing. He was broughtin to be a color commentator. He
was not supposed to be a playby play guy. Again, I think
it was very much they really didn'tknow, you know, how would how
would you be a play by playperson and really have at least some you
know, general knowledge to be ableto actually go out and you know,
set up the event. And soyou know, Bill, Superfoot Wallace and
again you know, talking with Artand talking with Campbell and talking with pretty

(01:00:58):
much everybody involved, and yeah,there's some personal issues and things and what
have you. But he was kindof thrown to the wolves as far as
his role in the UFC. Hewas not supposed to be the you know,
the play by play commentator and comeout and do all those types of
things. That was not something hewas very comfortable with doing. And obviously
you saw he wasn't you know,very very wasn't very good at you know,

(01:01:22):
but you know it was the otherthing too about having Jim Brown and
having some of the other colorful charactersyou know that were always part of it.
You know, you had Donna DragonWilson at some point, you know,
making you know, different comments aboutwhat he would do if he was
in there, and you know,you always had this type of thing before
they finally settled on and they gotsome folks in there who could really do
the job. And you know,I mean, thank god, we've got

(01:01:44):
you know, Mike Goldberg, We'vegot you know, Joe Rogan, We've
got you know, some very talentedfolks now that I think are especially after
that many events, you know,they've got everything right. But back in
those days, you know, theywere just trying to find anybody who could
fit the bill, and of coursea lot of it came down to money.
I think even made mention of someof the different folks that Art tried
to get, you know, onboard to h to call the event,

(01:02:05):
and you know, again from martialarts standpoint, a lot of folks just
didn't want to have anything to dowith it. Yeah. Yeah, there
was definitely that stigma that wait andsee from a lot of folks, and
that change and evolved as the timewent. Bill Wallace, Jim Brown and
Cathy Long your first UFC commentary team, and just quickly Clyde mister Wallace went
on to actually feud pretty publicly inthe pages of martial arts magazines with the

(01:02:28):
UFC. After this, What wasthat all about? What was the basis
of his grape? He basically thoughtit And again, if memory serves me
correct, you know that the UFCreally lied in staunch contrast to a lot
of the things that he really believedin about martial arts. And this was
always a thing that I got intoit. I mean, one of the
people that I interviewed that you know, we went back and back and forth

(01:02:51):
on the phone so many times,and there were so many almost threatening messages
to call him back, you know, and get back into their arguments with
Joe Lewis. Yeah, the personwho was very much in the same,
very similar role as Billy Bill Wallace, and we were talking about different things,
and you know, basically again,you know, when you're talking about
martial arts as far as a businessand what it means, you know,

(01:03:15):
and obviously the fact that the quotationof having kids and having belts and adding
layers to the belts and tips andall those other kind of things to make
money, and then you have somethinglike the UFC, you know that's outright
fighting, you know, where obviouslyeventually, you know, you really saw
a more athletic component added to it. It just didn't really fit the bill
with what they're trying to push,and I think they were very very scared

(01:03:37):
of that. A lot of themwere scared of that, and that was
definitely a source of contention between myselfand Joe Lewis during the numerous times that
we would talk more so than Iwould like to admit. As he would
call it, you know, you'dbasically demand that I call him back,
and we'd get into other arguments abouttalking about you know, this, that
and the other thing. And Ithink, again, it's just it's about

(01:03:59):
protecting their lineage. It's about protectingyou know, the traditional aspects of martial
arts, which again I didn't feelwe were tainted per se with the UFC.
It's not like it was you know, the Karate Ultimate Fighting Championships or
anything of that sort. You know, it was really the judge, jury
and executioner of traditional martial arts,putting them in a form and a foundation

(01:04:20):
where they can use, you know, their own tools and not have something
basically taken away from them because itdoesn't fit in their style. And I
think that you know, that wholeidea of that, and certainly that idea
you know, becoming a part twoapart three and then obviously giving way to
so many other things, especially youknow that just the complete explosion of Brazil

(01:04:40):
jiu jitsu I think was absolutely terrifyingfor Joe Lewis and Bill Wallace and a
lot of these folks. I mean, Kathy Long, you know, you
didn't really hear that much from her. But again, she was a competitive
fighter. I said, there's nodoubt she liked the fighting aspect. I
didn't really have an opportunity to talkwith her. But I think that's where
you really didn't see anything much sofrom her, because you know, she

(01:05:00):
was an athlete, she was acompetitor. She saw a lot of those
things in there, and I thinkshe probably wanted to see something more akin
to what she was used to asfar as actual trained athletes going in there
and fighting, which obviously is verymuch what we have today. But back
then, I think it was allabout you know, I think she was
in it, and I think thatwas kind of the difference between her and
Bill Wallace, who obviously, youknow, spent a lot of time in

(01:05:23):
the ring himself. I mean,there's no doubt about it, but especially
with age and lineage and everything else, and and certainly trying to you know,
kind of um, you know,mythology, and and and again just
kind of giving more levity to totraditional martial arts into itself. I think
he just didn't want to see anything, you know, harm Matt, and

(01:05:43):
especially after you know, his boutwith the UFC were of course, a
lot of folks you know, madefun of, you know, belching in
the mic, calling the you know, the event incorrectly and those types of
things. You know, it justI'm sure it outright pissed him off,
and he certainly wanted to use thewhole vehicle of traditional martial arts and everything
is one way to try to combatyou know, any reason why he wanted

(01:06:05):
to be involved with the event andeverything else. Not to mention you got
to understand, you know, Ronvan Cleef, a lot of the folks
that I interviewed that had, youknow, a very solid name in the
traditional martial arts community were chastised openly, you know, through letters, phone
calls, everything from the rest ofthe community, as far as even being
part of the event in any way, shape or form. So I'm sure

(01:06:27):
that had something to do with itas well. Let's hond right in on
Hoist Gracie, the winner of thefirst UFC tournament. He who captured the
imagination of so many, I mean, every other fighter you talked to who
grew up in the nineties points toHoist Gracie as the guy who exposed to
them the possibilities of martial arts andmixed martial arts and got them on the
track to become a fighter. AndI want to know a few things about

(01:06:49):
Hoyce. You've already talked about ita little bit, Clyde, and we'll
talk about it too as the evolutionof the negotiation between Horry and Gracie and
Bob Myrowitz and Seg as the eventsgo on kind of take shape and Rubber
meets the road on some sticking pointsregarding the Gracie's in the UFC cage fighting.
First of all, what was theplan? You know, Horion talks

(01:07:10):
about Hoist being his choice because he'sso embodied because he was such a rail
thin kid and did not look imposingthat he would really drive the point home
of the effectiveness of Gracie jiu jitsu. He would embody it. And I
think there's just a bit of revisionisthistory there, because I don't think that
was entirely the reason. I thinkit was more happenstance than anything, because
Hickson and Horion didn't really get alongat the time, because Hickson had sort

(01:07:31):
of gone off on his own andtry to train, and perhaps I'm short
and Horion's view steal students. Imean, this wasn't a total harmonious family,
though eventually, of course, Hicksondid corner Hoist for the early fights
and kind of get on board forthe good of the family. And under
the father Elio, everybody sort ofwhen he made an order, everyone sort
of fell online. So that wasthe dynamic. But talk about why Hoist
and if it always was to beHoist stepping into the cage for that very

(01:07:55):
first UFC. Well, I'm suremost people know this, and again it's
it's been several years, but youknow it's it's I mean, making no
mistake. I mean, Horreon controlledHoise and even when I interviewed Hois,
Horreon insisted on being on the line. And if anything, you know,
HOI said that he disagreed with ormaybe he said something he didn't really like.
You know, he wanted to youknow, move on to another question

(01:08:19):
or something else. And you know, Horrion very you know, you don't
understand. I mean, Horrion cameto this country. Uh, you know,
he tried to have it, goat it as far as teaching martial
arts. You know, he triedto do a lot of things. He
failed at it. He ended upbecoming an actor. He was in many
many TV shows, many different moviesand things, and that's kind of what
gave way to, you know,obviously the whole infamous thing with lethal Weapon.

(01:08:42):
And then of course, you know, as things started to develop,
you know, that's where he broughtover Hois um, you know, or
to watch his kids and you know, to kind of help out with the
gem and some of these other things. And that's where, um, you
know, kind of that trust developed, where Hois was looking at Horreon,
you know, obviously for guidance.Now, Hi, on the other hand,
was a whole other story and certainlyhad a lot more you know,

(01:09:04):
you know, maturity, and wascertainly farther down the game, you know,
than than Hoys was. So Ithink part of it was control.
Part of it was the fact thatyou know, Hickson really saw from a
monetary standpoint of you know, Ishould really be the one in there,
and um, you know, Artyou know, so graciously detailed a meeting
between uh, you know himself,Horreon, Hickson, and Hoys Um.

(01:09:28):
You know, in Hoist basically hesaid was you know, really didn't want
to continue with the event and wasreally just kind of disinterested in the whole
you know, goings on as opposedto Hickson and Horrion really coming to blows.
Not physically, I mean, mindyou, but just verbally over the
whole idea of you know, Hicksand stepping in and how much money he
would make and that type of thing. And Alio really took um. You

(01:09:51):
know, he really had a problemwith that because obviously he said, you
know, basically, in promoting ourart, it's never been about money,
and you know, very much kindof stuck to his very traditional values as
far as you know, that typeof aspect was concerned. But of course,
as we know, you know,Hickson went on, you know,
of course to really kind of forgehis career in Japan. But make no
mistake, you know, I mean, Hickson was the one at the very

(01:10:14):
beginning. I don't think there's anykind of revisionist history that would tell me
different. I mean, again,claim McBride, you know very much a
Follower, was a student, youknow, a Horreon. He was there,
he saw almost everything was going on, and this had been so many
years after he had anything to dowith the UFC. When I called him
and got a hold of him,you know, he so raciously let me
use some of his pictures. Youknow, he was working on some scripts

(01:10:35):
and stuff and really hadn't even dealtwith any of this. You know,
he told me straight out, hesaid, there was absolutely no doubt.
It was one hundred percent supposed tobe Hickson, you know, it was
not going to be Hoist. Andsame thing goes for Art, you know,
and I just that's where I there'sno doubt in my mind whatsoever.
I mean, Hickson was supposed tobe the one. And then there was
a time I think after the youknow, after the fourth event or no,

(01:10:59):
it was um after three the thirdevent. It was after the third
event where they really came came touh, you know, the one discussion
where I remember, you know,Art so vividly told me the story of
they were in this office and theyhad some piranha or something like that at
an aquarium, and Hoist was justmore interested in looking at that and even
than even listening to what was goingon as far as whether he would continue

(01:11:21):
or not. And you know,you really definitely saw you know, a
different type of Hoist, you know, after that, after that time,
and I think everyone always looks atthat fourth event, you know, about
what he was able to do andaccomplish, you know, as far as
you know, getting through um,you know, Dan and and everything else.
So I think that it always wasHickson. Um, you know,

(01:11:43):
I think it came down to money. Obviously there were some real issues when
Horrion kind of ejected Hickson from thedojo, UM because basically Hickson and I
know it was uh, it wastwo of the machados. And again it's
in the it's in the book thatbasically they were teaching things that Horrion did
not, you know, they didnot fall in line with what he wanted
to teach as far as gracie jiujitsu, and so that's why they basically

(01:12:06):
were ejected and that kind of createda lot of the earlier problems, you
know. But but Hickson and Hoiler, of course, you know, at
the very beginning wanted wanted to continuea training Hoist and then you know,
obviously the ultimate fallout where he reallydidn't see them. You know, again,
as far as working with Hoist,you know in the octagon, in
the UFC right, not in thecorner, not in the background, not

(01:12:28):
in the foreground. Nothing, Um, fascinating behind the scenes dynamic at John
McCarthy, in his recently published bookA couple of years Ago, talks about
how Horrion actually asked him one timehow he could get access to a gun
because he was afraid of some ofthe behind the scenes drama bubbling over to
the point where there would be physicalviolence. That there was not harmony in
the family. Make no mistake aboutit, as as this venture got off

(01:12:49):
the ground, even though they presenteda great united frontum in front of the
television cameras and the Gracie train andall of that, and and so Hoist
taps Gerard Gordeaux UFC one and beforewe go off the air, Jim Brown
with a very prescient line. Hesays, quote what we've learned tonight is
fighting is not what we thought itwas end quote boom there it is right.

(01:13:10):
That was what was driven home withUFC one. And I would completely
concur with that, you know,and I think it again, it didn't
really matter who you were. Youknow, you could come from any type
of background. But to see thatevent the way that it unfolded, and
especially the way that it ended,I mean, if you were to size
up all, you know, eightof those gentlemen, you would put them
right in front of you and justbasically kind of, you know, you

(01:13:31):
know, kind of look at everybody. It would be very, very difficult
to say to yourself, you knowthat, and really pick Hooices as the
one that's going to come out thevictor. And the structure of things was
as much an experiment as what wouldhappen with the fights, the structure of
the rounds, the structure of therules, the whole idea of how this
thing would be set up and presented. And you write in your book,

(01:13:54):
Clyde that about twelve days after thefirst show, our Davy sends the facts
to producer Campell mcle are in outliningsome proposed changes, including taking out the
rounds because no fight had made itpast five minutes and the way the matches
were decided was going to change.Talk a little bit about the changes that
they decided were prudent for UFC twofrom a structure standpoint, well, and

(01:14:17):
that was one of the things thatI that I wanted to make sure that
I did, especially for the lastversion of the book, was really kind
of go back to the original factsesand notes and letters that I managed to
get ahold of and really detail theactual dates, because I thought that was
extremely important. Again, you know, unless somebody had managed to hold on
to a fact back from nineteen ninetytwo or nineteen ninety four. You know,

(01:14:41):
I guess I was just crazy enoughto do so, so I wanted
to have those dates in there.On the other hand, you know,
it was a situation where they reallyfelt that they had something, and it
was a point where I remember CaMLAMcLaren talking about it. You know,
from the standpoint of they were alwayslicensing content, they weren't really making as
much money as they felt they would, um, So to be a content

(01:15:02):
creator and really kind of come upwith something special that they can build,
build seg off of and really haveyou know, something like the UFCB a
platform with something very interesting for themto actually turn it into a series.
And so to do that, obviouslyyou've got to compartmentalize some issues. You've
got to turn it into something thatis going to work, you know,
within that format, you know,which is obviously you're paying for a slot

(01:15:26):
of time and you have to havethe event you know, take place over
that particular time. And of coursethe UFC's got bit in the ass several
times, um even including you know, when they went back to Vegas um,
which wasn't that far you know,long ago, like the very first
I think it was the second eventor first event in Vegas. Yeah,

(01:15:46):
they got bit on that and somesome cable providers you were able to see
it in some some weren't. Butagain they lost a lot of money off
that. So it was always anidea of no matter what we do,
we've got to be able to containit and we've got to be able to
make sure it works. What wasinteresting though, and again that the way
that you know, Art says it. He said it was basically just over
a phone call, you know,because I think out of everything that happened

(01:16:09):
in that second event, it comesdown to, you know, the difference
between having an eight man tournament andhaving a sixteen man tournament. And that
was the one thing where you know, Art said that he felt that you
know, literally over a conversation maybea facts or something that he felt was
enough to kind of get the ballrolling and didn't hear it, hear anything
else wise, So he was justbasically planning the event when everybody to seg

(01:16:30):
just thought, you know, itwas going to be an eight man tournament.
And again I've asked Bob, I'veasked several different folks who were involved
with the program, and you know, Art was pretty much the one,
you know who basically was driving thatof the sixteen man tournament. And again,
like I said, testament to segthat they continued on with that to
allow all of those fighters to participate. And how about it, groin shots

(01:16:54):
introduced. They were not allowed inthe first UFC and then they got static
from people in the karate world whosaid that groin strikes are a central part
of my offense. It's not fairand glide. They introduced groin strikes for
UFC two. Yeah, and thatwas the other thing too. They also,
you know, that was the firstevent. Actually you know, you
know, John McCarthy was at UFCone. Um he even I think,

(01:17:17):
if memory serves me correctly, hegave the actual award itself to Hoist.
And so for the second event hewas asked to be the referee, but
was told he cannot stop a fighton his own accord. So even if
he sees something wrong, there's gotto be some other type of variable involved
before he actually steps in. Andso that's where he saw a lot of

(01:17:39):
the very haphazard type of not onlythinking, but what looked to be refereeing
in that event, because John againwas told he couldn't go and just basically
stopped an event if he saw someonein danger. And I think that the
fight with Orlando Vet really stands outbecause Orlando V being a competitive movie tie

(01:18:00):
kickboxer, and obviously he'd spent histime in the ring, you know,
basically at one point, you know, he thought enough was enough and even
turned around and held up his handsand everybody's like, no, you know,
you got to keep on going,and he just kind of looked like
are you serious and kind of wentback, you know, with the elbows
and knees and everything else. Andyou saw a lot of that really in
that in that second event, andyou saw you know, obviously, uh,

(01:18:23):
you know, John wasn't really ableto do, you know, things
that he certainly wanted to do,and of course he'd threatened that, you
know, he would never have anythingto do with the event, you know
again if he couldn't go and uh, basically make those tough decisions, you
know, which obviously started with UFCthree. So I think there were a
lot of things that were seemingly problematicwith that second event. You know,

(01:18:45):
certainly by having sixteen you know,a sixteen man tournament, second of which
is you know, it made senseabout the rounds. But then on the
other hand, you know, youhad the very first fight with Johnny Rhodes,
which you know, I think,if memory serves me correct, that
one fight basically was more than allthe fights put together from UFC one twelve
minutes, thirteen seconds. So whenyou have that, you know, figured

(01:19:10):
into it, it's like, youknow, it's one of those things where
they were still again trying to figureout, how do we get this thing
to work, how do we howdo we make this you know, something
that's palatable that we can really growand we can really build a franchise out
of this and not just you know, a one off event. And so
I think, you know, justthat that one facts is very detelling and

(01:19:30):
that was one that I certainly rummagedthrough and I tried to put as much
information and there is possible because itwas something that certainly, you know,
you're looking at a dialogue, youknow, between the folks that are trying
to get the UFC moving in theright direction from the standpoint of not just
creating a one off event, buthaving something that's containable, that's something that
can be sold as a pay perview event, and the rounds are dropped.

(01:19:54):
We mentioned rounds in the first UFCUnlimited five minute rounds. Horan didn't
like that rounds disappear at UFC two. Well, and again, you know
the thing with Horrion, you know, he was still always very much a
purist, you know, for jiujitsu, and I think it was a
situation, you know that they alwayswent back and forth in terms of a

(01:20:16):
number of different things about how dowe make this work? And of course
there's always the fame story about youknow McCarthy standing up, you know,
Kim Shamrock, when Kennon Hoys foughtin UFC five. You know that that
really was the point where Horrion said, I can't have anything part of this
event again, and that that's reallywhat I mean. It was a little
bit before that too, but thatwas really the the impetus for him saying,

(01:20:41):
you know, I can't do thisany longer, because now it was
no longer an infomercial for jiu jitsu. It was obviously becoming something else,
and something certainly much bigger than thanHorrion and much bigger than you know,
jiu jitsu into itself. So Ithink there was always kind of going back
and forth as far as the rules, and you know, as far as
Horreon goes, you know, isthe understanding, at least from what I

(01:21:01):
gathered that Obviously he was the fightguy. So anything dealing with the rules
or what you would do, orwhat kind of gloves or you know,
whether they would be used or anythinglike that always fell to him. And
so when he saw or art andeven a discussion talking about rounds or anything
else that basically happened in the fight, you know, department. I think
that's really what created a lot ofcontention between you know, not just the

(01:21:25):
two of them, but obviously otherofficers of seg UFC two March eleventh,
nineteen ninety four at the Mammoth Gardens, Denver, Colorado. Two thousand people
in attendance roughly and a sixty thousanddollar prize to the winner of the sixteen
man tournament the opening round. AsClyde has talked about, not every fight
was made available on the pay perview broadcast. The home video version,

(01:21:45):
however, did include I think everysingle one of these fights. Hoist Gracie
beats Minyoki Ichihara, a karate manwith a lapel choke. Five oh eight.
Jason DeLucia is back and stops ScottBaker gets into tapped to punches at
six minutes forty one seconds. CoPardu defeats Alberta Serra Leone with an armlock
at nine minutes fifty one seconds.This is the bout that we were just
talking about where Orlando Veit defeats RobertLuca Luca Relli at two fifty after having

(01:22:12):
to administer a lot of unnecessary punishmentbecause Luca Lucarelli's corner just wouldn't throw in
the towel, wouldn't concede, andLucarelli was knocked so loopy by wheat strikes
at that point he certainly couldn't communicate. He probably didn't know where he was,
so that was part of the rubthere, and John McCarthy drawing that
bright line in his ability to stopfights. Frank Hammicker defeats that he as
luster for fifty two with the TKO. Johnny Rhodes defeats David Laviki, and

(01:22:33):
that very long twelve minute thirteen fight, especially for the time gets the tap
with punches. Patrick Smith defeats RayWizard with a guillotine choke fifty eight seconds.
Scott Morris defeats Sean Doherty twenty secondsto advance, and then we have
our quarterfinals. Hoist taps Jason DeLuciawith an armlock at one oh seven.
Unco Pardu defeats Orlando Wait. It'sa brutal stoppage where he sort of gets

(01:22:53):
a crucifix position and kills him withelbows and knocks him out in a minute
twenty nine. Johnny Rhodes beats FredEdish with a naked choke at three minutes
seven seconds and one of the trueepic, legendary beatdowns in UFC history,
and we'll talk about that. PatrickSmith tries to up the violence level one
of the most vicious knockouts ever inthe UFC and fodder as Clyde has talked
about for UFC critics in the nineties, because it was just such a brutal

(01:23:15):
situation as Morris was helpless underneath themount of Smith, who rained down elbows
to his face, cut him upbad to where he couldn't stand and had
a nasty ring of blood around hiseye that came in thirty seconds. Hoist
Gracie in the semifinals gets a lapelchoke on Remco Pardu at one thirty one.
Pat Smith beach Johnny Rhodes with aguillotine, a really crude guillotine choke
to get the submission at one ohseven, and thus the final hoist Gracie

(01:23:36):
defeats Pat Smith, gets mount,throws a few punches, Smith taps once
out of there, doesn't even getthe chance to work as submission did Hoist
even though he was looking for We'renaked choke, hoping to Smith would turn
over in his mount get the backone minute, seventeen seconds. A lot
of things going on and here,of course Clyde and we could talk about
every single fight, but we don'tnecessarily have all year, let alone all

(01:23:57):
night. So I do have tomention. I do have to mention one
thing, because you know, especiallyin interviews like this, there's always going
to be the folks that, um, you know, know every name and
know everything about what happened. Ofcourse, they're always going to call out
certain aspects and the one thing youmentioned about, you know, the full
broadcast being on home video. No, it was um, I you know,
I got it from a friend.It I guess it just got passed

(01:24:18):
around. It was certainly like abootleg, if you will. And it's
not the fact that you know,the fights haven't been put out there,
but what I had was an actualbroadcast going from fight to fight with commentators,
you know, basically going in betweenthe whole different type of thing.
Exactly what you would see is ifyou had seen those fights as part of

(01:24:39):
the original collective of you know whatmade up UFC too. So I just
had to make mention to that thatas far as I know, um,
you know, those very few firstfights is really as the real beginning of
the event in that format as faras I know, Yeah, yeah,
I think you might be right.I mean, the pants of Johnny Rhodes
coming down, I know that detailfrom your book and really nowhere else,

(01:25:00):
you know, I can't say I'veseen that, but I've also heard all
the matches are on the tape.Certainly the Hoy's Gracie opening round matches was
broadcast. Yeah, that's that wasThat was of course, that's how the
event started. That was the veryfirst one. The other one's previous to
that. I know that they've beenreleased in some form, although I don't
think the Johnny Rhodes fight has.But I thinking back, the Vite Lucarelli
fight was shown in highlight for himto explain who Vite was before he faced

(01:25:25):
Ramco Pardo in the quarterfinals. Yeah, so the whole fight wasn't shown,
right, right, right, Yeah, yeah, you're right. So I
want to touch on Fred Edish.Yes, Fred Edish gets the call to
fight Johnny Rhodes. He's literally hangingaround backstage. He wants to just be
around. He's a martial artist,and they give him some assignments to run
back and forth and deal with withfighters and logistics in the back, and

(01:25:46):
he gets the call to fight JohnnyRhodes due to an injury to Frank Hammocker
tell us about the famous or forFred infamous though he's sort of good natured
about it and good hearted about itto this day, showing it was it
was just a brutal beat down fromJohnny Rhodes. Well, the first thing
is freak Hammicker was actually brought inby Gerard Rudeaux. Um. He was
actually, ah, you know,something of a you know, porno book.

(01:26:12):
Store owner in a part, Idon't gonna be something of one of
bookstore owner, if that's it.He was doing some you know, other
types of things in Amsterdam, butobviously he knew, you know, he
knew was his deal. And uh, he didn't break anything. He basically
just he had the one fight.And even Girard said as well as Art
you know, even had mentioned youknow that, Um, he just wanted

(01:26:33):
to have one fight. He justwanted to see how it was. He
wasn't injured, he was fine,but anyway, he uh, he declined
the fight in um. Fred mwho had never even seen a UFC,
he didn't see UFC one Um hedid. He wouldn't watching any of the
matches. He was basically really justin the background helping out with with Horion,

(01:26:54):
you know, with whatever he wantedhim to do. Um, you
know, go getting towels and andjust getting that type of thing. And
they they basically just kind of meteach other, um you know Horreon.
I think it was going downstairs andFred was going up and he asked him,
he said, you know, doyou have your gee? And he
said, well, yeah, ofcourse, you know, I've got my
gee. I've got everything. Hereand he said, well, uh,
we need you, you know,we need you to fight. And so

(01:27:15):
with no prep work or anything.It's not like he was backstage warming up
or anything. He basically just hadto stop what he was doing, put
on his ge and obviously, asyou know, you know, of course,
so much of the fight depends onthe mentality and obviously being committed to
it, and he didn't have thatopportunity. It was more or less he
was doing like odds and ends andjust said, hey, you're up next,

(01:27:35):
let's just go ahead and do it. He you know, put on
the gee and went out there.And what's interesting is is, you know,
they both, you know, JohnnyRhodes and uh and Fred came from
very similar backgrounds. But you know, especially especially if for speaking with with
Johnny, you know, he said, you know, after that very first
fight, I realized that so muchof what I had practice and as far

(01:27:56):
as being a traditional martial artist wouldnot work in this type of form.
So he said, I just wentto you know, back to just good
olds free fighting, and and justyou know, I wanted to go ahead
and get to the next event.And he said, I just went out
and just you know, I didmy thing, so I kind of threw
away a lot of you know,essentially the trappings of the traditional martial arts
elements. And Fred, on theother hand, you know, again is

(01:28:19):
a very very private person. Umlives out in the middle of nowhere in
Minnesota. I mean it takes youknow a lot of time to get out
there. I can't actually pronounce it. It's kind of a strange name.
But um. What's what's interesting aboutthat, though, is that you know,
Fred really is, you know,even to this day, a very
true, uh you know, traditionalmartial artist. And you know, I

(01:28:44):
remember interviewing him like in two thousandand three and he had actually set up
a makeshift dojo like in his houseand had private students and was even teaching
you know, uh, you know, grappling and submission holds or whatever.
But you know, prior to thatpoint, you know, he went and
got his his his sins says,okay to even compete in the UFC.
But you know, bottom line was, you know, he had to throw

(01:29:05):
in the gee walk out there infront of the lights and the crowd and
everybody yelling and screaming, which hewas not you know, accustomed to.
He stepped in there not really knowinganything about you know, his opponent or
what he would do. And thenobviously he saw what happened. I mean,
Fred tried to stay in there asmuch as he could. Obviously he
took he took a beating, youknow, but he hung in there.
He was not part of what TankAbbott would say is you know, the

(01:29:28):
the quick Tap club. I mean, he did what he could to do
it, and he got chastised forit. And of course, even you
know, even though it was kindof the infancy of the uh the internet,
you know, he really uh,he took a worse beating. You
know, I think you know,outside of the cage than he did inside.
You know, there was websites putup, you know, called the
fetal Fighting and this type of thing, and really just made a mockery of

(01:29:50):
him as a person um and uhand and really really upset him and it
really just kind of turned his lifeupside down. He tried to get the
website removed. He to the ISPProvider. There were a lot of things
that went on, and again,you know, just like anybody else,
you know, you're talking about anevent that very few people had, you
know, any knowledge of Obviously everybody'strying to, you know, have their

(01:30:12):
go at it, and here wasthis guy who really was not a bigger
than life type of person. Hereally was very much the traditionalist, and
he went in and lost, andthat's all there is too. Unfortunately paid
the price. I think that oneof the great things that I was able
to do is not only have aninterview with him, which took some time
to do it because I had trackedhim down, we'd had a couple of
conversations, and he would not speakwith me the first couple of times.

(01:30:38):
It really took me putting him intouch with Art Davy, who he'd wanted
to talk to over the years.And Art always said, he said,
you know, after he lost thatfight, he got a very heartfelt letter
from Fred saying how displeased he waswith his performance and to police keep him
in mind that he certainly wanted tocome out and fight again. And Art
always remembered that. And so Artand Fred ended up having a conversation or

(01:31:01):
told him basically what I was doing. And of course, you know,
before I didn't know Holds barred.I did the first history book on Jackie
Chan and then so that began youknow, kind of a little bit of
a friendship, just kind of talkingback and forth with Fred and a very
very great guy, I mean,honestly just you know, saw to the
Earth guy, you know, andcertainly very very much of a traditional martial

(01:31:23):
artist. And I was so happy, you know, in the fourth term
incarnation of this book, you know, to find out that at the age
of fifty three, he did comeback and have one more fight in August
to two thousand and nine and oneagainst a twenty six year old combatant.
I was so glad he came backin he did have at least one more
fight, and of course, youknow, you can say whatever you want

(01:31:44):
about his opponent or this and thator whatever, but he went out there
and did it again and he won. And I interviewed him again, you
know, for that and just thefeeling of having at least something to say,
you know, for being part ofthis whole journey. Because after the
UFC, believe it or not,you know, he had served as a
judge and he was working with BradKohler on some of the events that he

(01:32:05):
was putting out there in Minnesota.He'd always had an interest in coming back
in and fighting and so I think, you know, again, people always
gave him a very raw deal,you know, obviously based on that footage.
But you can't deny his heart.You can't deny you know, the
reason why he was there. Andof course it didn't work out for him.
He'd be the first to admit that. But you know, it wasn't

(01:32:26):
for lack of trying. It wasn'tfor you know, a lack of courage
or anything else. It's just obviouslyhe was completely unprepared thrown to the wolves.
He paid his price, but youknow he came back and he made
up for it. Yeah, it'sa great story. It's a great yes,
and if you're just learning more aboutfred Edish an addition to Clyde's great
work on telling his story recently,a couple of years ago we started doing

(01:32:48):
where are They Now? Pieces atSherdog and I believe it was Brian Knapp
did a profile, got him onthe phone and and also talked a bit
about what life is like these daysfor Fred Edish and he was really of
his time in terms of it reallyspoke to the state of the sport that
someone like him could end up inthat position at the drop of a hat
and it's almost miraculous UFC two,especially Clyde, that there wasn't anyone seriously

(01:33:12):
heard UFC two. To me,UFC one was brutal, making no mistake
the head stomps and the Roger fight, some of the other stuff that happened,
the two league tooth knockout. Therewas brutality, but it was so
one and done so quick, soturning on one particular blow or technique that
you really didn't have time to feeluncomfortable. UFC two, from the Edish
fight to the elbows that Pat Smithdelivered from Mount On Scott Morris and the

(01:33:32):
clips that that provided, the highlightsthat provided was stomach churning stuff and it
was scary and that's kind of beenwhitewashed over the years. But talk about
kind of what was in the etheror what was in the air in the
media and the press, and ofcourse Campbell doing the press release talking about
right after UFC two that these fightscould end via death, you know,

(01:33:53):
just putting that out there to getattention and doing interviews admitting as much,
you know, talk about what wasin the air around this sport this time,
because some of those finishes are reallyput it over the top in the
eyes of people who were squeamish aboutthis. Well, this was still a
little bit earlier on before um,you know, a lot of the politicians

(01:34:13):
sport for John McCain, let yemake no mistake. But but but on
the other hand, you got tounderstand, and this was another thing I
came across where a lot of factsesof denials and things from different venues it
did not want to have events inthere because again, you know, the
whole reason why they went into Coloradofor the very beginning, they didn't have
a boxing commission. So they werealways going into you know Colorado or North

(01:34:33):
Carolina or whatever that didn't have aboxing commission or basically had a way around,
you know, from from getting inthere and basically showcasing these kind of
events. And of course when theydid, you know, the media would
obviously pick up on that, andeven if it was just local media would
say, you know, bloody event, you know, wows crowd or something
like that, and of course youknow, the mayor and other folks who

(01:34:55):
would get involved, you know withthose um local political structures would pick up
on that and would certainly say,you know, we're going to ban this.
We don't want to have the event, you know, in our town
and that type of thing, andthat's really kind of what got that started
on a grassroots level, and certainlyit didn't help, you know, having
events like a UFC too. Butagain, you know, from the side
of SEG, you know, theywere trying to push a spectacle. They

(01:35:16):
were trying to push something that wasbigger than life. They were trying to
sell as many pay per view buysas they could. They wanted to eclipse
what they did from the first event, which they certainly did, and they
wanted to keep it going and soobviously in some of the press materials I
remember I actually got a very earlybooklet you know that SEG together very early

(01:35:38):
on after that second event, andthat that shot of Fred Adishwood blood coming
you know, down his face wasone of the prominent images that they showed
it there, and that of course, you know, the other problem was
they didn't have a real solid PRdepartment that would say, look, Cambell
McClaren is probably not the person wewant to have in front of talk shows
and just having you know, justkind of running off of the mouth,

(01:35:59):
because you know, there was hea martial artist. Nor was he someone
that was really trying to promote asport or anything that that you know,
had any kind of ilk of ofbeing um, you know, healthy and
safe and so you know that ordeath comment or some of the other things
that he said, you know,again coming back from his kind of you
know, more comedic background, Ithink added you know, a very dangerous
sense of thought or to the pressand a lot of the folks who are

(01:36:23):
around back during that day who certainlysaw this as something they did not want
to have in their town. Theydid not want to have, you know,
the taint of having an event likethis take place, you know,
in their city and and having youknow, folks get absolutely outraged you know
over you know what they think youknow transpired. Um. And that's what

(01:36:43):
it kind of gave way to alot of the comments and things that I
would read. And it's really amazing. I mean it's really really amazing to
me if you think about journalists andyou think about what they're supposed to do,
when you think about you know,just how granular they have to be,
you know, in terms of whenthey put something out and of course
when you're right an article on thefly. That's one thing, and when
you're doing a book that's another.And obviously, you know, I'm not

(01:37:04):
going to say, you know,everything is one hundred percent correct, because
I wasn't there for a lot ofthis type of thing, and I tried
to piece together as best I could. Thankfully, you know, I had
a lot of the materials that hadthe right dates. But what's really interesting
if you go back and you canresearch some of the original articles that were
written about the UFC from these wouldbe journalists that's you know, basically said

(01:37:25):
that they were there. They weretalking about all kinds of things you know
that obviously didn't take place in theevent. I mean, one of the
biggest ones is them saying there justwasn't a referee at all, you know,
you know that type of thing,and you're always talking about how you
know rabid the fans were, andreally just just just created the sense of
a blood lust. You know,that folks were there and kind of not

(01:37:46):
really anything different from going to youknow, art always kind of described this.
You know, it's like you goto a NASCAR race, you know
about half the people are there reallykind of wanting to see, you know,
erect they're wanting to see danger.They're one and see something, not
necessarily someone come across the finish line. And so it's very much the same
kind of thing that I think alot of these journalists were trying to,

(01:38:08):
you know, put out there thatthis was a blood loss, this was
you know, this was you know. Of course, they always used barbaric
and bloody and a lot of thosetypes of things. They didn't want to
really get into the heart or reallytry to get into any of the any
of the people. I think untilyou know, you really brought on Jeff
Blatnik and you had some other folksinvolved with the whole organization, that we're

(01:38:31):
able to really talk to some ofthese people and find out where they came
from and really kind of get asense. Because I've always looked at it
just like anything else. It doesn'tmatter what sport or whatever it is.
There's always certain people that you identifywith and that's why you're there, and
that's why I always, you know, I go to people say well,
you're a big football fan, right, and it was like, yeah,
of course, and you like theDallas Cowboys. Yeah, I love the
Dallas Cowboys. Well what if Ijust go get any team and throw up

(01:38:55):
there. I mean, how interestyou are you in that? And I
was like, well, who's playing? No, it didn't matter. It's
like, well, I don't knowif i'd be interested in that. Well,
it's the same thing, so whetherit's fighting or anything else. And
that's really I think kind of whatbecame very problematic for mixed martial arts as
a whole as far as growing outsideof the UFCS. You had, you
know a lot of these event organizers, you know that we're putting on you

(01:39:16):
know, anywhere from fifteen to twentymatches and anyone given night, and so
it kind of became a different formof pornography. I mean, you sit
down and after about two or threehours where you don't know the names of
any of the fighters, you don'teven you're not even given a booklet of
who they are or whatever, youfinally just say, look, I've had
my fill of people, you know, getting their head beat in. It's
time to go home. And Ithink when you look at those earlier ufcs,

(01:39:38):
you know a lot of the journaliststhat were part of that, they
didn't really want to talk about thenames. They didn't want to get anyone
interested in that they were merely justtalking about the violence, and it took
place in a cage, and itdidn't have a referee, and and so
it just kind of gave way tothis whole you know, you know,
sensibility if something that actually just wasn'twasn't true. And then of course,

(01:39:59):
on top of you have Campbell McLaren, and he wasn't the only one.
You have folks out there just sayingdifferent things. And then you know,
obviously there was a there was anotherstory that I had in the book that
I even I didn't know about untilI just did more research, was you
know, Kathy Kidd was very mucha part of SEG. She was dating
you know, our Davy, youknow, very very early on. And

(01:40:19):
then somehow it became a little bitof a not necessarily a love triangle.
But Jim Coleman, who worked forblack Belt Magazine, which you know black
Belt, really came out against theUFC and hated the UFC and was always
ripping down all these events. Whatit was because he was in love with
Kathy Kid and there was a kindof a weird triangle thing there. And
then she left, So you hada lot of stuff that was going on

(01:40:41):
behind the scenes, it didn't necessarilyring true with what was happening inside the
cage, and I think it wasn'tuntil you had, you know, real
solid athletes, you know, notonly inside the cage, but again,
like I said, Jeff Blatten,and who could really come out and speak
intelligently about the sport and intelligently aboutyou know, what it is and what
everybody's trying to accomplish. People finallywised up and on that tip. Before
we get at UFC three, KimbellMcClaren told me that, you know,

(01:41:05):
basically they had to get attention forthis event, and they were very successful.
I mean, the degree to whichthe UFC attracted pay per view buys
without any free television platform to advertiseit is remarkable. It's a wonder how
they were able to draw north ofsix figure buys after that first show in
terms of hundred over one hundred thousandpeople in a much much smaller pay per
view universe and than mid to latenineties to buy these shows. And it

(01:41:27):
was word of mouth marketing. That'swhat they had at their disposal. He
told me, you know, ifthe sports writers would cover UFC one,
we'd have presented it and marketed itas a sport, but they didn't want
to touch it. They didn't care. We had to get attention. We
didn't have any tapes of these fightsto put on television to advertise the first
UFC. We didn't have any footage, So you know, he basically he
exercised whatever it took in his instinctto get attention. And I'll be damned

(01:41:51):
if it didn't work, because thesuccess of those UFC pay per views in
the beginning was so phenomenal that reallyno one could turn away or deny that
the marketing effort and that approach paiddividends and really brought in the revenue that
allowed the infrastructure to be built,even if the same people who put those
messages out weren't ultimately the people whodid the grunt work to build the sport

(01:42:14):
that we came to know and love. So that all said, UFC three
is next. And that was Septemberninth, nineteen ninety four, the Greedy
Cole Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, again about three thousand in attendance,
and another tournament with the sixty thousanddollars prize at the end. In the
quarterfinals. This was back to theeight man tournament format. Hoist Gracie defeats
Chemo. This is Chemo Leopoldo's UFCdebut, and we'll talk about that.

(01:42:34):
Just an amazingly colorful character and hiscornerman and ultimately totally disgraced right hand man,
Joe Son. Brutal battle between Hoisand Chemo in terms of just such
a taxing affair, especially in contrastto how Hoist had run over all of
his opponents prior to this. Fourminutes and forty seconds felt like a much

(01:42:55):
longer fight when you had a relativesense of how long a Hoist Gracie fight
would take back then. But itwas an armlock kind of half even put
on. It looked like Leopolo tappedmore to exhaustion than anything else, though
Hoys who was efforting for an armlockat the time of the finish. Harold
Howard, one of the more colorfulguys also in UFC history, also became
infamous for driving a car into amall in Canada. Defeats Roland Paine with
a knockout punch at forty six secondsas far as I could tell, maybe

(01:43:19):
after the Hackney thing, which we'lltalk about because I'm kind of reading these
bouts out of order. One ofthe first real knockouts in UFC history,
and that Howard catches pain with anoverhand, he drops him, and then
he finishes him with a hammer fistand again, as we mentioned by UFC
three, John McCarthy has the rightto step in and stop the fight,
and that's what happens. And thatwas really one of the first times we

(01:43:39):
had seen a guy hit him,hit another guy in the feet, finish
him up with some follow up groundand pound, which of course it wasn't
even called then to get the stoppage. Ken Shamrock is back and he beats
Judica Christoph Leninger, getting him totap to punches at four minutes forty nine
seconds, and Keith Hackney fights EmmanuelYarborough. The big four hundred plus pound
sumo Viatko just rocks him with punchesand swarms all over him. It's a

(01:44:01):
very very memorable fight, this contrastand size. A minute fifty nine,
Hackney busts his hand up big timethough, bare knuckle punching this massive sumo
in the head over and over again. Howard Harold Howard goes on to face
Hoist Gracie, and of course Hoistis exhausted from the chemo fight and it
has difficulty with vision and his whereaboutsand basically just can't go. He gets

(01:44:25):
in the cage but can't go,and Howard celebrates like he's going to Disneyland,
and he goes on to the final. Ken Shamrock fights Felix Lee Mitchell
beats him of a rear naked chokeat four thirty four, comes up hobbling
from an apparent knee or ankle injury, and also when he gets to the
back and realizes that Hoist Gracie isn'tgoing to make it to the final because
of bowing out against Harold Howard certainlyhe wanted to fight Hoist Gracie to rematches

(01:44:46):
his evenge rather his loss to himat UFC one that coupled with the injury
he apparently suffered, didn't want tocome out, and so Steve Jenam the
alternate, the guy who hadn't evenfought yet. And they changed this practice
later because they didn't want alternates whohad and even had to fight once get
into the final, which is whathappened here. Steve Jenam, a Nebraska
police officer gets the call to faceHarold Howard, who had made it through
the finals, and it's a GenAmwho rocks Howard, gets him to the

(01:45:10):
floor, Mountsam hits him with punchesand stops him at one twenty seven,
and so it's Steve Genom. Areal footnote curiosity in UFC history gets the
Ultimate Fighter, the Ultimate Champ FightingChampionship three tournament win. So a lot
in there. Clyde, of course, first the Gracie Leopoldo fight Um and
Chemo Leopoldo. He comes out witha wooden cross across his back, seg
and our Davy had been of coursepitched this guy. He shows up at

(01:45:31):
the offices, tell us all aboutthe strange arrival and strange night of Chemo.
Well, you know, certainly thething that art, you know,
always remembered was, you know,Joe Son, And obviously you know,
we all know kind of what happenedwith this guy. And I actually met
him once. I was I wasactually hanging out with Tank Abbot at one

(01:45:54):
pointed in a in a makeshift boxinggym there in Huntington Beach, and Joe
Son showed up and it was justas strange of a character as you can
even imagine. But he showed upwith these dark sunglasses and you know he
was just talking about all this andthat, and and you know, are
just thought, I mean, thisguy is just so big, you know,
as far as just bigger than life. And it was just really just

(01:46:16):
blown away. And obviously as aas a showman, you know, and
certainly trying to put a compelling eventtogether. And like I said, you
know, it always comes down tocharacters and personalities. It was certainly a
personality that you just couldn't deny andyou take that and the dichotomy between that
and you know, a police officera firm and police officer like Steve Jennam,
you know, it kind of hadall the makings for kind of building

(01:46:38):
your you know, your motley groupof folks who come from all different types
of not only just you know,martial art backgrounds, but there's you know,
that other type of street cred andthat other type of mythology that people
like to buy into, and youknow, those types of things. So
whether it was you know, callingtake Abit a street brawler or you know
having you know, you know Chemowho you know, from what I could

(01:47:00):
understand, you know as far ashis you know background, and I did
actually you know, end up interviewinghim, um, you know after I
had done the book, but Iended up kind of putting some of that
material in there. You know.He wasn't really much of a martial artist
or anything. He kind of pickedsome things up, you know, from
Joe Son, but you know,he knew how to punch. You know,
he was a football player and hadhurt his knee and uh, it

(01:47:23):
was it was one of those typesof things where he'd found Jesus and kind
of bought into you know, thethe very occidental type of cult or whatever
that that Joe Soon was pushing atthe time. And uh, you know,
he had somewhere to go, hehad something to do, and obviously
he made made the best of it. He gave Hois you know, run
for his money. It would havebeen interesting to see if he'd went in

(01:47:43):
there without the ponytail, which Hoisoceremoniously used, you know, obviously the
great effect to hold him in position. And uh and you know, you
know basically basically just try to keepyou know that the mammoth of muscle that
was towering over him, you knowat Bay you know, to try to
basically, you know, wear himout, which obviously he did. It
was really a tremendous fight and Ialways kind of hart back to something that

(01:48:06):
Dave Meltzer said, you know,obviously being of the wrestling observer, you
know, he said, um,you know that UFC three, you know,
even for not being a pro wrestlingevent, was really like the best
pro wrestling event he'd ever seen,you know, just all the twists and
turns and shock factor and just howthe event ended up. And it was

(01:48:26):
like, you know, with youhad Kin dropping out so we didn't really
lose, and he had a hoistdropping out and he didn't really lose,
and he had this tremendous you knowforce with Chemo, and then you had
this police officer come out of nowhere. I mean, you couldn't make this
stuff up. I mean, itwas really really incredible just how that whole
event came together. And of coursethere were arguments and all kinds of stuff
going on in the street. Iremember our Davy nearly getting into into a

(01:48:48):
fight with Joe Son, and ofcourse you had this wonderful character that you
didn't really get to, uh yousaw him a little bit, but Helse
and Gracie kind of took over fromyou know, we kind of took the
mantle from Hickson in the in Hoileras far as training, Hoist and Helson
was a lot more than he wasbasically kind of the street fighter of the
family and and and definitely a veryrough and tumble individual, not not you

(01:49:13):
know, the wallflower type of youknow, the Hoist Gracie was so you
know a lot of the stuff thatJoycen was doing, jumping up and down
and just acting like a jackass.You know. M Helson nearly you know,
got into it with him several times, um, you know, out
the hallway and that type of deal, and was very much willing to just
throw down right there. I mean, that's really kind of the person he
is. And he was a fantasticinterview. I mean, there were so

(01:49:35):
many f bombs. Yeah, kindof became another story, but a fantastic
interview of great personality and certainly intalking to other people that were around him,
he was very much that type ofperson. And so you had that
personality as well that was kind ofadded to the mix. You know,
that was very very different from Horrionand Um and Hoist and some of the
other Brazilians who have very, veryreserved natures. He was very much quite

(01:49:58):
the opposite of that. So Ialways thought that was interesting. But you
know, it always comes back to, you know, the cross and where
that came from, and was thathatched by Seg And in fact it wasn't,
you know, and I taught Ididn't talk to several people, and
Art had, you know, he'dalways remember, you know, he said,
this box showed up and he youknow, he was like, okay,
what is this. Is this somethingMichael peel out put together as far

(01:50:19):
as a production or you know,how does this work and this type of
thing, And it was just abox and it was something for Joe Son
and they said, well some extragear, and no one really knew,
you know, as far as whatit was until he finally walked out there,
um, you know, with thecross on his back of course,
you know, the matching tattoo andeverything else. So it was actually not

(01:50:41):
hatched by Seg. But of coursethey loved it and the audience kind of
fell in love with it, andit was kind of one of those moments
where you can't you can't help butwatch what's going on inside the octagon and
no, obviously it is real.Um. You know, on the other
hand, you have these really crazycharacters who were making the stuff happen.
I mean, Harold Howard's another one, you know, with the glasses and
out of the weird banter that wascoming out of his mouth, you know

(01:51:02):
during you know, some of thosetapings. That was another thing too.
You know, Claim McBride was actuallythe one that you know, worked with
the fighters as far as filming themand what they would say into the camera
and that type of thing. Andhe said it was you know, one
hundred percent, you know, completelyunrehearsed. It was just that was his
deal. That's kind of what hewanted to create. And maybe he had
his own kind of you know,weird musings or whatever you want to call

(01:51:25):
it about being a pro wrestler atsome point. But you know, at
the same time, you know,he came in and he saw Harold Howard's
background, and then he saw rollandPaine, who rolland Pain was a movie
tie fighter, you know, hewasn't just another karate guy or whatever.
So to see Harold Howard go outthere and do what he did to uh,
rolland Pain, it was another It'sanother interesting kind of footnote is to

(01:51:46):
see somebody that is a trained fighterthat's used to fighting in a ring versus
someone who basically is putting themselves outthere as a traditionalist who at least as
far as I know, was notfighting, you know, at least in
terms of that capacity or real youknow, full contact. So you had
a lot of interesting things of thatilk that went on in that event that
I think really made for for avery interesting event, you alls, said

(01:52:10):
Christophlinager. You know, as faras his you know, Judaica background and
everything else, you know, itwas very very well polished. Again,
would have been interesting to see whathe could have done maybe ten years earlier
from that point. I think hewas still you know, way toward the
end of it. But you know, it was it's a very very fun
event to go off on, andlike I said, Dave Meltzer definitely said

(01:52:31):
it best. It was, youknow, one of the best pro wrestling
events he's ever seen, even thougheverything was real and in as much too
because they come out of the eventwith so many lucrative directions to go in
with matches. I mean, itjust it piqued the interest for that Hoist
can Rematch so much more that thatthey didn't quite get there yet you didn't
feel ripped off that they didn't getthere, And of course that made the

(01:52:51):
UFC five their first super fight theHoist can Rematch possible. What was going
on Clyde with hoys in the cageafter that ruling fight with Chemo, he
comes out, he gets in thecage and then it gets waived off.
It's always a curiosity to me whyhe didn't just call it off in the
back and what exactly was his problemin there. Well, first off,

(01:53:13):
you still have to remember, youknow, Hoyce is you know, and
again, I mean all I'm goingby is obviously in speaking to the man
himself and obviously kind of knowing whatwas going on. You know, he's
still under the control of Horreon,He's got Helson, who obviously is pushing
him. He's also you know,going through with the fact that he didn't
have Hickson and didn't have Hoiler there. Obviously everybody's expecting him to come out.

(01:53:36):
He had everything basically saying you're goodto go out there, and I
remember him telling me this is oneof the things he did go into detail
on He remember he sat, hegot in there and he said, I
want some watermelon juice, and noone would bring him the watermelon juice.
And he was he was frustrated overthe fact that we're like, look,

(01:53:56):
guys, you know I'm in here, I'm going to fight, okay,
but you're not helping me. Andthen in addition to that, he couldn't
see, you know, he wasstarting to get deja vu and starting,
you know, his mobility was off. Now again, I think he was
he didn't have the right fluids inthe system. Nobody was obviously trying to
help him with that. And thenit was a conversation with him and uh

(01:54:16):
and John McCarthy and basically, youknow, John of course had trained,
you know, under Horrion, obviouslyknew hoys really well, and you know
he knew, you know, there'ssomething off here. And so I think
I think it's a combination of afew different things. I mean, Hoyce
was going to go out there nomatter what, only because you know,
his family, his lineage, prettymuch everything behind it was saying you have

(01:54:38):
to go and do this, andand then you know, also trying to
get over the whole hump of nothaving you know Hickson and Hoiler there.
Secondly, obviously it's his brother's event, you know, Horrion and and um,
you know, surely he wants todo well for that, you know.
Third of which you know, isjust the plain fact of this is,
you know, this is the positionhe's put in. He's basically carrying

(01:55:00):
everything of the Gracie's right on,right on his shoulders, and so,
you know, from the train thatwalked him out to the event to everything
else. But I think when hefinally got in there for those few you
know, a couple of minutes,as he's looking at you know again,
you know Harold Howard jumping around likean idiot, you know, on the
other side, you know, justdoing what he's doing and probably thinking himself,

(01:55:21):
you know, guys, I'm tryingto ask for something here. I
need this, I need that,And you know, everybody was just so
caught up in the minutia of youknow, why we're here, and we're
doing this for the Gracie family,not trying to help him out at that
moment. I think, you know, that, couple with the fact that
obviously you know, John McCarthy knewhim very well, it was like he's

(01:55:43):
he can't go forward with this,and I think that's what happened. And
again, it would have been interestingto see if if, if if Hoyce
had actually been a couple of yearsolder, had come into the certain into
the situation a little bit differently fromhow he had developed, you know it
certainly kind of coming in under thewing of Qoreon and then also even having
Hickson and in Hoiler, you know, by his side, it would have

(01:56:05):
been interesting to see the difference betweenthat. That's where that all came from.
And Hoist did talk about that hewas he didn't have the fluids,
no one was helping him out,he didn't have the mobility, and obviously
John called you know, called itoff. And there was also an element
too that if he got into thecage, he'd still make the money for
appearing. Uh, you know,honestly, I don't, I don't,

(01:56:29):
I don't know anything about that.I mean, that would be kind of
a chintzy thing. Yeah. IfI had heard that Harold Howard was and
this might have come from um KeithHackneys where are they now? Piece that
we did about him at Shure Dog, that that Howard was actually mad?
And who knows of Howard even hadthe story straight that he wasn't made aware
that somehow you had to get intothe cage to to collect your money.

(01:56:53):
And if you you decline to getinto the cage in the back, or
never actually stepped into the cage,you wouldn't get paid for withdrawing. And
I don't know i'd heard that,but it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny
when it comes to Hoys. Imean, you know Horion was running the
show. Hoys would have got andpaid. Yeah, I mean, honestly,
I didn't know anything about that.I did try to interview Harold Howard.

(01:57:15):
I knew someone who worked at hisgem, and was unsuccessful at getting
that interview. I tried to interviewSteve Jennam and was and even got a
hold of his gem where he wasat, talked to a person that trains
him, even said hold on,he's coming to the phone, and Steve
never showed up. So, youknow, on those two fronts, I
really don't know very much about that. I just know that obviously it was

(01:57:40):
just a very very crazy scene,you know, with obviously Joe Soon and
Keimo making a huge deal about whatthey had done or what they thought they
had done, and Harold Howard jumpingup and down, acting all crazy,
and then you got Helson wanting tofight you know, anybody who comes in
the way. And then you gotJoe Soon pushing around Art Davy and this
is all going on in just afew minutes before they're like going, Jesus,

(01:58:00):
we got to get you know,Steve Jentleman there. And unbelievably,
they were actually able to catch SteveJennam because Steve Jennam was in the car
leaving. That's the thing. Hebasically was in the car, basically backing
up in the parking lot to leavethe event. I remember this was something
again I added the book from KathyKidd and she actually went and stopped him

(01:58:25):
and said no, no, no, you're actually fighting now, wow,
got him out of the car,go in. Yeah, that's that's just
how crazy it was, because theyalmost didn't have a Steve Jennam to come
back and fight at the end.So there was a lot of stuff going
on with that event. Now,quickly for folks who aren't really aware of
what we're talking about in terms ofwhat happened after Hoys Withdrew Howard celebrated like

(01:58:46):
he just won and actually beat hoysChemo and Joson come back out and parade
around the cage. Chemo said laterit was to prove that, you know,
he was still able to fight andsort of came out better for wear
after the Hoyse fight, even thoughhe tapped, and so he wanted to
demonstrate that somehow that was some kindof victory. Joson was directing traffic and
the issues that we talked about withJoson just for sake of history, and

(01:59:11):
this was happening, by the way, four years after the gang rape that
he was later convicted of participating innineteen ninety in California, for which ultimately
he was sentenced to to prison timeand would probably never see him again,
especially since after he was sentenced toprison for doing this, he was accused

(01:59:33):
of killing his cell mate in prisonas well. So hardly hardly a model
citizen parading around the cage in Charlotte, North Carolina that night, and a
lot of untoward things in his pastat that time, let alone, um,
you know what came ultimately from anadjudication and charges standpoint later, it
really was, it really was somehorrible things to hear about the kind of

(01:59:55):
guy that Joson apparently was. Sothat was all happening, and UFC three
was an absolutely memorable night, asyou mentioned Clyde in so many ways,
and when we go to UFC four, it really is to me the last
Hoist Gracie stand, the last essentialkind of quintessential Hoist Gracie event, not

(02:00:18):
only because it was a tournament thathe won, but because of the method
in which he wanted. And whilehe did fight Ken Shamrock at UFC five
and then disappear until UFC sixty,it just the UFC five fighters we'll talk
about just wasn't wasn't trademark hoist.And so there was a very special in
retrospect, especially a special feeling aroundUFC four, which was December sixteenth,

(02:00:39):
nineteen ninety four at the XOS ExpoSquare Pavilion in Tulsa, Oklahoma, about
fifty eight hundred in attendance, andthe tournament once again featured the eight person
field. As Dan Severn makes hisUFC debut, the Beast first takes out
Anthony Massias German Sue, playing himall over the mat, smashing him and
eventually choking him at a minute andforty five seconds with a rear naked choke.

(02:01:01):
Steve Jenam comes back and beats Meltonbow And actually using a textbook perfect
armbar from the mount to win atfour forty seven, but he had to
withdraw dud an injury and was replacedby Markets bosset. Keith Hackney was back.
He beat Joe Son and this isthe famous fight where he hits him
in the balls over and over andover again. That finish came though via
choke because Son, of course hada cup on and while the shots weren't

(02:01:24):
comfortable, it wasn't ultimately the finishthat was. At two forty four,
Hois Gracie defeats Ron van Cleff,who we've talked about a lot already with
a rear naked choke three minutes fiftynine seconds, and Ron Vancleif is one
and done as a competitor in theUFC, but later went on to be
the UFC Commissioner, which we'll talkabout. Dan Severn then beats the replacement
Markets bosset with a rear naked chokein fifty two seconds. Dan Severn of
course famously came into this fight pledgingnot to use strikes. Felt like he

(02:01:46):
was going to he was a wrestler, he was going to use wrestling and
just sort of modify some of theholds that were banned on the collegiate mats
and the international mats that he competedon, and and figured they were illegal
for a reason because they wrenched thebody and such a painful way that it
would elicit a tap in this kindof fight context. So that's basically what
he did to win his first twoUFC fights. Hoist Gracie comes back to

(02:02:08):
be beat Keith Hackney with an armlockat five minutes and thirty two seconds,
and in the finale fight, thefinish came all the way at fifteen minutes
and forty nine seconds as Hoist Graciepinned underneath Dan Severn for minutes and minutes
on end as he utilizes that thatwrestling, though doesn't let a whole lot
of strikes go as we mentioned,eventually catches Severn in a triangle and Severn
has to tap. That happened afterthe live pay per view went off the

(02:02:30):
air because they ran out of satellitetime, and so it was a huge
disaster for the UFC from that perspective. Class already touched on all that.
So wow, what an evocative nightwere you watching live that night when Gracie
versus Severn cut off? Clyde absolutely, what was your feeling? Well,
I was just I was shocked andactually my pay per view provider it went

(02:02:53):
off, It went black for afew seconds and then it actually came back
on. I do remember, uh, now, when Marco Huas fought Paul
Varlins in UFC seven, when thatone cut off. Um, I actually
just had to read about it thenext day. It just it was cut
off. I mean, so Iended up missing, you know, all

(02:03:13):
of it from that point. So, um, but yeah, I was.
I was watching that one live anduh it was it was really really
an incredible site, you know.And again I remember interviewing Dan. One
of the things that he told mewas, you know, there was that
point when he had Hoist down andhe said, you know, I'm bigger
than he is. I mean,if I wanted to, I could smash
his face, and I could,I could, I could do a lot

(02:03:34):
of the things that I said thatI was not going to do because obviously
coming from an amateur wrestling background andeven you know, competing all over the
world, and doing a lot ofthose types of things, and obviously he
had been successful up to that point, and um, you do kind of
see that, you know, I'mnot gonna say that that's one hundred percent
of it. I think it wasanother part of it. He probably didn't

(02:03:57):
realize what he was getting, youknow, caught in. But on the
other hand, you know, youdidn't really see him come out there and
just start, you know, smashingyou know somebody, you know, much
like the completely opposite of that ofthe Dan severing UFC five, which really
is you know, going out there, you know, understanding a little bit
more of the nuances of the game. So, um, that was a
very very interesting moment, and Ialways that really brought on probably the biggest

(02:04:19):
argument that I had with Horion Gracie. One of the moments that I always
you know, kind of came backto is because you know, Horion always
pledge. You know, that wasthe thing about jiu jitsu. You know,
you take the tools away from astand up fighter, you know,
by you know, once you takethem to the ground, you've taken their
tools away. And you know,I said, I understand that, I
said, but you know, Danbeing a definitely a consummate wrestler, and

(02:04:42):
certainly you know, somebody who's farmore depth at wrestling than Hoists. He
could have taken hoists tools away bynot having the fight to the ground.
I mean, obviously Hoist just interms of a wrestling match, um,
I can say probably would not beable to get you know, Dan down
on his own accord. But ofcourse Dan felt you know, of course
a lot more um you know,open to the idea being a wrestler of
going to the ground. If Danjust said, look, I'm not I'm

(02:05:05):
not going to go to the groundat all. We're not going to wrestle.
I know I'm bigger than you,I'm stronger than you, i know
more wrestling than you. So I'mgonna take your tools away. So you're
not gonna be able to do jiujitsu on the ground because we're not even
gonna go there. We're going tostand up and we're gonna fight. And
that infuriated Horreon, but again,it was it was, It was true,
you know, and I think itkind of is one of those those

(02:05:27):
lessons you know, that we thatwe learned when we watching so many of
these events, just was very specificfights that happened just at you know,
the logistics of what's going on betweenthe combatants and how different things counteract one
another, and you know, it'svery very easy to say. You know,
it's like, you know, obviouslyDan, as far as a lot
of the submission holds, you know, he knew about a lot of those,
that's true, and he obviously waskind of getting drug out into deeper

(02:05:51):
waters with Hois, you know,as the fight drug on. But the
plane and simple part of that isis obviously you know, I think he
did have all the body mechanics andeverything else to keep the fight standing had
he wanted to do that and thusbasically take away the tools that Hoist would
need to essentially submit it, andyou know he had. He just chose
just to stand up and fight.And so that was always that was one

(02:06:14):
of the arguments that we got into, and we went back and forth two
or three different times on the phoneabout that. I remember he even called
me afterward and was talking about it. I said, well, again,
it's like I'm taking you know,basically what you're saying as far as jiu
jitsu, and I'm turning it rightaround, and I agree with you.
You know, as far as astand up fighter, if you take them
to the ground, they don't knowanything about the ground. You know,

(02:06:35):
they're in way over their head.But if he can't get them there,
you know, if that segue betweenthe two doesn't happen, now what are
you going to do? And hedidn't have an answer for that, and
that that was a very interesting point, and that really came out of that
one fight, and we did seethat later. In fact, within this
ten event body of shows that we'llbe talking about is guys I think of

(02:06:55):
Amar Btec and I think of JoeMorera, and guys who are jiu jitsu
exponents simply not able to get theiropponents to the ground as they became more
you know, as better wrestlers gotinvolved in the sport and became harder to
get into that position. So certainlythat became that actually totally happened. I
want to hit a few production noteson UFC four because it was the debut
as head commentator of Bruce Beck,as well as the debut of the color
man Jeff Blatnick, who of coursewas so vital to the UFC in those

(02:07:18):
early days and evangelizing for the sportand trying to get it accepted. Prior
to that, you know, BillWallace fell out as the lead guy.
After the first fight, they broughtin Brian Kilmeade, which in a so
amusing Now. I mean, ifyou see Fox and Friends with Steve Doocy,
he's there sitting there pretending he didn'twant to do UFC. It's hilarious.

(02:07:38):
Brian Kilmead is there just stumbling andbumbling through the broadcasts. Ben Perry
was on there, and Ben Perrywas awesome on UFC two. If you
listen to Ben Perry Clyde, heknows everything that's going to happen. It's
I don't know how he was soplugged in. I have to admit I
don't know a lot about Ben Perry. But quickly, where did his knowledge
base come from? You know?I seem to remember, uh, you

(02:08:03):
know, he came from more ofa of a judo and in more of
a traditional Japanese jiu jitsu background.And I remember he made a couple of
comments in UFC one. I don'tknow if I I don't, Yeah,
I mean to be honest with you, I don't really know if I delve
too much into him. I justremember him more from UFC one that I

(02:08:24):
knew from UFC two. And obviouslyyou have the advantage you just, you
know, actually watch these events recently, so I'm sure you can pick out
all kinds of things that you knowback then you probably didn't pick up on
just because you know, as acasual viewer. But yeah, I didn't
really remember much about him. Ido remember, though, I thought it
was really great about bruce Beck,and um, I know, and talking

(02:08:45):
with Joe Silva, he was notreally the biggest fan of bruce Beck,
although you know Dave Meltzer of bruceBeck. I thought bruce Beck was great,
and I thought he really brought theexcitement. He brought the field to
the event, and he sounded hesounded really great, and he really really
got me jumped up every single time, you know that when that feed would
start and I rus back, Iwould just get totally totally energized. And

(02:09:07):
you know, Jeff Blatnick, youknow, to his credit, um,
he didn't know everything about it,and he probably could have. You know,
he certainly needed some help. AndI think that was one of the
reasons why he ended up leaving,is because he's he just was He did
not have the aptitude that they reallyreally needed. You know that. I
think Joe Rogan certainly has um,but you know, he was learning,

(02:09:28):
he was trying to get things right. He wasn't perfect. But Jeff Blatnick
also, you know, as faras his wrestling Acaman of course winning in
the Olympics in eighty four and thattype of thing, you know, certainly
could speak to different elements of it. And he also he brought another part
of it too. And it's likewhen he was talking to the fighters,
you really felt what he was saying. He was a lot more than just

(02:09:48):
a color commentator. Remember when hewas talking to the fighters and even talking
about certain fighters, you know,in the broadcast, you could tell that
it was It was not robotic,It was not somebody who was just trying
to say something for the moment.You could actually feel what he was saying.
So I think the dichotomy between himand Bruce Beck, I thought it
worked out really really great, andit really really got me pumped up for

(02:10:11):
a lot of those events that thetwo of them were involved in, and
it certainly took the UFC. Ithink we're really where it needed to go
was to have some professional polish onit and not look like, you know,
you just have some guys that wereyou know, merely brought in because
they had won some championship or whathave you, but really because you know,
it worked and the chemistry worked,and I think that that was something

(02:10:35):
that needed to happen if the UFCreally wanted to have a chance at becoming
a franchise from you know, orbecoming a series, you know, much
more so than just being a oneoff, you know, spectacle or just
something that would just pop up,you know, once or twice a year.
Yeah. Total contrast from the professionalpolish of Bruce Beck and his well
timed exclamations. Whenever there'd be agreat takedown or a big slam or something

(02:10:58):
impressive, Bruce Beck had this wayof switching up his voice that really let
you know that something really cool justhappened, even if you didn't quite know
what you had seen, Whereas BrianKilmeade was calling it Sumu and Judo at
Judu and he'd he'd literally be asking, like Jim Brown, what happened?
Like you know, a guy wouldget on board, like when Jason DeLucia
got on board by hoist, hehad no just no clue, no clue

(02:11:20):
at all what was happening, andthat came through. So that was evolving,
and bruce Beck developed a foothold andwas there for a while in that
position and as you, I wouldagree with you, Clyde, justifiably.
So this broadcast, by the way, introduces doctors for the first time,
like, look, here's the doctorswe have at ringside to take care of
things. They really trying to communicatethis message that this is this is overseen

(02:11:41):
and this is monitored by professionals.They're trying to get that across and they
show Ron van Cleef, I think, for the first time as the UFC
Commissioner at cage side, and ofcourse he did this point had already fought
once in the UFC falling to HoistGracie talk about what Ron van Cliff did,
if anything, as UFC commissioner,what that meant, and how ultimately
there was kind of a I don'tknow, kind of some subterfuge going on.

(02:12:03):
He got involved with a competitor andas Campbell McLaren told us, was
kind of working from the inside out, almost as an infiltrader, trying to
help a competitor run opposition to theUFC while while they're commissioner. Well,
first off, you know Ron Vancleiffbasically was you know, he was getting
paid. I don't think he evenknew exactly what he was supposed to be
doing. So okay, it wasmore or less art um and I don't

(02:12:26):
know if anybody really remembers, butat one point, you know, they
wanted to sign you up for theUltimate Fighting Alliance and they had patches and
stickers and all kinds of things.They were trying to do some branding,
you know with with um you know, the the the I'm not gonna say
faux paw commission. You know,it was a one man commission. You
know, it was what it was. But you know, it was just
basically to have some levity to itand have somebody from the traditional martial arts,

(02:12:50):
you know, as far as hum, Ron van Cleefe was involved,
but he really didn't do anything.You know, it was just more or
less he was there, you know, be able to say a few words
here and there, do something,but it wasn't anything near of what you
know, Jeff Blatnik was obviously hewas you know, somebody you know really
in that role. He was verymuch instrumental in getting the sport passed in

(02:13:11):
California. Um, he was somebodywho always, you know, was there
as far as a real commissioner isconcerned, and certainly worked on behalf of
a number of different events and reallytried to get a lot of things moving,
especially in the state of California.But just more so about the fight
that seg would end up trying tocombat outside the octagon, you know,
when he got knocked off pay perview. But as for for Ron van

(02:13:33):
Cleef and what he did with theUFC and then ultimately what he would do
with the UH. The very firstUH International Fighting Championships that took place in
Russia where um, they had alogo that looked almost exactly like um,
the logo from the you know,the the UH you know the yeah,

(02:13:54):
the bald headed guy you know fromthe UFC one. And there were threats
and arguments and all kinds of stuffeight or whatever, and once again it
was just it was a situation.You know. Um, you know this
guy named Buddy Alban and he waskind of the local promoter for UFC four.
He was kind of a big talker, and all kinds of stories about

(02:14:15):
this guy screwing people over. Youknow, I've heard it from many,
many different people, and uh,you know, Seg kind of fell you
know, in with him for thatlocal promotion, and Buddy Alban ended up
kind of hatching this plan of startingup his own show and was part of
basically, you know, creating theInternational Fighting Championship, which actually is an
entire chapter because it's it's really anamazing story. I mean, you want

(02:14:37):
to talk about stories about fighters toRussia and it's all the kind of the
crazy stuff that went on there.It's really an amazing story. And a
lot of folks were involved in tellingthat story. And that's of course what
Cambell was talking about in a referenceto uh Ron van Cleef now serving in
a in a very similar capacity tothat, and Ron even having conversations with

(02:14:58):
Bob Meyer what's on the phone,you know, even the night before that
event was going to take place,and them having to go out you know
actually you know, you know,mid nine or whatever it was before that
event, or maybe even hours before, just you know, marking over with
black paint, you know, thatlogo because of threats from Bob Myrowitz that
he didn't want to see that onthere and what have you been? No,

(02:15:20):
it was just it was you know, it was merely for show.
I mean, he didn't really doanything, and the art was the person,
you know, and really credit toart. I mean, I guess,
you know, on the one hand, if you're going to look at
it, you know, logically,you know, if anybody were to sit
down and just kind of size up, okay, what would the rules be
or what you know, something todo? You know, you know.
But on the other hand, youknow, if you look at the body

(02:15:41):
of work that Art actually put togetherat the very very beginning, I'm talking
about you know, the the uhthe mid nineties, and then he would
even update that book. And thiswas this was before Jeff Blatten it came
into the picture, you know.I mean, he was the commission He
was the commissioner. He put allthat stuff together, a lot of that
on his own. I mean,he did get some input, of course,
but he was you know, hewas the one who was putting that

(02:16:03):
stuff together. And I think itwas more or less, you know,
maybe they just didn't want to haveart, you know, in that position,
because he was also the matchmaker.They just they wanted to have somebody
like you know, Ron Van cliffUm, you know who. Obviously he
speaks well, he's certainly has beenin front of the mic. Obviously,
he's you know, been in tonsof uh, you know, fight movies
and you know, all kinds ofthings you know, in his tenure.

(02:16:26):
So um, he probably just seemlike the usual suspect and he got paid
for it. But you know,as far as him doing anything, no,
not really, not so much.Yes, that was just it's it's
fun to see them trying to feeltheir way around these trinkets of legitimacy,
you know, trying to project thisas people pushed back and had a distaste,
a public distaste for some of theviolence of the UFC. You can

(02:16:50):
see on the broadcasts kind of anevolution of how much they go out of
their way to highlight precautions. Theytake this kind of this official veneer to
it. Um. It becomes morepre announced, and the announcer has become
more kind of advocates for the sportrather than just you know, issuing all
these warnings and being and sitting homewith the rest of the spectators almost as
this uh, this person taking inthis this uh nerve racking you don't know

(02:17:15):
what's going to happen spectacle, butbeing more confident and authoritative in their voice
about this being, you know,a legitimate competition that's worth consideration and respect.
Um. All of that said UFCfour and the gripping closing scene with
the triangle on Dan Severn, thestuff of lore Um, there's just you
know, to hear Dan talk aboutthe fight, to hear Hoist talk about
the fight and Horion and everybody,it's it's it's a lot of different things

(02:17:37):
going on there, and a lotof psychology Dan talks about. He talked
about it on the sit down onthis show, looking over to to Elio
at one point seeing Hoist kind ofmake eye contact and reading Hoist's body language
to say, you know, ifyou threw that towel in, I would
not hold it against you. Rightnow, as Dan was working him over
on top and and Dan feeling likeHelio was making the decision that Hoys was

(02:17:58):
going to get put through the ringerother than jiu jitsu, take take a
perception hit and take a loss there. And ultimately it had proved wise because
the triangle was there and he nailedit. But but Clyde I have to
say Dan has a very sour tastein his mouth, so much so that
he almost makes it seem like likeif he know, well he actually said
this in as many words, ifhe knew then what he knows now about
all the players and the dynamics thatnight, it would have been a much

(02:18:22):
different outcome. And I try tocoax him into what he meant, and
he couldn't. He didn't really wantto go there. Sometimes he gets coy,
as you know, but he basicallyleft me with the impression that he
held back to such a degree thatnow if he got his hands on Hoist
Gracie again, he would absolutely gonuts on him. Well, I think
Kim Shamrock, you know, hecertainly has said the same thing, and

(02:18:45):
so many people have said the samething, and you know, it's it's
always, you know, very interesting. Many of course hindsights twenty twenty,
and they don't always try to sayI should have done this or I should
have done that. I mean,bottom line is in my opinion that Dan
Severn from UFC five, had hebeen in UFC four, I think it
probably would have been a very differentstory. But you're talking about two different

(02:19:05):
people. I mean you know whenwhen Dan Severn, you know, he
tried to get in the UFC acouple of times he got turned down.
Um, you know, obviously forbeing a pro wrestler. Our Davy went
and saw him, you know,in a makeshift Chinese restaurant of all things,
doing um, you know, somesome pro wrestling, you know,
stuff with Alice Snow. Uh,you know, kind of like the lower

(02:19:26):
levels, and uh talked to himand said, you know, you know
this thing is right, you knowreal. Of course, Dan really kind
of backed up his background, youknow, with a lot of the matches
he had on the amateur level,you know, in different countries and about
just different things that would go on. And he started competing very young,
so he certainly had you know,knowledge of being in an environment. It

(02:19:46):
wasn't exactly you know, one percent, you know, amateur wrestling. There
was other stuff going on, youknow what. On the other hand,
it's like when he showed up atthe event, you know that one of
the things that he talked about washow you know, everybody thought that all
Snow was really the guy who wasgoing to be fighting. You know,
Dan showed up in a suit,which is what he normally does, and
was very reserved and kind of heldback, and al Snow actually looked like,

(02:20:09):
you know, somebody who was reallykind of getting ready, you know,
to step in. And you know, the fact of the matter is,
you know, before the event,you know, they were training together
and training about how they were goingto do this, and they had no
idea how to properly throw a punchor position yourself or you know, work
levels or work you know, theyhad no idea about how how to do
any of that stuff. I mean, they were just trying to wing it.

(02:20:31):
And so I do by the partof Dan going into the event and
wanting to be a pro wrestler,I mean, I'm sorry, wanting to
to really take this thing as I'man amateur wrestler, and I know if
I turned this way or turn thatway, you know that I can inflict
damage. I do believe that toa degree. Um. You know.

(02:20:52):
On the other hand, you know, obviously he's left to his own devices,
you know, I mean, itwas only the two of them in
the in the cage. He couldhave done any number of things to trying
to really finish that fight. Ithink there was probably a mental you know,
war kind of going on the backof his head about you know,
how much he's really willing to stepup and do things that he hasn't done
before, you know, obviously throwingstrikes and elbows and doing things you know,

(02:21:16):
of course, he had no problemwith doing in UFC five, you
know, which is a real differencebetween the two different men. And that's
that's kind of where that I buysome of that argument. But the distaste
in his mouth over you know,I should have done this or should have
done that. I mean, ofcourse we've we've heard that many different times.
You know, he said a lotof the same thing about Ken Shamrock
Kins said a lot of that typeof thing about Hoist, So I think

(02:21:37):
that's where it's coming from. It. I don't blame him, you know,
if I was looking at that too, knowing what I know now,
it's like, man, you know, I had it right there. I
could have won UFC four and fiveand finished off Hoist. But the fact
of the matter is that's not whathappened. And there was like a subplot
to this fight Clyde and't that youhad Jim Brown who was just totally enchanted

(02:21:58):
with Grace jiu jitsu by this pointhaving called all the events and seeing Hoist
take on so many different types ofopponents and win so decisively, and you
had Jeff Blatnick kind of very muchrooting for the wrestler in a way,
not in a way that was improfessionalor offensive, but you know, it
was clear, and they're going ateach other. And when Hoist catches Severn

(02:22:18):
in the triangle, which Jeff waskind of blowing off in the moments before
it got sunk in, it's somethingthat wasn't really a threat. Jim Brown
goes talk to me, now therewas actually like an verbal argument, and
it's so illustrated what was going onas far as the you know, the
clash of styles and fight philosophies thatthat the UFC represented. That Blatnick and
Brown were going at it on thebroadcast, well, you know, just

(02:22:39):
like you had again, you knowwhen we talked about the difference between you
know, when you say mixed martialartists, there's actually a couple of different
connotations of that. It's the samething for having you know, different people
who were doing the commentary back then. I mean, you really didn't have
a true you know, integrated mixedmartial artist. At that point, you
still had traditional styles, so ofcourse you're going to have traditional viewpoints and

(02:23:01):
Jim Brown not being a commentator soto speak, for fighting, and especially
for something like this that was obviouslyso new and nan you have Jeff Blatnick
coming into it, who, youknow, whether he was a spectator of
boxing or whatnot, obviously came fromwrestling. Wrestling was the one thing he
knew more than anything else. SoI think it's interesting to kind of see

(02:23:22):
that that banner between the two ofthem and also realize that, you know,
you really couldn't get anybody to,you know, try to fill those
roles and try to be you know, objective and try to tell the point.
I mean that's where at least fora Bruce Beck, you know,
doing play by play, it's mucheasier because he could he could do the
same thing for that as he couldyou know, golf, you know,

(02:23:43):
for all tentth purposes. I mean, he can pretty much just kind of
just let it go and not reallyhave to worry about it, as opposed
to you know, when you getinto the color commentary elements of it,
you know, you really just didn'thave anybody that kind of just fit,
you know, really truly fit thebill. And then obviously getting somebody like
Jim Brown in there, who's youknow, really kind of a character all
to himself, and Curtly an actorand everything. You know, he was

(02:24:05):
just trying to come up with hisown his own stick. And I think
again for the time and for whatthe event was, and you know,
still kind of being in that stageof trying to evolve. You know,
I think it certainly worked. Andobviously it's not anything we would see today.
You know, the folks that dothe commentary now are you know,
well schooled in many different aspects ofthe game, and don't you know,

(02:24:28):
are certainly far more objective about whatthey're watching and know more about what they're
watching than anything even compared to anybodyyou know who was watching the stuff back
in the early nineties. And wemoved to UFC five, the Return of
the Beast. Clyde has referenced ita few times. Dan seven bouncers back
from that embarrassing conclusion to the hoistfight and comes roaring back in a big
way to win the UFC five tournament. It was April seventh, nineteen ninety

(02:24:50):
five. Charlotte North Carolina, aboutsix thousand in attendance. The very first
UFC super fight, Hoist and Kenare matched up one on one in the
main event, quickly go through theresults. In the quarterfinals, Seven beats
Joe Charles with a rear naked chokeand starts putting strikes together and tosses aside
this idea that he's going to showwin UFC fights with just wrestling and submissions

(02:25:11):
alone. We see the debut ofall like Toctoroff, who of course would
be one of the bright stars ofthe early UFCS, and in his first
fight he beats Ernie Verdicia with achoke at two twenty three. Todd Medina
beats Larry Kurtin a boxer within twofifty five with the viatko to advance.
John Hess, representing SAFTA, whichwe have to touch on Scientific Aggressive Fighting

(02:25:31):
Technology of America, defeats Andy Andersonvatko at one minute twenty three seconds.
So that takes us to the semifinals, where Dan Severn then defeats Toctoroff,
totally bludgeoning him from the top positionand using strikes to open up a big
cut that ended the fight at fourtwenty one. So again going in the
total opposite direction in terms of layingoff of strikes. Seven really laid it

(02:25:52):
in and earned the beast moniker hereon this card, Dave Bennetto faces Todd
Medina as an injury replacement because JohnHass broke his hand in this fight with
Anderson. So Beneto gets the nodand beats Todd Medina the TKO to twelve,
which puts the final as Dan Severnversus David Beneto. Beneto goes down
to a key lock as Severn makespretty easy work of him at three oh

(02:26:13):
one and takes the UFC five tournament. And so we had Hoist, Gracie
and Ken Shamrock Clyde absolutely testing thelimits of patients and the time limits around
this fight. And this shows theissue. I suppose you know, this
idea that the UFC represented this pureform of combat that shouldn't have any limitations
on it at all. Uh,these fights, including the Severn and Hoist

(02:26:33):
fight before this, gave us anidea of why the UFC was was so
interested or almost forced to impose timelimits on their fights. Well, certainly,
and I think it was it wasobviously you know again, you know
since Horrion was still you know,so much part of the uh, the
fight wrangling element to it, andhe didn't have judges, and you know,

(02:26:56):
he always had a belief system ofa fighter having to basically chase victory
because obviously when they had these valetudo style matches and a lot of the
course Brazilian jiu jitsu matches um ofold um, you know, basically they
would just let the match continue untilthere was a winner. And obviously there's
many uh, you know, matchesthat his father Alio had had participated in

(02:27:20):
that was you know, going reallyout there as far as the uh as,
you know, as far as thetime it would take to finish someone.
So again, the problem was isthat, you know, the foundation
of the UFC was never really Idon't think completely realized for a pay per
view format in the sense that youknow, eventually you're going to have things

(02:27:41):
like this, and that's why,you know, especially when you start to
have even more and more fights runover and still again, you know,
just to show that it it uh, you know, still took some time.
You know, even even that event, uh you know, you know,
under the tulage of the Fatidas goinginto Vegas reign over. So you

(02:28:01):
know, it was always problematic,I think obviously when when you've got a
situation, you know, especially withHorrion, you know, really trying to
be a marshal for UM, youknow, just not only just sport jiu
jitsu, but but obviously just wantingto see things play out. I mean,
I can certainly understand that, butit just really wasn't meant for a

(02:28:22):
pay per view format. And obviouslythat's the one match Um of course that
everybody remembers, you know, fromthat particular event because obviously because uh,
you know, you couldn't have thereferee stand up the fighters, which obviously
that that changed UM and it actuallycreated the only you know, real excitement
in that match, because there wassomething that Art Davies said, you know,

(02:28:43):
we can't let the fans continue tosuffer to watch the stalemate on the
ground, and of course that reallycreated a lot of problems between him and
Horreon and then ultimately you know,obviously changing the UFC in a major way,
you know, by instituting more rulesand more things obviously keep the action
flowing. Yeah, so that whatwas happening there with Hoyce and Ken Shamrock

(02:29:03):
you've done a lot of reporting,You've talked to the principles. You know,
I'm watching that thirty six minute fight. What am I seeing? What's
to account for the lack of action? Well on on on Ken SHAMROCK's side,
Uh, he just did not wantto get caught again. And he's
he's always talked about that, andyou know, as kind of of course
played you know, Devil's advocate ofyou know, why why didn't I do

(02:29:26):
more, um to to try toadvance my position? You know, but
he didn't want to get caught again. That's that's the plan and simple.
You know, he felt that ifhe kept it, you know, in
a certain confine, that he wasnot going to get caught. And that
was true. But on the otherhand, it made for a very very
warring fight, and hoyt Um againwas was certainly of the ilk of just

(02:29:46):
to let things continue. Um Sohe wasn't really doing that that great of
a job either at trying to reallyreally advance his position. More so,
just get to a point where fatiguewas set in and he can uh,
you know, catch Ken Shamrock,which obviously didn't didn't take place, So
I think it was it was amatter of both um. I know,
certainly Bob Shamrock and speaking with him, he was very very adamant that that

(02:30:09):
Ken obviously could have finished it.He could have done some things and imposed
his will to to try to movethe fight forward. But it was a
case where either man, you know, neither one really wanted to to you
know, leave them leave themselves,uh truly exposed and it and it really
made for for a just a horriblematch. And again it's it's a shame

(02:30:33):
that, you know, Ken wasalso involved in another one of these um
obviously with Dan Severn the second goaround, which obviously had a whole other
um you know, swove of issuesobviously with having to fight open handed in
that type of thing. But bottomline is, you know, obviously you're
paid to fight, and you're you'repaid to go in there to advance your
position and try to win and andsome some of these things, you know,

(02:30:54):
especially when you're when you're talking abouta spectator sport um, which it
was still you know, not quiteto that point. He was still more
or less in an in spectacle land. It just didn't it just didn't come
to be. And as they wereentangled on the floor for an extended period
of time. The chance of bullshitbegan raining down on the cage, and
folks were just not happy with thisiteration of combat. And as you mentioned,

(02:31:16):
at one point, Art Davy,as I understand applied, it sort
of gives the high sign to refereeJohn McCarthy that we're going to stand these
guys up, even though coming intothe fight there was no understanding that stand
ups were even something that could happen, But it just got so bad and
torturous at that point that they decidedto stand them up, and then I
think even give additional overtime beyond whatwas planned. This was very much on

(02:31:37):
the fly response to this, youknow, complete consumer rejection of what was
going on. No, you're absolutelyright. In fact, one of the
points of contention for Ken Shamrock isthat he was he was worried. You
know that basically just hours going intothat fight, you know that there was
going to be a thirty minute timelimit. And again, you know,
a lot of this type of thingthat was done on the fly. It

(02:31:58):
really just got to show that theydidn't really set up the framework for a
sport. You know that basically theywould sit down and have all these things
you know, um, you knowmarked out enough to where you wouldn't have
things like this going on. Andplus the fact that they didn't have judges,
so it's like, well, whatare we supposed to do? And
I think that what really hurts isif you look at Dan Severan's performance that

(02:32:20):
in that event and you really sawa completely different fighter from UFC four.
Unfortunately, it was incredibly you know, overshadowed that performance, you know,
by that one fight, which againis just you know, it's it's a
snooze fest. There really isn't awhole lot more to say about it than
the fact that someone had to sitthere for over half an hour and watch

(02:32:41):
that. This was ultimately cost theUFC a lot of money because it did
quite well as far as the payper view buys, but because it ran
over, you know, obviously theyhad to give they you know, they
lost a lot of money that night. Yeah. Yeah, And that was
always a trend, is when theywould have a long drawn out fight without
any kind of means to end it. Um, there would be a hit
to the pay per view buys thenext time around. You know, consumers

(02:33:03):
would check out a fight and thenthe next show, if the fight dragged
on and was rejected by the livecrowd and then of course by the home
audience. You saw it in thenumbers. Um, this was Clyde the
last time we'd see Hoist Gracie untilUFC sixty, believe it or not.
What happened, well, you know, basically when Horrion made the decision of

(02:33:26):
really, you know, kind ofgetting out of the business with seg And
obviously that was another point of contentionwhere you know, both Horrion and and
I think to an extent, Artyou know, kind of had this idea
that they would, uh, theywould leave the UFC and they would start
up their own organization, and thatwas kind of the plant at least what
that's what Horrion felt was going tohappen right away. So he had no

(02:33:50):
idea or certainly was blown away bythe fact that Art actually would continue on
with seg Um you know, inthat in that capacity. So, but
that that one point of standing uphoists Um. That was that was a
real issue that created a lot ofthings between not just the two of them,
but obviously the relationship between Wow andseg So you had a number of

(02:34:13):
those types of factors going on,and I think the way Art always framed
it is that, you know,Art felt that he could really work with
Bob Meyerwitz um, and even thoughthey had some disagreements, uh, you
know, it was one of thosethings where they could get through it.
But there was always a sense ofjust a misunderstanding between Horreon and Bob.
They didn't really see eye to eye. Um. There was a lot of

(02:34:35):
other things that Bob was trying todo behind the scenes, as far as
you know, maybe make you know, hoist out of a out of a
you know, a movie star,and you know, we're certainly looking kind
of like the bigger picture, um, which is something obviously if you look
at Bob's background and everything that he'sdone with you know, pay per View
and the Keen Biscuit, Flower Hourand everything else. You know, certainly

(02:34:56):
he saw you know, a lotmore benefit with that. But ultimate and
it didn't work out. And whenHorrion basically left, um, you know,
Hoys went right along with him,and like I said, you know,
especially back during that time, youknow, and even to the point
when I interviewed him, you know, which was thinking it was in two
thousand or ninety nine, it wasstill a situation where Horrion was still pulling

(02:35:18):
a lot of the strings. SoI can certainly only imagine back during that
point there wasn't even a question,you know that if Horrion left, you
know, hoys left as well.Right, And so the buyout happens,
and Horry and Gracie's share of Wowis bought out, and our Davy and
Bob Myrowitz then sort of go intobusiness together. Seg buys Wow, Davy
teams up with Myrowitz, and theUFC continues on with everyone but Horrion.

(02:35:41):
I want to touch on this,Clyde. It seems an opportune time.
Bob Myrowitz is a guy who's alwaysreferred to sought out when we want to
look at the seg period of theUFC, and you know, up,
you know, quite fittingly enough,he put up substantial money and was a
big player, no question about it. But when you talk about the nuts
and bolts of those early UFC's,of all the seg Era UFC's, you

(02:36:01):
seem to talk more about Art Davy, about Campeall McLaren, about David Isaacs,
and less about Bob Myrowitz. Iwant to clarify for listeners, the
degree to which Bob Myrowitz was waskind of at a distance on this whole
thing. Um, he certainly understood, you know, he certainly understood why
the product was popular and made money, but he wasn't a martial arts fanatic,
and he wasn't really interested in theminutia of the matchmaking. And I

(02:36:24):
wonder if you could cast for uskind of who Bob Myrowitz is as far
as the big picture at this pointin time. You know, Bob was
a solid businessman and certainly wanted tobuild a platform around pay per view.
It was something that he really sawthe light in and certainly, working with
Dave Isaacs and caml McLaren, youknow, they really felt that, you

(02:36:45):
know, there there were some thingsthat they could do that would be interesting,
that would make a lot more moneyfor them, you know, versus
just you know, licensing content.On the other hand, you know,
Campbell was certainly more a lot moreinvolved as far as the orchestry of you
know, kind of setting up alot of these types of events and working
with David Isaacs and and a lotof the other folks that were involved.

(02:37:07):
You know, Bob was a lotmore um, you know, kind of
fifty thousand foot view. You know, certainly when he came down to the
money, you know, that wasobviously something that he was extremely you know,
obviously intimately involved in. As faras the nature of the specific events
and a lot of things that weregoing on, he wasn't you know,
that actively involved. On the otherhand, and and I've always got to

(02:37:28):
say this, you know, asfar as any criticisms that might have been
made of seg you know, Bobkept it running at a point when a
lot of other people would have folded. And if he would have folded it,
and you know, the brand namewould have lost out. And of
course all the time that Bob workedhand in hand with Campbell as well as

(02:37:50):
John McCarthy and other folks really tryingto push, you know, forgetting the
thing legalized, and certainly trying tokeep out of you know, the even
the bigger fight which which took placeoutside the octagon as far as just you
know, try not to lose youknow, any more of their pay per
view universe or those types of things. That was what Bob was obviously far
more invested in. And obviously,when you look at extreme Fighting and some

(02:38:13):
of the other events that took place, and you know, the melee that
kind of unfolded, you know,around not just the nature of those events,
but but obviously just competing on gettinginto different venues and things that were
going on. That's where Bob wasa lot more involved. And obviously that
fight really took its toll. AndI always I always kind of characterized at
a time when they went off payper view as kind of being the dark

(02:38:35):
ages for the sport, and itreally was like a band of gypsies.
And I just got to make mention, you know for a second that I
would go to these events and youknow these fighters, you know, many
of whom you'd seen on pay perview, and that type of thing was
more or less, well, whatdo we do now? You know,
we're not making nearer as much moneyas we were. We're fighting in front
of a couple of thousand people peopledidn't know akin from a Frank Shamrock um,

(02:38:58):
you know, any of which werecompletely uninformed. Obviously, you know,
the Internet was really the only vehicleto keep a lot of the the
uh these events as well as informationgoing on about them in play for fans
who had access to it. Buton the other hand, when he'd go
to these events, it was justreally a system of you know, how
do we find a way to keepthis thing going? And I got to

(02:39:20):
say, you know, Bob,you know, he's the one who,
at the end of the day,he was he was putting up the money
for this. He was trying everythingthat he could, you know, doing
the video game deal with Dreamcast anda few other things, which the fighters
didn't make any money off of that, but it was a situation where they
had to have other vehicles to reallyget the branding, not just not just

(02:39:41):
increasing the branding, but really justkeeping it alive in any kind of way
because they lost so much, youknow, after going on pay per view.
I mean, so many people actuallythought the UFC was completely dead and
MMA was dead, you know whenthey got off a pay per view,
which was not the case. Itwas just a situation, you know,
how do we keep this thing owing. We've lost you know, more than
eighty eighty five percent of of theyou know, the market share, um,

(02:40:05):
you know, and that's you know, it was, uh, it
was it was hard to see alot of times, you know. The
only thing that I really remembered wasmore or less the camaraderie between a lot
of the fighters during that time.That again, you know, now you
had pride and so you had otheravenues for them to go and compete.
But when you went to those events, you know, you gotta sit,
you gotta you know, a veryclear cut picture of how do we keep

(02:40:28):
this thing going? And at thefront of that, you know, Bob
was the man with the money,so you couldn't argue that. And honestly,
it's you know, you gotta atleast give credit where credits due that
he kept it going as long ashe did. Yeah, everybody in the
business, even if they were aboutto face off in the cage, shared
that rallying cry. It really waskind of a like a shared mission at
the time. I definitely know whatyou're saying there. Uh. And so

(02:40:50):
Ken and Hoist go thirty six minutes, Dan Severn roars back to win the
tournament, and UFC five is inthe books. Hoist Gracie rides off into
the sunset, so to speak withHorreon, and the UFC takes kind of
a different direction. Right before wejump off UFC five, one more thing
I want to make mention of Clydebecause it seems to me a significant fight.
John Hess in the quarterfinals fights AndyAnderson. It's over in a minute
twenty three. John Hess, who, as I'd mentioned in the intro,

(02:41:13):
was an exponent of SAFTA Scientific AggressiveAggressive Fighting Technology of America. God knows
what that is. That the prerole where they show guys sparring, I
mean SAFTA looked like a guy justattacking another man without any idea of what
he was doing really, and asthe fight played out, that was it.
To me, that was one ofthe last real breaths, one of
the last real gritty like two guysin there who even if they had martial

(02:41:37):
arts skill or had technique to bringto bear it it was just a fight.
It was just an absolute all outfight. And John has stands out
to me for that just the exoticismof SAFTA and what a strange thing that
was, but also how just streetfighter like he was in the cage.
Well, and that was a thing, you know, and you saw a
lot of this. It existed withthose events where you know, the the

(02:42:00):
uh you know the titles that wereBallyhood, you know, for their entry
into into the UFC um you know, obviously we're not as decorated, um
as far as being able to seewhat these people were really about. I
mean Andy Anderson was friends with BobMeierwitz. He was friends with um,
you know, Buddy Alvin, whowas one of the local promoters, and
he had a you know, hadhis much of a serious martial arts background

(02:42:24):
as almost anybody who'ser entered a dojoand and uh you know got their their
black belt. However that was framed, but no, you're absolutely right,
it was. Um it was.It was a you know, ugly mess.
It was a mess. I thinkt take Avid actually said to me,
you know, it was like,you know, you might as well
have a you know, two oldwomen throwing h throwing water balloons at each

(02:42:46):
other. I mean it was andyou know that's not too that's not too
far away from the point. Imean Andy, although did lose some site
in in in the one eye,um as a result of what was going
on. I remember Jeff Blatten specificallysaying that, um, he narrowly actually
came to blows not with John buthis handler because he was just off on
this tirade about SAFTA and all thisother kind of stuff. And and really

(02:43:09):
just wouldn't let it go. Andyou know that you had always had a
lot of very strange characters. Ofcourse, we talked about Joe Son and
some of the other stuff was goingon. But again, the whole you
know, Montrea of just bigger thanlife always seemed to play out much more
so than than the solid accolades thatsome of these guys did have. But
you know, that fight as wellas again some of the you know,

(02:43:31):
the you know nothing against Art,but you know he obviously was looking at
it trying to get folks again,that kind of played on that bigger than
life component much more so than tryingto find the best best athletes. Um
to really kind of enter the fray. In fact, I do want to
make mention of old taktarov Um.You know, he was an interesting guy
that uh, you know, again, at least as far as Art was

(02:43:52):
concerned. You know, Horrion didnot want to have him in there um
and basically was you know, itwas one of those things to find kind
of get him part of the event. But Olig you know, really kind
of came to the us um.You know, he really didn't know where
to go or what to do butum at one point, and this was
something that Kathy Kid told me about. Art told me a little bit about
this, but Kathy said, Iremember almost every morning, you know,

(02:44:15):
showing up to the WOW office andthere would be Oleg basically living in his
car um right in front of theWOW office there in the parking lot,
and we'd bring him food, we'dbring him breakfast, we'd give him money,
you know, to go get ashower, this type of thing,
and you know, just to havethat kind of you know, a person
kind of lingering around, you know, honestly wanting to be part of the
event. And then he basically wastaken under the wing of Buddy Alban who

(02:44:39):
you know, then kind of parthim off to h Ken Shamrock and you
know, to some to some degree, guy Metzker here in Dallas, just
to how to get him up toa point where, um, you know,
his health would necessitate him being ableto even get into the octagon,
because again it was a situation whereyou know, he was he was uh
starving, p Yeah, he starving. He didn't have the money and it

(02:45:01):
was difficult for him to try todo anything else other than just survived.
So they kind of got him inthere. And of course we all know
about the you know, the successstory of him, you know, venturing
off into into uh, you know, film and just doing a lot of
other things. But I didn't wantto make mention of him. Uh and
obviously he didn't, do you knowthat well in the in UFC five.

(02:45:22):
You know, that was his firstforay into U to the UFC, and
obviously he would become, you know, a fairly big name, you know,
as far as the earlier days ofthe UFC. Yeah, and and
certainly well timed they're Clyde to bringup a leg because UFC six, which
is our next event here, wasdefinitely his big stand. I think better,
No, Mma better. Listen tothe Serdog Radio Network REWE Sunday,

(02:45:46):
nine pm Eastern, exclusively on theSUDL Radium Network

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