Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [100]
Dan Severn made his reffing debut when he officiated the Freeman-Adams fight. Severn, wearing a traditional black-and-white striped shirt and red wrestling shoes, did fine but never reffed in the UFC again.
UFC 25
“Ultimate Japan 3”
April 14, 2000
Yoyogi National Gymnasium
Tokyo, Japan
Bouts I Reffed:
LaVerne Clark vs. Koji Oishi
Ikuhisa Minowa vs. Joe Slick
Ron Waterman vs. Satoshi Honma
Sanae Kikuta vs. Eugene Jackson
Murilo Bustamante vs. Yoji Anjo
Tito Ortiz vs. Wanderlei Silva
Seeing Murilo Bustamante finally get into the UFC was a big moment for me. I had always admired his fighting and the classy way he conducted himself. The one downside was that he made short work of Yoji Anjo.
The Ortiz-Silva fight, which would determine a new middleweight champion in Frank Shamrock’s place, had some good moments but overall wasn’t the barn burner you’d hope for. Ortiz was really nervous about the fight, as was pretty much everyone who faced Wanderlei “the Axe Murderer” Silva, but he pulled out the unanimous nod and fulfilled his own prophetic destiny to become a champion.
On September 30, 2000, the NJSACB regulated its first MMA event on a trial basis under the leadership of Commissioner Larry Hazzard Sr., a former Golden Gloves boxing champion and accomplished Hall of Fame boxing referee. Six MMA bouts were approved at the International Fighting Championships (IFC) event that night, but the one that really caught Hazzard’s eye was a heavyweight contest between the six-feet-ten Gan McGee and a Canadian kickboxer with limited ground experience, Brad Gabriel. McGee, who’d trained with Chuck Liddell in California, took the bout to the ground and repeatedly slammed his knee into a turtled Gabriel’s head until the referee called the bout. It was a type of attack that had long been admissible in MMA bouts, but Hazzard had a real issue with it.
When Meyrowitz approached the New Jersey board to hold three UFC events at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City beginning that November, Hazzard said he would allow the events to take place during a probationary period under the two conditions that knees to a downed opponent’s head were made illegal and that the regulatory agency would continue to observe the sport at the next three shows. It seemed a small price to pay to get the UFC into a state as influential as New Jersey, so Meyrowitz agreed.
As a small window began to open in New Jersey, SEG also banged on the doors of Nevada, specifically Las Vegas. Sin City was the crowned jewel for combat sports. Boxing events regularly pulled in live gates in the double-digit million-dollar range.
As he had in New York four years earlier, Meyrowitz hired a lobbyist, Sig Rogich, to champion the sport with the Nevada State Athletic Commission and push regulation through. Right around UFC 28, SEG got word that a proposal for mixed martial arts’ regulation in Nevada had been scheduled for the athletic commission’s next meeting. Lorenzo Fertitta and Glenn Carano along with three additional commissioners would vote on the proposal; SEG needed the support of three.
I was flown to Las Vegas to answer any questions the commissioners had about the sport. SEG and the lobbyist figured Fertitta would support the sport because he’d now become John Lewis’ jiu-jitsu student. They thought Glenn Carano would vote against it and two other commissioners would split with their votes. The fifth was a veterinarian who wasn’t particularly familiar with the sport, so I was sent to meet him. With the swing vote in the balance, I did my best to persuade him to give MMA a chance, talking up its safety points, but he didn’t seem to care either way.
Meyrowitz met me in Las Vegas a day before the vote. The lobbyist, who was relaying