• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

When I reemerged, Ron was again being towed away from me, coughing up a huge spurt of water that really alarmed me. I was probably in the best shape of my life, but when I got to him a second time, my arms were lead weights. I was dead tired, and Ron had this terrified look on his face. I knew in that moment that if I didn’t do something, my son was going to drown and I wouldn’t be far behind him.

“Ron, I need your help,” I ordered. “You’ve got to swim.”

Ron grabbed me, and again we stroked out of the riptide and toward the shore. We were tossed again, but this time I held on tight. We finally got close enough that I could get my feet underneath me, and I dragged him the rest of the way onto the sand.

Elaine came running to me in hysterics—but not because the sea had nearly swallowed her son and husband. In fact, Elaine had missed our near-death experience because Johnny had sat on a Portuguese man-of-war and been stung.

Ron’s eyes were bloodshot, and my heart rate must have been over 200 beats a second. “That’s fucking interesting,” was all I could muster for Elaine.

It’s a paralyzing feeling to think your child might die, something you can’t understand until it’s happened to you. In that moment, I didn’t have any fear of dying; I just knew I had to act. Either we were both going to make it, or we were both going to die. There were no other choices.

When I teach, I tell every police recruit that fear is natural. If you don’t have fear, then you’re probably stupid. Everybody has fear. It’s what you do when you’re afraid that qualifies who and what you are. I don’t think there’s ever been a hero who wasn’t afraid. Each one just did what was right in the right moment.

I’ve been shot at. I’ve had rounds going off near me. Was I afraid? Sure, but I’ve gotten smart enough to understand that running from a bullet doesn’t work. It’s better to attack where the bullet is coming from and end a dangerous situation. That’s going to give me a better chance of survival.

Fear can be overcome by preparing as much as you can for that critical moment. That’s one key factor that makes police work and MMA refereeing similar. The more knowledge and experience you have in dealing with those split-second decisions, the better you’re going to react. The decisions will already be made for you.

I certainly had no fear about the UFC going out of business. Elaine and I had talked about it many times. We’d left events time and again thinking that show could be the last. I was sad about that because I loved the UFC and the sport, but I wasn’t afraid.

Elaine and I had done our best to prepare for the moment when the UFC wouldn’t be a part of our lives anymore. Over the last twelve years, we’d moved into eight different homes around Southern California, fixed them up ourselves, and flipped them. With Elaine’s knack for interior design, we were able to make $225,000 on one sale.

So, when we’d heard two weeks before UFC 30 that brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta had purchased the UFC from Meyrowitz for $2 million, I was as braced as I could be for what was to come. Dana White, the fight manager and friend to Lorenzo, was appointed president of Zuffa Sports and Entertainment, later shortened to Zuffa LLC, and given a 10 percent share of the company.

The first time I talked to others in the industry about the purchase was on a trip to Kuwait, where I refereed a one-off event called Shidokan Jitsu: “Warriors War 1.” I hadn’t refereed many events outside the UFC, but this was an adventurous opportunity, so I’d accepted the assignment and was flown in with Elaine. A wealthy sheikh also brought some of the better-known fighters, including Matt Hughes, Jose “Pele” Landi-Jons and Carlos Newton, to the Middle East. Oddly, while the fighters were housed in a shit hole, Bruce Buffer, the commentators, I, and others who worked the event were put up in an upscale hotel. A few of us discussed the changes waiting for us back home, but no one really knew what to