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The next thing I was asked was if I’d worn my badge during the shoot. You couldn’t even see the badge in the ad because it was half cut off by the gear. I told them I hadn’t worn my own badge anyway but a prop one.

“It looks a lot like an LAPD badge,” they said.

I insisted I’d gotten a fake one from a colleague.

I’ll be damned if they didn’t blow that picture up 800 times until they could read the last number on that badge. Sure enough, it matched the one on my own badge.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said when they handed me the picture.

I was accused of lying about the whole thing, and lying could’ve cost me my job.

My accusers treated me like one of their suspects, going after any shred of evidence they could find to prove my guilt. I was “big time” in their eyes, after all, and some of my superiors couldn’t have that.

I finally told my sergeant, Andy Markel, this whole situation was bullshit and nothing more than jealousy. Andy ended up taking over the investigation and made one taped phone call to the photographer who’d shot the ad. The photographer was willing to go on the record stating that he hadn’t noticed two badges in my bag and had pinned the wrong one on me, and the investigation was finally dropped.

The first batch of Zuffa-run UFC events improved on the product immeasurably. The packaging, from its advertising to its pre-fight videos, looked much more professional. The talent was improving quickly as well, but that didn’t immediately translate into pay-per-view buys. As a train-wreck spectacle, the UFC had peaked with nearly 300,000 buys. Now a recognized sport, the UFC barely mustered 50,000 buys for its first few shows.

UFC 35 “Throwdown,” on January 11, 2002, was the first held at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. The main aggressor at this event was a stomach bug, which had fighters, cornermen, and even some of Zuffa’s staff rushing for their toilet bowls the entire weekend.

Everyone had a theory regarding the mystery plague that pillaged UFC 35’s roster. Some of the fighters blamed it on the food cooked by the hotel’s restaurant, ironically named The Octagon, and a few fighters stole their personalized steak knives as payback. Some had come into town with the bug, though, so maybe it had infected the rest that way. Kevin Randleman was sick and irate at the same time, convinced the hotel had poisoned him in some master conspiracy before his big fight against Renato “Babalu” Sobral.

Luckily, I was one of the few not sick. During the event, fighters were running to the bathroom backstage. UFC middleweight champion Dave Menne was one of the sicker fighters and was throwing up till his title defense against Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Murilo Bustamante. A drained and depleted Menne lost the title to Bustamante on second-round punches, but the real story is that a guy who felt like he was going to die went out and fought his heart out and never complained once about the result.

Not all of the fighters got ill. In the main event, a healthy B. J. Penn challenged Jens Pulver for his lightweight crown and won the first two rounds handily. Penn secured an armbar on Pulver at the end of the second round, but just as he extended and locked it in, the bell rang. I believe two things happened in that moment: first, Pulver got pissed off over nearly getting caught; second, Penn, who was fighting for a world championship in his fourth professional bout, lost his spark because the fight literally slipped out of his hands.

I noticed a real shift in both fighters’ demeanors when they came out for the third round. Though Penn had an early lead, Pulver used his newfound motivation to go after his opponent and win the final fifteen minutes to keep his title.

Fights are like that. They can turn on a dime, and a mental catalyst can be just as powerful as a landed punch or submission.

In a time of fast-paced growth, I made my second major refereeing blunder. It was at UFC 37 “High Impact” on May 10, 2002, at the CenturyTel Center in Bossier