Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [113]
The event also featured the rematch of the controversial UFC 34 encounter between Matt Hughes and Carlos Newton. However, there was no doubt this time around. Hughes walked through Newton and got a fourth-round stoppage.
Many were surprised by Hughes’ domination, but sometimes the fans forget that outside of the cage fighters balance complex lives just like everybody else. This was a clear case of two fighters moving in different directions. Hughes was coming into his own as a fighter and honing a style that worked for him. Newton had been in the game so long and was pursuing a medical degree and other interests at the same time. Fighting wasn’t his first priority anymore.
I did attend Zuffa’s after party at a trendy nightclub in London and left about a minute before the now infamous brawl broke out in the street between Lee Murray and Tito Ortiz and their drunken entourages. After that night, Zuffa decided not to host its own after parties. Fighters and alcohol didn’t seem to mix too well.
Though Zuffa had now held eleven quality events in nineteen months, it didn’t seem the UFC was making substantial strides. They had spent millions on a magazine ad campaign, tried to coax the mainstream press to cover them, and even taken an event halfway around the world to England. However, the pay-per-view numbers for the first eleven events under Zuffa’s watch were reported to be under 100,000 buys each, with some rumored to be 30,000 or lower. It was time to try something different.
Dana White had told me a couple days before UFC 40 that Tank Abbott would be returning to fight at UFC 41, and Zuffa managed to keep the MMA press from finding out. When Abbott appeared at the top of the ramp at UFC 40 and swaggered down with his salt-and-pepper goatee and leather jacket, the audience was shocked.
UFC 39
“The Warriors Return”
September 27, 2002
Mohegan Sun Arena
Uncasville, Connecticut
Bouts I Reffed:
Gan McGee vs. Pedro Rizzo
B. J. Penn vs. Matt Serra
Ricco Rodriguez vs. Randy Couture
McGee stopped Rizzo in the first round via a nasty cut, the start of the downfall for the Brazilian striker.
Rodriguez’s fifth-round victory over Couture was a tough bout to watch. Couture led early, but later Rodriguez used his size to trap him on the mat. Rodriguez then hit Couture with a legal elbow that cracked his orbital bone. It was the one time I heard Couture verbally submit in a fight.
My sons, Ron and Johnny, with former UFC welterweight champion Carlos Newton in their best Dragon Ball Z poses
Some time had passed since Abbott had been in the UFC, and I didn’t have a strong opinion about his return either way. Times had changed, and the UFC was overcoming a lot of the stigma I’d felt Abbott had helped feed during his SEG days, but if it would get people to tune in, why not? I knew he wouldn’t win against good fighters, and Zuffa and the audience would see that when they watched him fight.
UFC 40 “Vendetta,” held on November 22, 2002, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, launched the sport’s first true rivalry of the Zuffa era. The brash and outspoken Tito Ortiz took on Ken Shamrock in a flashback to their UFC 19 encounter when Ortiz had beaten Shamrock’s prized student Guy Mezger and donned the “Gay Mezger Is My Bitch” T-shirt.
The bad blood built up in the days before the show. At the press conference, Shamrock uttered the now famous line, “I’m going to beat you into a living death,” and kicked a chair Ortiz’s way, which Dana caught midair. It was a pretty nice catch for someone who never expected a chair to come flying his way.
At the weigh-ins, I was asked to stand between these passionate