Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [115]
I also refereed the B. J. Penn versus Caol Uno rematch for the lightweight title vacated by Jens Pulver.
11 UFC 41’s championship bout was the culmination of a four-man tournament, and the promotion was eager to get a new 155-pound champion back in the mix. But after five rounds of action, the fight was ruled a draw.
I couldn’t believe one of the judges had given the fight to Uno and another had scored it a draw when Penn had clearly won. To me, it was simply a crime.
Though Abbott’s drawing power had helped UFC 41 sell out the Boardwalk Hall with 11,700 spectators, things didn’t bode well on the pay-per-view front. UFC 40 had been able to break through the 100,000 buy-rate ceiling, but UFC 41 was said to have dipped right back below it, where the numbers would stay for the next handful of shows.
Zuffa continued to Miami, Florida, site of UFC 42 “Sudden Impact,” held on April 25, 2003, at the 16,000-seat American Airlines Arena. It was another sobering night for all of us, with only about half the venue filled with fans. Even O. J. Simpson, notorious at this point for his acquittal in his ex-wife’s murder trial, was able to sneak into the arena undetected and watch the show unfettered in a sea of empty seats.
The Florida State Boxing Commission had insisted on using two of its own referees for the preliminary bouts that night. During the event, one of the local referees watched Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Hermes Franca dislocate Rich Crunkilton’s elbow two times with a straight armlock attempt in their lightweight contest. Franca actually pointed to the dislocated elbow to let the referee know what he’d done, but that didn’t work.
The referee should have been protecting Crunkilton from himself, as he wouldn’t submit, but since he didn’t know what he was looking at, it would’ve been hard to accomplish that. The commission pulled the referee from the rest of the fights he’d been assigned to that night and had me sub for him.
It wouldn’t be the first or last time I’d have to sit cageside and watch a fighter’s safety be compromised. Referees would accept assignments to work MMA shows when they had no idea what the fighters were doing. It upset me every time.
A bout that led to a rule change: Genki Sudo vs. Duane Ludwig at UFC 42 “Sudden Impact” (April 2003)
UFC 42 led to another rule change. Japanese showman Genki Sudo was dominating his fight on the ground against striker Duane Ludwig until I halted the action in round three. I believed Ludwig was taking in too much blood and couldn’t breathe properly. When a doctor deemed the fighter fit to continue, I restarted the pair from the one position I was allowed to: standing. Sudo lost the ground position he’d worked so hard to get, and Ludwig, a champion kickboxer, took full advantage, scoring with late punches and kicks to pull out a controversial split decision, even though Sudo had dominated Ludwig for a good portion of the fight before.
This didn’t make sense to anybody, and fast action was taken. Both the UFC and the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which would oversee the promotion’s next event, instituted a new procedure. The referee would have to remember the fighters’ strategic positions before stopping a bout and bringing a fighter to the doctor for a medical opinion. If the fight continued, the referee could now restart the fighters in the position they’d been stopped in, whether standing or on the ground.
Now, when a referee thought he’d need to stop a bout for a doctor’s check, he’d have to take a quick mental photo of the fighters’ positions. Are they in half guard? Does he have an underhook? We never say that we put the fighters back in their exact positions and locations; it’s approximate. It’s not hard for me to make these mental pictures because I understand the positions and have been in them myself