Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [118]
I warned Abbott, “If you say that to the doctor, the fight will be stopped.”
But Abbott knew what he was doing. He was tired and wanted out, and going out this way allowed him to blame it on the doctor.
When the doctor recommended the fight be ended based on Abbott’s comment, Abbott erupted into his defiant act, cursing the stoppage in a tantrum and stomping around the cage.
From here, things developed quickly. Correira broke out into his cabbage patch victory dance, and John Marsh, another heavyweight fighter working Abbott’s corner, made a remark about it, which I didn’t hear. Correira flipped Marsh off, and then Marsh threw a water bottle in the Hawaiian’s direction and lunged at him. Before we all knew it, the Octagon resembled a pro wrestling battle royal.
A couple commission attendants and I grabbed Marsh and cornered him against the fence, while referee Larry Landless and others did the same with Correira. Cutman Jacob “Stitch” Duran moved to Abbott to work on the laceration, and in the chaos a disgruntled and possibly inebriated fan jumped the fence and nearly fell on Duran while trying to claw his way to Abbott. Chuck Liddell, who’d piled into the cage with a few others to break up the commotion, grabbed the overzealous Correira fan and pointed him to the Octagon door.
With the sport still struggling for acceptance with the general public in the United States, this display didn’t go a long way to show how much MMA had matured. But if there’s one thing that MMA is, it’s unpredictable, and you take the good and bad with that.
It was strange because I walked away from UFC 45 feeling it wasn’t as big a show as I’d wanted it to be. I’m not saying Zuffa did anything wrong. I think the Hall of Fame presentation was a nice gesture, but it came down to the fights, and they didn’t deliver on the level that some of the shows before, like UFC 40, had. And that’s not even taking into account the referee assault and riot that had erupted in the cage.
Despite its black eyes, though, UFC 45 was still a night of celebration, a time for many of us to come together to reflect on what had been accomplished during the last ten years. The show gave Elaine and me the opportunity to see some old acquaintances we hadn’t heard from in a while.
Fred Ettish, the unfortunate victim of the UFC 2 beating and ridicule that followed, attended the show. It was the first time I’d seen him since his fateful 1994 appearance, and I told him that I felt bad for the way fans had treated him. He told me he appreciated my words and was happy for me that I’d been able to stick with the sport as long as I had.
Former commentator Jeff Blatnick was also in the crowd, as well as the UFC’s previous owner, Bob Meyrowitz. Zuffa had given him tickets, and it was the first time he’d attended the show since he’d sold the promotion in 2001. Dana White seated Meyrowitz cageside and made sure he was treated well.
Afterward, Elaine and I had a late dinner with Jeff and Bob. It was weird for me because I was the only one still with the UFC, and I felt guilty. Blatnick was bitter that he wasn’t with the promotion anymore, and I didn’t blame him. He’d spent hours drafting the UFC’s rule changes with me around UFC 22 and made many other contributions to the sport.
Meyrowitz also loved the UFC and had spent a lot of money fighting to keep it afloat. He commented on what a wonderful job Zuffa was doing with the show, which was gracious of him, but I could tell he wished it was still his. He regretted selling it, even though when he’d done it, he’d really had no choice.
With the old owner’s stamp of approval, the new owners kept trying to push the sport into the mainstream. UFC 46 “Super Natural,” held eleven weeks later at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, was the first UFC to be held over the busy Super Bowl weekend. In the main event, there was another Octagon first when Vitor Belfort cut Randy Couture’s eyelid open with his glove in their main event rematch.
At the opening bell, Belfort, who was grief stricken because his sister had gone