Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [129]
He’d always start cussing at me and then laugh, the prefight tension broken. “I’m telling you, she had some of the best tits I’ve ever seen,” he’d say.
At UFC 53 “Heavy Hitters,” held on June 4, 2005, at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Eilers challenged Andrei Arlovski for his heavyweight title. I had to stop the fight prematurely when Eilers fell to the ground cradling his leg. He’d blown out his knee.
It would be the last fight I’d have the privilege to referee him in. The day after Christmas in 2008, Eilers was shot and killed by his stepfather, an ex-sheriff, during a dispute at a family gathering. It was another senseless loss for the MMA world.
Tanner, Lewis, and Eilers all contributed to the sport in their own way. Their individual efforts helped propel the sport to new heights in mid-2005.
On the heels of Couture-Liddell II, UFC 53 was the show where I felt the atmosphere changing at the events. The strangest thing I noticed was that fans were now packing the arena way ahead of the start of the show.
When Forrest Griffin, who was fresh off his win over Stephan Bonnar at The Ultimate Fighter finale two months earlier in Las Vegas, made his entrance, he was practically accosted by crazy fans trying to touch him as he made his way to the cage. When Griffin won his fight against Canadian Bill Mahood, the crowd blew the top off the place. Griffin got the kind of reception reserved for Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture, and Chuck Liddell—fighters who had toiled in the UFC for years.
UFC 54
“Boiling Point”
August 20, 2005
MGM Grand Garden
Arena Las Vegas, Nevada
Bouts I Reffed:
Chuck Liddell vs. Jeremy Horn
Now that Liddell was the UFC light heavyweight champion, Liddell got to avenge one of two career defeats to Horn, who’d choked him unconscious with an arm-triangle at UFC 13 in March of 1999. It was a hard fight to watch as Liddell hit Horn with incredibly hard punches. Remember: in the cage, I can hear and feel how heavy some of the punches and kicks are and the wheezing of an athlete who can’t breathe correctly. Horn put up a great fight but got knocked down a few times. When Horn advised me that he couldn’t see the punches coming anymore, I stopped the fight.
It was clear right then and there that the reality show had already impacted the UFC’s popularity. The promotion often refers to the series as its Trojan horse because it was the vehicle they used to bring mixed martial arts to the uninitiated masses. It wasn’t the live fight show Dana White had envisioned to do the job, but the public’s obsession with reality TV couldn’t have come at a better time for the sport. The story goes that Spike TV head Brian Diamond struck a handshake deal with White and Fertitta for the second season of TUF and more live Fight Night events in the alleyway behind the Cox Pavilion only minutes after Griffin and Bonnar had knocked the tar out of each other.
Griffin-Bonnar became a “watercooler fight,” the one talked about in offices across the country Monday morning. The ratings were the sport’s highest to date in the United States, with 2.6 million viewers tuning in. The finale was the highest-rated program on both cable and broadcast TV that night for men ages eighteen through thirty-four, which is the coveted demographic for advertisers. Here at UFC 53, more than four years and $40 million later, Zuffa’s purchase of the UFC looked like it might finally turn out to be a worthwhile investment.
UFC 55
“Fury”
October 7, 2005
Mohegan Sun Arena
Uncasville, Connecticut
Bouts I Reffed:
Marcio Cruz vs. Keigo Kunihara
Joe Riggs vs. Chris Lytle
Andrei Arlovski vs. Paul Buentello
Buentello rushed in throwing a jab-right hand