Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [131]
Mandalay Bay Events Center
Las Vegas, Nevada
Bouts I Reffed:
Nate Marquardt vs. Joe Doerksen
Rich Franklin vs. David Loiseau
Franklin-Loiseau was highly anticipated, as Loiseau was a talented striker who liked to throw spinning back kicks, flying knees, and landed elbows that cut and incapacitated quality opponents. But it was Franklin, an unorthodox southpaw, who put a beatdown on the French Canadian.
Between rounds, I heard Franklin tell his cornerman Jorge Gurgel his hand was broken (he also broke a foot). Gurgel looked straight at Franklin and said, “Just keep hitting him with it, and it will go numb.”
What people didn’t know was Loiseau was having problems with his management that were sapping his focus. I’d noticed Loiseau’s tension and anxiety in the locker room beforehand, then watched Franklin bludgeon his face over five rounds until he resembled the Elephant Man.
UFC 59 “Reality Check,” held on April 15, 2006, at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim was a bittersweet moment for me. On the bright side, it was the first UFC ever held in my home state. After fifteen years of traveling across the country and the globe to referee fights, I had to get in my car and drive only one hour south this time.
I’d spoken before the California State Athletic Commission at its public meetings in the months prior as it locked down its own set of regulations to oversee the sport in the Golden State. I defended the Unified Rules already widely utilized stateside, much to the chagrin of Pride Fighting Championships’ executives from Japan, who were also in attendance to try to get some of their own rules recognized in the key state.
I never had a problem with Pride or their rules, but it had taken California five years to finally approve MMA’s legalization with a four-to-one vote. Pride’s requests would hold up the regulation process for another six months to a year. To me, that was crap. I figured they should let the legalization go through entirely, then attempt to put in an addendum that allowed for what they were asking. I have heard some people say that I fought to keep Pride out of the United States, but that’s not true. I was just fighting to get MMA going here as fast as possible.
Ironically, UFC 59 marked the first UFC when I wasn’t assigned to the main event fight. This wasn’t a really big deal for me, but it upset Elaine because she knew why the commission had decided not to assign me.
About a month prior, I’d been offered the main event bout in a Strikeforce show, which would be the first regulated MMA event in the state. The commission was kind about it. Executive Officer Armando Garcia said I’d earned the honor of officiating the fight for all I’d done in the sport.
However, I felt I needed to turn down the assignment.
I had a personal issue with the fight because it paired former UFC champion Frank Shamrock against Cesar Gracie, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who’d never entered an MMA fight in his life. I told the commission if this were a boxing match, they never would have approved it. The commission and Gracie went to great lengths to prove Gracie had a record of fourteen wins and zero losses back in Brazil. However, I knew he was just a grappler, a good grappler, but not a person who’d been under the pressure of performing in an MMA match in front of thousands of people the way Shamrock had. When a grappler who’s never been hit in a real fight gets struck in the face and he’s not used to it, things can go bad for him quickly.
The proof was in the pudding. Shamrock needed one punch to crumble Gracie for a twenty-second finish. I’m glad it didn’t go longer, because I didn’t want to see Gracie get seriously hurt.
But since I didn’t support the fight that the CSAC’s executive officer had approved, I sat out a UFC main event for the first time.
Honestly, I preferred the bouts I was assigned to at UFC 59 because they were evenly matched. Tito Ortiz and Forrest Griffin went to a split decision. It was also great to have my family with me for part of fight week. My dad and children