Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [136]
The other big name White was waiting to unleash was Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, the Croatian knockout artist who had defected from Pride just as the foreign promotion stumbled in Japan because of a magazine article linking it to the Yakuza mob. Filipovic went for the bigger payday the UFC was now able to offer, and his first opponent would be the lesser skilled brawler Eddie Sanchez.
NSAC Executive Director Keith Kizer told me I’d originally been scheduled to referee this fight but had been removed because of comments I’d made about the match to other NSAC officials on the set of The Ultimate Fighter weeks before. I’d said it wasn’t a matter of who’d win but of which row Cro Cop’s lethal left high kick would launch Sanchez’s head into. It may not have been the right thing to say, but to me there was little doubt that Sanchez was being sent in for nothing more than to fill Cro Cop’s highlight reel.
I don’t blame Kizer for taking me off of the fight. In fact, I thank him for it. I got to referee two more evenly matched bouts, including a rematch between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and kickboxer Marvin Eastman.
In 2000, I’d watched their first fight at a King of the Cage show at the Soboba Casino in Southern California. The fight was a war. Jackson absorbed three hard head kicks from Eastman and kept coming forward. I was amazed by his chin as much as anything. Afterward, I told Jackson, a wrestler with a penchant for stand-up brawls, he had a great future if he kept working hard.
The rematch at UFC 67 was a well-paced affair. Eastman, a Las Vegas prison guard by day, would fight anyone, anywhere, anytime and was stopped only after Jackson nailed him with a knee and follow-up punches. Jackson’s win set him up nicely for a rematch with UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell.
Now that the Las Vegas shows were drawing healthy attendance numbers with some consistency, it was time again to take the show on the road. UFC 68 “The Uprising” on March 3, 2007, was scheduled to coincide with the Arnold Sports Festival weekend at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio.
The Arnold Sports Festival is an annual fitness and bodybuilding expo started by Arnold Schwarzenegger that hosts many kinds of competition, from Arnold Classic bodybuilding to table tennis to archery. The festival also attracts over 175,000 sports fans, who can meander through aisles of sports-related product booths and meet their favorite athletes. It was a great opportunity for MMA to get exposure alongside some other popular niche sports.
The Arnolds takes place during the first week of March every year. In 2007 that week, a monster snowstorm was gripping the Midwest, which would make travel to Columbus a challenge for most of us.
The only recurring dream I’ve ever had about the UFC is one in which I’m frantically trying to get to a show and miss it, disappointing the promotion and the people who depend on me to be there. I’ve never been able to let myself be late to an appointment or event because, to me, that would be disrespecting the people I’m working with. I just have to get there, and that’s that. Not being able to is my nightmare, and UFC 68 would be the show where it came to life in excruciating detail.
It started in Las Vegas three nights before UFC 68. I got on a plane with Elaine to Minneapolis and then on to Moline, Iowa. At the time, Elaine had opened her own interior design business and agreed to help manager Monte Cox furnish and decorate his new house in Bettendorf, Iowa. From Moline, we’d fly into Columbus