Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [151]
Corey Schafer, who heads up an MMA and kickboxing sanctioning body called the ISKA, is another one of those guys who’s smarter than me. Corey showed me that just because someone says something about you doesn’t mean you have to react immediately. He taught me to be smart and look at what I’d done that could have brought about this response, analyze it, and then figure out how to make it right for everyone. I have to admit I’m still working on it, but I hope to someday live up to Corey’s example.
It’s taken me a long time to be able to say this, but I now take full responsibility for what happened between me and Zuffa.
Being an analyst for TFN wasn’t easy for me. After every questionable referee stoppage or judges’ decision, my phone would ring off the hook with reporters looking for comments. As a referee, I’d tried not to speak judgmentally about my colleagues. But I wasn’t a referee anymore. I was hired and paid to give my opinions and impressions and was expected to do my job. Doing this without upsetting some people proved difficult.
I also figured that if I spoke truthfully, maybe it would improve things. But when I suggested that some officials were being assigned to MMA events they were vastly under-qualified for, it alienated me with a few athletic commissions.
My time away from refereeing was probably one of the harder periods of my life. I’d cut something out that I’d really enjoyed and taken pride in. I would sit at home and watch events and get angry when a referee would get a call wrong or not remember a rule correctly.
In the fall of 2009, I started to think about returning to refereeing. Then I began to talk to Elaine about it. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to return, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was where I truly belonged.
The Fight Network made it a much easier decision for me in the end. The channel went through a drastic change in leadership, and its cash flow issues only mounted. My paychecks were delayed, then stopped coming altogether. In October of 2009, I resigned from the company.
I owe a debt of gratitude to the California State Athletic Commission for taking me back into the fold as quickly as they did. My return engagement to the cage came at Strikeforce “Destruction” on November 21, 2008, at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.
I don’t mean to sound cliché, but it felt like I’d never left. The other referees, judges, and backstage officials all welcomed me back with enthusiasm as I went about my regular routine that night before the fights started. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to have me around again, which was a good feeling.
Strikeforce was a Bay Area promotion that used a lot of local talent, so I didn’t know every fighter. In the locker rooms, I took a knee to go over the rules with each fighter stretching and warming up on the mat. I tried to make them feel at ease, as I’d always done. If a fighter was nervous and made a joke, I’d come right back with humor. If he seemed a little in awe of the situation, I talked to him until I felt he’d absorbed the instructions.
Then I walked out into the arena and did my job. It wasn’t different from the hundreds of nights I’d refereed before, except for one thing: after one of the bouts, as I went to raise the fighter’s hand, he turned and gave me a big hug. It was totally unexpected. I felt better already.
The welcome back I got in California wasn’t felt everywhere. It became clear over the next few months that the UFC preferred I not referee at their events. When Zuffa took the show abroad and could bring along any officials it wanted, the UFC didn’t call me, which was really no surprise.
There wasn’t much I could do but be grateful for the assignments I did get and perform them as well as I could. Slowly but surely, I began to get calls from a number of jurisdictions new to the game. I found myself traveling to the Midwest,