Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [21]
“What’s your fucking problem?” one of them asked.
Now, I was about 265 pounds at the time. One of the guys was about my size. The other moron was about 190, not a small guy.
“I don’t have a problem,” I said, but there are only so many times I will tell somebody to move. I finally gave them the ultimatum: “Either you leave or I’m calling the cops.” I went behind the counter and got on the phone with the police dispatcher, but these guys kept mouthing off.
Then one of them did the unthinkable. He spit on me.
There are certain things I can’t accept, and being spit on is one of them. I stopped long enough to think, I’m going to spend the rest of my life buckling bratty kids and their parents into miniature race cars, and a split second later my hand was putting down the phone and my body was vaulting over the counter in one succinct motion.
I hit the big guy first, which left the smaller guy on his own. Divide and conquer at its best. The big guy went reeling across the room, slamming into a magazine rack, which sent periodicals flying everywhere. He landed on an arcade game, shattering the screen.
I grabbed the other guy next and leveled him before doing what I’d done for so many years. I started stomping and pounding the piss out of him. He was out, but I just didn’t care.
By the time I was done, my customers were a heap of blood and bruises on the floor and the police were on their way. I grabbed both guys by their shirts and dragged them toward the door.
Elaine, who’d watched the whole thing play out, was in shock. “Why are they bleeding so badly when you didn’t hit them hard?” she said. “Your punches didn’t make that much noise.”
Little did my young, naive wife know she would later watch fight after bloody fight when we’d both get involved with the UFC.
A few minutes later, justice’s black-and-white sedan pulled into the parking lot. I told the officers what had transpired, trying to keep my cool as sweat dripped down my forehead.
When a man walked toward us and said he’d witnessed the entire thing, I almost lost it. He was an off-duty Orange County sheriff out with his kids. After explaining everything, he turned to me. “Son,” he said, “that was the bitchinest thing I’ve ever seen.” Then he walked away.
Without another word, the officers jotted something in their notepads, handcuffed the men, escorted them to the car, and drove off.
As soon as I was alone, I called Mike Hillman and forced the words out. “I’m in trouble.”
Mike told me not to say a word to anybody. He would call the police department and make sure nothing came of it.
Elaine and I didn’t sleep a wink that night as we waited for my lifelong career at the Malibu Grand Prix to be green-lit come morning. But the only call that came was from the LAPD. My delinquent butt was expected to report to the academy in a month.
The only sunny day of our honeymoon in Hawaii until the last
THE BADGE
Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Even at twenty-two years old, I knew I never wanted to spend my life behind a desk. I wasn’t built that way physically or mentally, and I knew from watching my dad that police work would present a fresh challenge each new day. I never imagined some of my greatest challenges would come from inside me.
I thought there was nobility in the act of protecting people who couldn’t protect themselves. In my mind, there were three kinds of people in the world—wolves, sheep, and a sheepdog that protected them—and the police officer was the last kind. I wasn’t altogether right or wrong on the matter, but I learned later that there were some things I could change and other things I would never be able to. That was something I had to learn to live with over time.
Honestly, though, one of the immediate allures of crime fighting for me was a steady paycheck