Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [54]
Everything else was legal. Groin strikes, which had been banned in the first event, would be admitted at UFC 2. A few of the applicants claimed they were a vital part of their disciplines and if they were allowed to execute them, they would perform better. Most of the fighters were wearing steel cups anyway, so Rorion said, “Why not?”
Rorion had an easier time scouting for the second event, I think because he now had something to show prospective fighters. Word spread through the martial arts community, and they came to Rorion like moths to a flame. Martial artists couldn’t resist the opportunity to prove their discipline was the be all and end all.
With more fighters to choose from, Rorion decided to expand UFC 2 to a sixteen-man tournament, a dream he hadn’t been able to realize with the first event. In keeping with the Brazilian marathon fighting tradition, Rorion also decided to get rid of those pesky rounds.
One of the common misconceptions of the early UFCs was that time limits and rounds weren’t instituted until later. UFC 1 was actually scheduled for unlimited five-minute rounds separated by one-minute rest periods until a winner was determined. But because no fight had gone past the five-minute mark at UFC 1, Rorion and SEG didn’t see the point of having rounds at all. It was decided that time limits wouldn’t be necessary for UFC 2. The fights would go on for one endless round until one man tapped out or his corner threw in the towel, no exceptions.
Again there would be no weight limits, but all the sumo wrestlers must have been fond of their teeth because UFC 2 had no one to follow in Tuli’s footsteps. The largest fighter weighed 275 pounds, and the lightest was 20 pounds below Royce’s 176.
With the lineup set, Rorion moved on to the next details.
Though UFC 1’s pay-per-view numbers were promising, the live event itself had failed to muster up enough of a paying audience to justify using Denver’s McNichols Sports Arena again. On top of that, in the first of many political interventions to come, the mayor had said he didn’t want UFC 2 there. So we packed up the circus and moved about seven miles down the road to the 2,000-seat Mammoth Events Center.
As a Los Angeles police officer, I was required to apply for a work permit to referee the event because I was going to get paid. On the form I wrote that I would be officiating a martial arts event. When my superiors asked me what kind, I told them, “It’s mixed martial arts. It involves jiu-jitsu, karate, tae kwon do, wrestling, boxing . . .” I doubt they understood it was a combination of all those arts in one fight, and I wasn’t about to overcomplicate things.
Satisfied with my answer, they finally signed off on it.
About a week before the show, I flew out to Denver with Elaine, who’d been asked back to help Kathy Kidd set up. In my new role as referee, I didn’t seem to have much to do, so I hung around the production office with Elaine and worked out at one of the local gyms commandeered for the fighters. I had a few officer friends with me, too, who Rorion had flown in as extra security to work the event night.
A day before the show, we had our second rules meeting. The fighters sat anxiously at long tables set up classroom style as the matchups were selected randomly with the numbered balls pulled out of the bingo machine. Art Davie introduced me to the room as “Big” John McCarthy and asked me to come to the podium to go over the rules, or really the lack of them.
This was the first time I’d been called “Big” John in front of the fighters. My mother had called me “Big” John all the time when I was younger, but it was Art who reintroduced it a few weeks earlier at the WOW offices in Los Angeles.
The WOW offices were out the