Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [56]
Davie loved the idea.
UFC 2 “No Way Out” was held on March 11, 1994, at the misleadingly named Mammoth Events Center, which had been incarnated as everything from a sports venue to a textile warehouse to an open food market. Compared to the McNichols Sports Arena, the place was like someone’s armpit. It was old, outdated, and in a seedy part of town.
The arena didn’t even have dressing rooms for the fighters to wait in before their bouts, so WOW and SEG rented a few rooms next door in a broken-down hotel full of prostitutes and drug addicts. The fighters pushed the beds against the walls to make space to warm up, and as the night wore on, they were ferried back and forth through the rat-infested alleyway between the two buildings.
Royce found that being Rorion’s brother had its advantages. He was the only fighter given accommodations at the venue in an area behind some curtains.
This night there were sixteen participants and two alternates. There would be a whopping fifteen fights—nearly double the eight quick bouts that had transpired at UFC 1—and Rorion decided I would referee all of them. Only the last eight fights would be televised, and Royce’s first-round bout would kick off the pay-per-view.
I don’t know if there was a momentous realization when I first stepped into the cage, which was officially dubbed the Octagon at the beginning of the UFC 2 telecast. I wore baggy, black Otomix weightlifting pants and a UFC T-shirt with the ironic words “There are no rules” across the chest. Standing there in the cage, I was nervous, I admit. I had no idea what I was doing. I just thought, Holy Christ, don’t let me screw this up.
The first fight matched eighteen-year-old karate expert Sean Daugherty against Scott Morris, an American ninjutsu black belt at least ten years Daugherty’s senior. Morris, a student of Robert Bussey’s Warrior International program, was escorted to the Octagon by an army of teammates in matching button-down shirts, ties, and red-and-black letterman jackets. One of these dapper guys was Matt Andersen, half brother to future fighting great Jeremy Horn. Andersen himself would fight at UFC 9.
Once the fighters and their corners had settled at opposite ends of the cage, I walked to the center and motioned to each fighter one last time to make sure they were on board. “Are you ready? Are you ready?” I pointed to each fighter. My first “Let’s get it on” was a far cry from its later glory. It was more like I was casually telling the guys I was going down to the store to pick up some milk. At least I accentuated it by raising my arm and throwing the imaginary gauntlet down in front of me.
As soon as the fighters engaged, I got out of the way fast.
Daugherty came out and threw a really fancy front hook kick, but Morris grabbed ahold of Daugherty’s neck in their clinch and flipped him over his head in a backward roll before climbing on top into mount.
That’s good, I thought.
Morris then cranked on Daugherty’s neck, and I’m sure the karate kid had felt nothing like this in the dojos. He tapped the mat fast and hard, and I rushed in to separate them. Twenty seconds had elapsed.
That’s it? I thought. This is going to be easy.
Before Morris could walk away, I grabbed his arm and raised it to signal that he was the winner and would advance. The two fighters left the cage, and the next pinball was in the chute ready to be launched on the first fight’s heels.
Patrick Smith, a Sabaki Challenge champion kickboxer, was a returning fighter from UFC 1. I’d also seen his opponent, Ray Wizard, at a karate tournament in Los Angeles. Wizard was fast. I quickly realized fighter recognition would be important for me because it gave me at least a faint idea of what the dynamic of the bout might be.
I checked both fighters’ fingernails and toenails to make sure they’d been cut down and then walked to center cage and repeated the starting words.
Smith flailed his arms above his head in some mock traditional stance, but what he really