Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [63]
During the show, McLaren uttered one of the stupidest but most famous lines: “You can win by tapout, knockout, or even death.” That sure perked up a lot of ears. Little did anyone know that this controversial sound bite would launch the UFC down a path riddled with political land mines in the near future.
But first there was profit to be made.
With a moneymaker on its hands, WOW and SEG began preparations for UFC 3, and Royce was sent back into training. It didn’t go smoothly for him.
Jiu-jitsu may not be as well-known as basketball or baseball, but it’s just as exerting as any other sport out there. Anyone who’s tried it knows the strains it places on the body while you stretch and bend into different positions.
A few months before the show, Royce hurt his neck badly and stopped training for a good chunk of time. He rested and got back on the mat as fast as he could, but with a few weeks to go, we all wondered if enough time had passed for his body to completely heal.
The show went on, and two nights before UFC 3, in Charlotte, North Carolina—another state with no athletic commission to speak of—I found myself with Royce, Rorion, and their older cousin Carlson Gracie Sr., an accomplished jiu-jitsu black belt and former vale tudo fighter in his own right. The beds in the hotel room had been pushed against the walls, and Royce and I were rolling all over the carpet as Rorion and Carlson gave Royce some last-minute fine-tuning.
Carlson wasn’t pleased with the way Rorion had hoarded the Gracie name in the States, so Rorion would show Royce his way of doing a move, and Carlson, who ran an academy in Chicago, would demonstrate his own version. The two cousins went toe-to-toe here to gain the upper hand while instructing Royce.
While Rorion and Carlson tried to tell Royce what to do, I was stuck in the middle of it as Royce’s grappling dummy. It was a mess.
Things were about to get messier for me.
The next night, Elaine and I had dinner with Guy Mezger and Oleg Taktarov, two fighters being considered for future events. I ordered swordfish, not knowing I was allergic.
That night, I woke up and felt like I was having an asthma attack. I sat up, sucked in some Primatene Mist, and then sat in a chair, but I couldn’t get the feeling to go away.
After two hours, I finally had to wake Elaine.
When she saw the veins popping out of my face, neck, and chest as I strained to get air, she said, “I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No, don’t do that,” I said, gasping.
Elaine knew Royce’s fiancée, Marianne, was some kind of a doctor, so she wanted to go find her. I didn’t have the breath or energy to tell her Marianne was a foot doctor.
When Marianne arrived and didn’t know what was wrong with me, she called the paramedics. I was rushed to the local hospital as my body started shutting down. It was now the morning of the event, and I was stuck in an emergency room.
About four hours later, hopped up on some allergy medication and ephedrine, I was released. I was buzzing, and it was awesome. I’d never taken drugs like this, and whatever they’d given me kept me up like a wired rock star. I wouldn’t sleep for two days, which wasn’t an issue—there were fights to get to.
The Grady Cole Center, site of UFC 3 “The American Dream” was supposed to seat 3,500 people, but that didn’t stop WOW and SEG from stuffing 1,500 extra fans into the stands and anywhere else they could fit them.
With North Carolina in its last days of summer, it had to be nearly 100 degrees inside the venue, and it was the humid kind of heat that makes everything stick to you. Under the scorching lights, it felt like 150 degrees. If there was a hell, this was it.
I don’t know how some of the fighters made it through the night. I know I was sweating profusely, and I wasn’t even exerting myself like they had to. “It was like trying to breathe in soup,” Royce would say afterward. I’d say it was more like chili.
Prior to the first fight, I went backstage to meet with