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UFC 10 happened six months later on July 12, 1996, at the Fair Park Arena in Birmingham, Alabama. It was christened “The Tournament” because SEG had abandoned the elimination format at UFC 9 for single bouts but brought the tournament style back by popular demand.

UFC 10 introduced Mark Coleman, who’d placed seventh in freestyle wrestling at the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. Coleman was a standout from the moment he stepped onto the UFC canvas. He had the strength of a monster and could take anyone down, but nobody could do the same to him.

Determined and disciplined by years on the amateur wrestling circuit, Coleman met karate expert Moti Horenstein in a quarterfinal match, took him to the ground, and fed him a heavy serving of punches until I stopped it at two minutes, forty-three seconds.

Horenstein had been a favorite of Meyrowitz’s wife, Ellen, because she thought he was so good-looking. He probably wasn’t so much once Coleman got finished with him.

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Coleman took out Gary Goodridge in the semis en route to the finals to face Don Frye, the durable wrestler who’d won the UFC 8 tournament back in Puerto Rico. In their quarterfinal bout earlier that evening Frye, who was not a pushover, had pulverized Mark Hall’s body like a side of beef till it was purple, and then in the semifinals he’d beaten an ever-improving Brian Johnston.

Frye-Coleman was one of the first bouts when I could clearly see that the fighters’ skill levels were starting to improve. It was a war. Coleman dominated the bout with his wrestling ability, but Frye, puffy-eyed and staggering at times from exhaustion, was the epitome of toughness.

After nearly twelve minutes of scrapping that culminated with Coleman hammering down punches into Frye’s guard, I intervened. Frye was bleeding, and his right eye was swollen shut. I knew he couldn’t see. Coleman’s family and friends, including his soon-to-be wife, Kelly, flooded the cage and flanked him.

Coleman would have so much success taking his opponents down and punching them into submission, as he had with Frye, that he’d become known as the godfather of ground-and-pound, the term given to his technique. It’s a popular strategy still used today, especially by the wrestlers.

UFC 10 was one of those shows I walked away from and felt it had delivered. It was also the start of a period when wrestling took center stage in the UFC.

That December, SEG hosted its second Ultimate Ultimate event, inviting back the cream of the crop from that year, including its champions and runners-up. We returned to the Fair Park Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, the site of UFC 10.

Tank Abbott fought Cal Worsham in a quarterfinal bout, where Worsham tapped out to his punches on the ground. Worsham became incensed that Abbott had gotten in an extra lick after I’d stepped in to stop it, and I had to physically restrain him against the cage, grabbing the chain link on either side of him. As Worsham pleaded that I disqualify Abbott, I kept telling him to knock it off, giving Worsham the few extra seconds he needed to come back down to Earth. When Worsham’s adrenaline dump subsided, I walked to Abbott, told him what he’d done was bullshit, and raised his hand in victory.

The show’s other highlights included Tank Abbott’s ruthless knockout of Steve Nelmark, who bent backward on the cage like a crash test dummy, and Don Frye’s come-from-behind gut-check victory over Abbott in the finals.

Unfortunately, this night was the second time I felt I was refereeing a fixed bout. In the semifinals, Don Frye and Mark Hall met in a rematch of their UFC 10 bout. In their first encounter Frye had beaten the piss out of Hall, who’d refused to give up. Here, though, Frye ankle-locked Hall to advance to the finals without breaking a sweat.

The fight struck me as odd. Frye, a bread-and-butter wrestler and swing-for-the-fences puncher, had never won a fight by leg lock, and Hall practically fell into the submission. I also knew both fighters were