Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [90]
On the second night, SEG’s foreign business partners wanted to take us out on the town and spared no expense. With a restaurant on the top floor of a high-rise practically all to ourselves, we sat around a large grill while the chef cooked teppanyaki-style. The Kobe beef melted in my mouth. When asked if we wanted more, we all said yes without hesitation.
Afterward, we learned that Belfort’s second helping cost about $1,500, while Abbott and I had ordered smaller servings for the reasonable price of $750 each. Abbott also liked eating the fat, which was cut up and grilled until it was crisp, not exactly the fuel for a top-caliber athlete. I watched him scarf it down and thought, Aw, dude, that’s nasty.
After dinner, Belfort excused himself because he had a massage scheduled, but the rest of us went to a lounge. It was a strange setup. Professionally dressed women waited on us, then sat next to us to have conversations. They weren’t prostitutes, and nothing physical was going on. This was just the way the culture worked. I later got a peek at the bill, which Meyrowitz paid—$8,000 for a bunch of drinks.
The night wasn’t over, though. Around 1:30 a.m., we went to a karaoke bar. Since karaoke was obviously important to our new friends, Meyrowitz asked me and Abbott if we’d get up and sing as a sign of goodwill.
Abbott, who was pretty liquored up by then, picked some freaking metalhead song and started banging around the room screaming and going nuts. He got a lot of laughs.
I sang a song by The Rolling Stones. Mick himself would have fucking cringed.
The next morning, we told Belfort over breakfast what had happened, and he was kicking himself. He thought for sure he’d missed out on something with the businesswomen at the lounge and couldn’t quite grasp that it wasn’t like that at all.
During the entire trip, Belfort kept trying to convince Meyrowtiz to let him, instead of Randy Couture, fight Maurice Smith for the title next. Meyrowitz wouldn’t have any of it. It was quite funny to watch.
When we left Japan three days later, Abbott dumped out of his suitcase all the new “Tank” shirts he’d brought to give away and replaced them with towels and robes from the hotel. “Did you feel these things, John?” he said. “They’re the softest damn things I’ve ever felt.”
The first and last time I ever karaoked in my life: on a press tour with SEG Vice President David Isaacs and Tank Abbott in Japan
We all later returned to Yokohama, Japan, and began the week-long ritual leading up to the event. At the press conference, SEG asked me to sit at the dais in the middle between the fighters, which was something I normally wouldn’t do and made me feel stupid as hell. Compared to the press reaction in the United States, the UFC seemed to be a bit of a bigger deal here in Japan. Maurice Smith and Frank Shamrock, both with a wealth of experience fighting in Japan, knew what the crowd wanted, so they played up the charisma and trash-talking for the cameras and did a good job with it.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing in the Land of the Rising Sun, though. At about 2:30 a.m. on the day of the show, I got a call in my hotel room from Meyrowitz, who was downstairs in the lobby. “John, I need you. Come down to the lobby quick.”
Being a heavy sleeper, I said, “Okay,” hung up, thought I must be dreaming, rolled over, and fell asleep.
Five minutes later, the phone rang again.
“Where the hell are you?” Meyrowitz asked, with a little more desperation in his voice.
I hadn’t dreamt it after all.
In the lobby, Meyrowitz was standing with four Japanese men, three in suits and another in a sweat suit. I recognized the beefiest gentleman as Kazuo Takahashi, who’d fought at UFC 12 and regularly competed for the Pancrase organization. One of the other men was Mr. Ozaki, an organizer for Pancrase.