Issue 042

December 2008

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, or so the old cliché goes. This month we look at five abysmal debuts from which the people and promotions involved may or may not have recovered.

01 Johnnie Morton (2 June 2007)

At 35 years old, National Football League (NFL) veteran Johnnie Morton seemed an unlikely entrant into the field of fighting. Over a decade of running around a field dressed in garish body armour catching balls is hardly the best training for an MMA career. But being something of a sports celebrity in the US, he was perfect for K-1’s big debut at the cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Brutally KO’d in 38 seconds by Bernard Ackah, Morton was unconscious for over three minutes and left the ring on a stretcher. Things got worse when he refused to take a post-fight drug test,earning himself an indefinite license suspension from the not-to-be-messed-with California State Athletic Commission. They also withheld his entire purse of $100,000. Bizarrely, Morton had readily provided a pre-fight drug test. When examined it showed a T/E ratio of 83.9:1. A normal sample would be a maximum of 6:1. Somehow or other, Morton had managed to ingest an enormous dose of testosterone, such as might be found in the body of a very recent, very heavy, very careless steroid user. Don’t expect him back in the ring.

02 Karam Ibrahim Gaber (31 December 2004)

Egypt’s 2004 Greco-Roman Olympic gold medallist made a very lucrative and very high-profile MMA debut at one of K-1’s New Year’s Eve spectaculars. Fresh off a whole three weeks of boxing training, one of the world’s most accomplished and physically dominating wrestlers opted to stand and trade with iron-chinned veteran Kazuyuki Fujita. Shockingly, Ibrahim quickly hurt Fujita with a right hand but order was restored to the universe when Fujita half-punched, half-clubbed him unconscious just 67 seconds into the fight. Perhaps Ibrahim (a man who could potentially make a lot of money in MMA) will be less foolhardy and remember where his true talents lie if he ever enters the ring again.

03 Mike Tyson (18 March 2006)

Faced with such a hard, thankless task and the responsibility of ensuring two men’s safety, few would don a referee’s shirt lightly. ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson did. Paid some £70,000 to officiate a single match on the first (and last) World Cage Fighting Championships (WCFC) event, Tyson guaranteed the show plenty of hysterical overreaction and publicity from the easily excitable British media. Assuring everyone that Tyson had gone through some intensive study to prepare for his refereeing debut, the promotion neglected to mention he must have been asleep at the back of the class. Completely unfamiliar with the sport, Tyson left the unfortunate, furiously tapping Spaniard Diego Gonzalez (stranded in Terry Etim’s triangle choke) for so long an outside official actually called an end to the fight early in the first.

04 IFL Battleground (12 March 2007)

Announced with plenty of ballyhoo and high expectations, the IFL struck a deal for a weekly two-hour slot on Monday nights on a minor US network station. Sadly, the first episode of ‘Battleground’ on the barely watched MyNetworkTV was so atrocious that ratings plummeted for the second episode and the owners had to publicly apologise to fans, fighters, and coaches. Relentlessly hyping the dangers of the sport like it was 1993 all over again, they squashed in far too many utterly random fights, clumsily edited out as much matwork as possible to the point the whole thing looked like bad kickboxing, and neglecting such obvious things as on-screen graphics to identify the fighters. This was among the worst episodes of any television series in the entire history of, er, television.

05 UFC 33: Victory in Vegas (28 September 2001)

Proudly brandishing their copy of the new, unified rules of MMA, UFC owners Zuffa made what looked to be a huge leap forward when they announced UFC 33 would be available on pay per view to cable customers. Cable is king in the US and for several years UFC had been available only to the tiny minority of satellite-dish owners. Sadly, this fully sanctioned show was quite the pay-per-view disaster. Scheduling three title fights for the live, three-hour event was asking for trouble. All three went the full five rounds. And the show’s other two fights went the (three round) distance as well. Worse, all five fights were dull. Even worse, all those eager new cable customers never got to see the conclusion of the main event. With the show running long, their signal cut out in the fourth round of Tito Ortiz’ s thoroughly dominant title defence over Vladimir Matyushenko.