Issue 049

May 2009

The mixed martial ats community has lost an important member with the passing of Charles Lewis, better known as Mask of Tapout. The controversial entrepreneur had been a fixture in the MMA world since the late 1990s. Famous for his camouflage face paint and boisterous personality, Mask was involved in a fatal car crash in Newport Beach, California, in the early hours of 11th March, 2009. He was 45 years old.  

Along with his close friend Dan Caldwell, Lewis founded the company based on a love for the sport that was born watching the first UFC. “It was the craziest, awesomest sport I had ever seen,” he said in an interview with UFC.com last year.  

In an interview shortly before his death, Lewis gave an insight into the people behind the uncompromising brand. “The sport needed someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up and take the flak. We believed in it back when nobody was paying any attention. How did you know Tapout was going to take off? All we did was believe. You choose to believe, believe in your vision. You say, I’ve got this thing inside, I can believe it and I can see it, and I’m just going to go with it.”  

Lewis used this drive and energy to build the company from nothing. He went from selling T-shirts at underground events in the late ‘90s to flying around the globe promoting his increasingly successful empire. This was in stark contrast to his humble background. “I was living out of a car, and I’d go to Barnes and Nobles and read all these books, self-help books or these dream books, like Michael Jordan, and all these guys had a dream. I’d go, ‘one day the world’s gonna know my dream’.”  

With thousands of fans around the world mourning the loss of this pioneer, and tributes flooding in, Lewis has left a legacy that will surely be carried on by his close friends and colleagues. Speaking shortly before his death, he had this to say about how he saw his impact on the sport.  

“We’re an extension of MMA, we support the sport, we support the fighters and we’re just an extension of that. I would hope somebody would say we encourage people. All this we’ve done right now, every morning I wake up I keep pushing it. That’s great. That’s Tapout.”