Issue 173

December 2018

UFC’s long-serving referee remembers the sport’s early days and his part in helping it gain acceptance.

You are an iconic figure in the history of the sport and the UFC specifically. Who else do you see as icons in MMA?

Do you know what icon means? Old. Icons are guys that changed the sport. Royce, I would look at as an icon. He helped make the sport. He changed people’s minds about fighting at a time when they thought things were going to be a certain way and he made them look at it a different way. The Randy Coutures and Chuck Liddells, they changed the sport. Georges St. Pierre, he changed the sport.

You are the most accomplished, most tenured referee in the history of the sport. How do you feel about carrying that mantle or having that title?

People give labels. This whole world is about labels. I hate labels, I really do. They don’t mean anything. Do you love what you do? That’s what allowed me to be a referee for so long. I love this sport. I love the people involved in it, most of them. I am lucky. There is no doubt about it. I do want people to know I work at it. Things don’t just happen. I don’t care who you are. Things didn’t just happen for Conor McGregor. He has worked his ass off to get to the place where he is today. He has worked his ass off in the gym. He has worked his ass off in other ways outside of the gym to get people’s attention. He is working all the time. That is how you make steps forward.

With refereeing, there are a lot of people that would say they wanted to do what I did.

Well, it doesn’t just happen. Work at it. Go to the gym and start learning everything that these guys do. If you don’t know it, you are going to be slow and you are going to make a mistake.

With your twenty-plus years at the top of the sport, you not only have shown a path for current and future referees but you blazed the trail and been a great resource and mentor to many. How important is it to have a relationship with other officials in the sport?

It’s funny. Everyone gets perceptions. It’s one of the things I learned early on in the sport. We had opposition against it. I started listening to what these people were saying. I had to go to Senate hearings and court and talk to people and I quickly realized, By God, these people actually believed what they were saying! It was worse than I thought. They had a perception of it and unfortunately guys have big egos, we all think we can fight, but you have no clue. You can’t sit there and tell this person that they have no clue, that they are stupid. You have to break down things for them and get past their perception without insulting them. You have to break down barriers. People in our sport think they understand it. The fans think they understand it. They think they know all the rules and sometimes they do but sometimes they are so far off of what is the reality of the situation. We have so many rules that people are confused by.

Back when we did the Unified Rules I was the dummy that was sitting in that room. We had a doctor that didn’t want someone to get hit to the back of the head because he had watched a fight where a fighter was using that technique and then we had another doctor who opposed the elbow being used because he had a friend who was a martial artist who said he could break blocks of ice with that move. The first thing they said were no elbows. Stop. I had to get to the point of explaining that elbows were legal in Muay Thai, in the same States, all over the country, so why would we allow them in that sport but not MMA? OK, then they didn’t want the one specific elbow to the back of the head, straight up and straight down. So, I narrowed it down for them and came out that we couldn’t do a 12 to 6 because it was simple, 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock. I had certain people in the room look at me and actually ask, ‘What if the clock is on the ceiling?’ What are you doing? When have you ever seen a clock on the ceiling? That’s what we have. Because the sport is run by so many different entities-promotions, athletic commissions, we don’t have the same thing as the NFL or Major League Baseball where all that information comes from one source. It got altered and diminished in ways that caused problems because we did have officials that were doing it wrong. If you look at the top guys out there that are doing the job, we are all friends. I just had dinner with Herb Dean. I do things to try to make him better. He does things to try to make me better. The only person you are in competition with is yourself.

Has trying to change perceptions over the years been the greatest hurdle for you during your time in the sport?

I started coming up with rule changes after the very first UFC I did at UFC 2. I said I would never do that again. I went to Rorion Gracie and told him that he was going to get someone seriously hurt. I worked for the LAPD at the time. I had seen somebody get stomped to death. If you are the person that is seeing what can happen to a human’s skull when a 200-pound human being jumps up and down on it, it’s not a pretty picture. At the time at UFC 2 I wasn’t supposed to stop anything. I couldn’t stop the fight. The only time I could stop the fight was if the fighter tapped out or if the corner threw in the towel. Before the fights I thought this was going to be easy. I quickly learned. If you go back and watch the old fights, it’s so bad, you will see me pointing and telling the corner to watch their fighter. I had given them cues that if their guy got in trouble, this was what I was going to do. I was going to tell them to throw the towel in. They would look at me, shake their head, turn around and throw the towel into the audience. I said nasty words to them. It wasn’t a good situation.

Afterwards, I said I would never do that again. I told Rorion that the show was going to get shut down. You cannot have somebody standing in that ring that is not doing something to protect somebody who can’t protect themselves. You have to put trust in the referee. The reason I got the job was because of what happened at the first UFC. The very first fight that happened between Gerard Gordeau and Teila Tuli is the fight that got me the job of being a referee. You can see when Tuli hits the ground, he is a sumo guy, he hits the ground and in sumo when you hit the ground, you lose. Tuli lets up at that moment. He turns and Gerard punts him in the face and hits him with the right hand. Barreto comes in and stops it. He’s not supposed to stop it. He is supposed let it go until the corner throws in the towel or the fighter taps out. You can see this conversation going on. Barreto was telling Rorion this guy can’t fight. Because he had compassion for another human being he lost his job and I got his job. I quickly realized that he was right. You can’t expect the corner to do the right

thing. If a fighter cannot intelligently defend himself I am going to stop the fight. He said ‘OK.’ That was the first rule I put in place. If you watch UFC 3, if a guy would get hurt I would stop the fight. Things happened in every show to further improve the rules. After UFC 14, I put in 18 rule changes. I came up with this list because we were in trouble with the cable industry and politicians. That’s when I said no head-butting, no hair-grabbing, I put in stupid stuff. I wanted to put in this long list without really affecting the sport too much.

So what was the actual conversation like between you and Rorion leading up to you taking the job at UFC 2?

I was at UFC 1. My wife was working it, I was there basically as a bodyguard for Rorion. He was suing every family member there was. It was not good. I was mainly there to be there for Rorion but I was also there to train with Royce because I was one of Royce’s sparring partners.

After the event Rorion came to me and said he needed a favor. He needed me to be a referee. I didn’t know how to be a referee. I was honest about it. He said I would be great. I swear to God his line was, ‘And you don’t mind seeing people get hurt.’ At the time I thought he might be right but I realized quickly I do mind seeing people get hurt.

You are known around the world as ‘Big John’. How did that nickname become the one that stuck?

The Gracie Studio was on Carson and there was a little street out the back door where there was a strip of offices. The WOW Promotions office was there. I would go over there and find out who Art [Davie] had that he was going to put in the next show. Art had a very quick mouth. He had a quick wit and he was a smart ass. He said something to me and I grabbed him and picked him up and I put him in the air and I had ahold of him, close to his leg, let’s say. He’s screaming ‘Big John put me down!’ I put him down I was joking with him. He kept saying ‘Big John’. Because Art started saying it, Bruce Beck started saying it on TV. Once it was said on TV, it was over. That’s how it stuck. I am trying to get smaller now. I’m trying to get down into the regular sizes.

After the lights went out and the cage was ripped down for the night what was the most memorable thing you remember from the early days of the UFC?

Before the show you had all the fighters in the back, kicking pads and screaming. Pat Smith had a ton of people there telling him he was the best. But none of them understood what they were getting into, expect for Royce. Royce understood it because he had watched his family. He watched Rickson and he was comfortable with it. None of the other guys understood. They didn’t think it was going to happen. All of that noise was in the back and the first fight happens and then I return to the back and it’s dead silent. Dead silent. There was no pad kicking. You looked at those guys and, oh, they were scared. Reality hits and they realize they had to go out in front of all those people and do it.

The Masquerade Ball was the after party but it was the day after the event. They had everyone stick around. The thing I remember from that was Kevin Rosier challenging everyone to a pizzaeating contest. He was going around telling everyone he could eat four large pizzas. He would have won!