Feature31 December 2008
EIGHT MEN IN A CAGE
It's 15 years since the UFC's first ever show, when there were no rules, no gloves, just eight men in a cage
This month marks the fifteen anniversary of the first Ultimate Fighting Championship. Back on 12 November 1993, there was no mixed martial arts. A group of professional wrestlers in Japan had started Pancrase Hybrid Wrestling, which held shoot matches instead of works, but outside Japan it was virtually unheard of.
Rorion and Royce Gracie were struggling to attract students to their Jiu-Jitsu classes in Torrance, California. The debate raged in martial arts magazines about what style was the most effective, and there were endless articles discussing whether Wing Chun could beat Karate or how an Aikido master would fare against a boxer.
It was all utter crap, of course, but at the time full-contact martial arts meant either kickboxing, Muay Thai (largely ignored in the US) or knockdown Karate. Far more popular were point sparring competitions, where if you actually knocked your opponent out you were disqualified for lack of proper control rather than congratulated on your timing and power.
Mysticism pervaded the martial arts world - George Dillman taught seminars on pressure point fighting and declared that he could knock people out with just a touch. Frank Dux claimed to have won a secret fighting tournament in Jamaica that served as the inspiration for the Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Bloodsport.
Dux was talking out of his ass but, back then, nobody really had any idea at all what would happen if you took a group of martial artists from different styles and had them fight it out for real. Well, nobody outside Brazil anyway.
THE FAMILY BUSINESS
The origins of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu have taken on the status of myth, but the basic facts are fairly straightforward. In December 1915 Mitsuyo Maeda arrived in Brazil with a group of fellow Jiu-Jitsu practitioners. The Gracie legend casts Maeda as an ambassador of the Japanese government, although prior to arriving in Brazil he had already toured the US, England and Europe competing in challenge matches.
To use the parlance of the period, Maeda was a barnstormer - a guy who travelled the world wrestling for money. His nickname, Conde Koma (Count Combat) was adopted during his European tour. However, Jigaro Kano, the founder of Judo, had expelled him from his Kodokan dojo for breaking the rule that forbade anyone fighting for profit.
In Brazil Maeda taught Jiu-Jitsu to Carlos Gracie, the son of successful businessman Hestao Gracie. Carlos taught his brothers, including the small and frail-looking Helio who turned out to be the most technically gifted of the brood. Despite his diminutive build, Helio proved the potency of what became known as Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in a series of challenge matches against other martial artists and fighters from 1931 to 1957.
By the 1960s there was a television show in Brazil, Heroes Of The Ring, showing what one local newspaper had christened Vale Tudo (anything goes) fights. The Gracie clan kept fighting and more often than not winning with their ground-based grappling style, but it didn't fit the image of martial arts that had become fixed in the public mind by too many Kung-Fu movies. There were no fancy kicks and no lethal punches, just a lot of rolling around on the floor.
After Rorion moved to the United States in 1979 to spread Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, he found it a tough sell. Teaching out of his garage, he was widely ignored by the martial arts press. He appeared in the December 1987 issue of Inside Kung-Fu magazine and, where nowadays an interview with Rorion would warrant a cover story, the lead article was instead The Drunken Style: Is There A More Demanding Kung-Fu Form?'
Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is the best form of self defence in the world, declared Rorion, who had recently defeated full-contact Karate veteran Ralph Alegria in a challenge match, but the martial arts world was more interested in esoteric Kung-Fu styles that had never been tested in combat than ground fighting.
ADVENTURES IN ADVERTISING
It was an interview in Playboy that brought Rorion to the attention of Art Davie, an advertising executive originally from New York. After witnessing Royler Gracie tap out a Karate instructor in a challenge match Davie worked with Rorion to create and promote the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu In Action videotapes.
These tapes, available by mail order, were compilations of challenge matches and their success led to Rorion and Davie discussing the prospect of staging an event like the old Heroes Of The Ring shows. They formed a company, WOW Productions, and Davie wrote up a proposal for an event called War Of The Worlds. They met with film director John Milius, of Conan The Barbarian fame, who came on board as creative director and they began looking for an outlet.
The third key player in the birth of what became the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Bob Meyrowitz, knew nothing about fighting. He had worked in radio before moving into the fledgling pay-per-view industry with the Semaphore Entertainment Group. He was looking for something new for SEG and found it in Davie's proposal.
Movie set designer Jason Cusson eventually came up with design of the fenced Octagon to contain the combatants, after bizarre suggestions including a moat and an electrified fence had been ruled out. Looking at it now, the original Octagon looks almost homemade; there were no sponsors' logos and the padding on the posts looks like pipe insulation.
For a location, the promoters needed a state with no athletic commission and so settled on the high-altitude city of Denver, Colorado, a state with plenty of mountains and little else. Now they just needed people who could fight.
THE MILE HIGH CLUB
The ostensible premise of the Ultimate Fighting Championship was to decide the most effective martial art in a real fight (the answer was going to be Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, of course!). In theory, the event should have featured the best masters of their disciplines that the world had to offer. What the UFC instead got was a selection of flotsam and jetsam from the combat world.
They didn't even get the strongest member of the Gracie clan. That was widely considered to be Rickson, a magnificent physical specimen and accomplished technician. However, Rickson had fallen out of favour with Rorion following a dispute about money, so instead the duty of defending the family name fell to Royce, who ran the Torrance classes with Rorion.
At 6' 1 and 178 pounds, Royce was the lightest competitor in the eight-man tournament. He had no professional fights on his record, but had competed in Jiu-Jitsu and fought in challenge matches (notably against Jason DeLucia, who also participated in UFC 1 as an alternate).
The rest of the line-up wasn't so much a who's who of martial arts as a Who's that? Many of the participants had answered one of the ads placed in martial arts magazines asking Can you fight for real? Kevin Rosier was a retired kickboxer who spent just three weeks trying to get back into shape ahead of fight night. Kempo stylist Zane Frazier earned his spot by beating up Frank Dux, the Bloodsport guy, following a business dispute.
Art Davie even approached WCW about getting Tonga Fifita, better known as Meng, in the event as he had a fearsome reputation as a street fighter, but nothing came of it. Instead they turned to Ken Shamrock, who had worked on smaller wrestling shows in the US before joining Pancrase in Japan, where he'd won his first three matches prior to stepping into the Octagon.
Keen to boost the credentials of the show's participants, Shamrock suddenly became the number one shootfighter in Japan and the retired Rosier was a super-heavyweight kickboxing champion. Sumo wrestler Teila Tuli was far and away the heaviest fighter on the card, while kickboxer Patrick Smith brought the trash talk.
Holland's Gerard Gordeau had fought in Karate tournaments since the 1970s, including fighting in Japan in 1991. He won the Savate World Championships in 1992 and was originally slated to meet Royce Gracie in the first bracket. Gordeau later said that Davie switched the line-up to keep him away from Gracie after a group of Japanese photographers told Davie how good he was.
The final member of the elite eight was boxer Art Jimmerson from St Louis. It was Jimmerson who faced Royce in the opening round of the tournament, not the tall Dutchman.
AS REAL AS IT GETS
The commentary team at cage-side was intended to lend some credibility to the event. Bill Superfoot Wallace was a former full-contact Karate champion, but his lack of broadcast experience was clear from the get-go when he belched during his opening introduction and called the event the Ultimate Fighting Challenge. Kathy Long was another full-contact champion, although like Wallace she seemed shell-shocked when the fights started.
Jim Brown was an ex-NFL player, often considered the greatest professional athlete the US had ever produced. What he knew about combat sports was questionable; his credentials for the job seemed to be that he knew Joe Frazier. Really, Brown was there to add an air of legitimacy to proceedings. Finally there was Rod Machado, whose job title should have been Gracie Cheerleader'. From the moment he opened his mouth, Machado was singing the praises of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
The rules for the first UFC stipulated no eye gouging, no biting, no groin strikes and five rounds of five minutes duration each. Two referees were brought in from Brazil, although the officiating throughout the first show was awful. With the fighters backstage unsure whether they were really going to be allowed to go at it, Gerard Gordeau and Teila Tuli were the first to enter the octagonal octagon as Wallace described it.
Tuli wasn't wearing a mouthguard. He charged at Gordeau, went down off balance and Gordeau promptly kicked his teeth out. One landed in front of the representatives of Gold's Gym, who withdrew their sponsorship after the first event. Gordeau's follow-up punch broke his hand, but Tuli was all done.
Two of Tuli's teeth stayed embedded in Gordeau's foot; the medical staff at the show decided to leave them in and just bandage the wound. The opening match had lasted just 26 seconds but it sent a message to everyone backstage (including Shamrock, who still half-expected the whole show to be a work) and watching on PPV: this was for real.
The second match was a battle of strikers as Zane Frazier and Kevin Rosier slugged it out. It was an unedifying experience, complete with hair pulling and a knee in the groin. The match finally ended with Rosier clubbing Frazier to the floor with a series of blows to the back of the head, then stomping on him before Frazier's corner threw in the towel.
At 4:18 it was the longest fight of the night, but it left both winner and loser in rough shape. Frazier suffered respiratory failure and was rushed to hospital while Rosier's ribs were busted.
EASY MONEY
Finally Royce Gracie made his debut opposite Art Jimmerson. However, Jimmerson wasn't there to fight, but to collect a payday. The boxer's manager at the time was Phil Adams, who years later wrote to the Wrestling Observer about his fighter's participation in the inaugural UFC. He was a journeyman light heavyweight. We got him ranked #12 in the WBC by running up several consecutive victories against suspect opponents after he lost a couple nationally televised fights, wrote Adams.
We found out he would be fighting Royce Gracie, a Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. We had no idea what Jiu-Jitsu was, so I bought an instructional book about it. Looking at it, it didn't seem like Arthur had much of chance to win unless he got in a lucky punch. Since there were no gloves in the first UFC, Arthur didn't want to get his jab hand hurt, so he wore a boxing glove in the match on his left hand, gloveless on his right.
Our strategy was that this was basically a free $15,000, so if Arthur got taken down I would throw in the towel. Adams didn't have to bother. Gracie took Jimmerson down, passed to mount and without Royce so much as setting up a submission or landing a single punch, Jimmerson tapped out.
Ken Shamrock made similarly short work of Patrick Smith. The wrestler took Smith down and tapped him out with a heel hook. The crowd went berserk, chanting Bullshit! thinking the fight was a work, because in 1993 who the hell knew what a heel hook looked like? It didn't help that once the fight was over and Shamrock had released the painful submission, Smith wanted to go again.
In the first semi-finals, despite a busted hand and the teeth in his foot, Gordeau demolished Rosier in under a minute, using his elbow instead of his fist to batter the big American to the canvas. In what many expected to be the most competitive match, Ken Shamrock sprawled on Royce Gracie's takedown attempt but gave up top position to go for a leglock that he couldn't secure.
As Shamrock worked back to all fours, Gracie slipped his arm around his neck and choked him, forcing the tapout. The referee didn't notice and Ken could easily have chosen to deny the tap, but he admitted defeat. Despite his apparent good grace at the time, the defeat haunted him and he became obsessed with getting another shot at Royce.
THE FIRST ULTIMATE FIGHTER
That made the final pair Royce Gracie, who was unscathed and unmarked, and Gordeau, who was the walking wounded. Before they met, there was time for Rorion to make a special presentation to Helio Gracie, declaring the old man the first Ultimate Fighter as the Denver crowd looked on in utter contempt. Who was this old geezer in the cage? No way was that skinny old man a fighter.
Then it was time for the finals. Gracie rushed Gordeau to the fence, took him down and Gordeau, panicking, bit his ear. Gracie took Gordeau's back and sunk in a rear naked choke, releasing it only after Gordeau repeatedly tapped to pay him back for the bite. Fighting is not what we thought it was, declared Jim Brown displaying a hitherto unknown gift for understatement
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 34 of FSM - available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders and Barnes & Noble, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
This month marks the fifteen anniversary of the first Ultimate Fighting Championship. Back on 12 November 1993, there was no mixed martial arts. A group of professional wrestlers in Japan had started Pancrase Hybrid Wrestling, which held shoot matches instead of works, but outside Japan it was virtually unheard of.
Rorion and Royce Gracie were struggling to attract students to their Jiu-Jitsu classes in Torrance, California. The debate raged in martial arts magazines about what style was the most effective, and there were endless articles discussing whether Wing Chun could beat Karate or how an Aikido master would fare against a boxer.
It was all utter crap, of course, but at the time full-contact martial arts meant either kickboxing, Muay Thai (largely ignored in the US) or knockdown Karate. Far more popular were point sparring competitions, where if you actually knocked your opponent out you were disqualified for lack of proper control rather than congratulated on your timing and power.
Mysticism pervaded the martial arts world - George Dillman taught seminars on pressure point fighting and declared that he could knock people out with just a touch. Frank Dux claimed to have won a secret fighting tournament in Jamaica that served as the inspiration for the Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Bloodsport.
Dux was talking out of his ass but, back then, nobody really had any idea at all what would happen if you took a group of martial artists from different styles and had them fight it out for real. Well, nobody outside Brazil anyway.
THE FAMILY BUSINESS
The origins of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu have taken on the status of myth, but the basic facts are fairly straightforward. In December 1915 Mitsuyo Maeda arrived in Brazil with a group of fellow Jiu-Jitsu practitioners. The Gracie legend casts Maeda as an ambassador of the Japanese government, although prior to arriving in Brazil he had already toured the US, England and Europe competing in challenge matches.
To use the parlance of the period, Maeda was a barnstormer - a guy who travelled the world wrestling for money. His nickname, Conde Koma (Count Combat) was adopted during his European tour. However, Jigaro Kano, the founder of Judo, had expelled him from his Kodokan dojo for breaking the rule that forbade anyone fighting for profit.
In Brazil Maeda taught Jiu-Jitsu to Carlos Gracie, the son of successful businessman Hestao Gracie. Carlos taught his brothers, including the small and frail-looking Helio who turned out to be the most technically gifted of the brood. Despite his diminutive build, Helio proved the potency of what became known as Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in a series of challenge matches against other martial artists and fighters from 1931 to 1957.
By the 1960s there was a television show in Brazil, Heroes Of The Ring, showing what one local newspaper had christened Vale Tudo (anything goes) fights. The Gracie clan kept fighting and more often than not winning with their ground-based grappling style, but it didn't fit the image of martial arts that had become fixed in the public mind by too many Kung-Fu movies. There were no fancy kicks and no lethal punches, just a lot of rolling around on the floor.
After Rorion moved to the United States in 1979 to spread Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, he found it a tough sell. Teaching out of his garage, he was widely ignored by the martial arts press. He appeared in the December 1987 issue of Inside Kung-Fu magazine and, where nowadays an interview with Rorion would warrant a cover story, the lead article was instead The Drunken Style: Is There A More Demanding Kung-Fu Form?'
Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is the best form of self defence in the world, declared Rorion, who had recently defeated full-contact Karate veteran Ralph Alegria in a challenge match, but the martial arts world was more interested in esoteric Kung-Fu styles that had never been tested in combat than ground fighting.
ADVENTURES IN ADVERTISING
It was an interview in Playboy that brought Rorion to the attention of Art Davie, an advertising executive originally from New York. After witnessing Royler Gracie tap out a Karate instructor in a challenge match Davie worked with Rorion to create and promote the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu In Action videotapes.
These tapes, available by mail order, were compilations of challenge matches and their success led to Rorion and Davie discussing the prospect of staging an event like the old Heroes Of The Ring shows. They formed a company, WOW Productions, and Davie wrote up a proposal for an event called War Of The Worlds. They met with film director John Milius, of Conan The Barbarian fame, who came on board as creative director and they began looking for an outlet.
The third key player in the birth of what became the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Bob Meyrowitz, knew nothing about fighting. He had worked in radio before moving into the fledgling pay-per-view industry with the Semaphore Entertainment Group. He was looking for something new for SEG and found it in Davie's proposal.
Movie set designer Jason Cusson eventually came up with design of the fenced Octagon to contain the combatants, after bizarre suggestions including a moat and an electrified fence had been ruled out. Looking at it now, the original Octagon looks almost homemade; there were no sponsors' logos and the padding on the posts looks like pipe insulation.
For a location, the promoters needed a state with no athletic commission and so settled on the high-altitude city of Denver, Colorado, a state with plenty of mountains and little else. Now they just needed people who could fight.
THE MILE HIGH CLUB
The ostensible premise of the Ultimate Fighting Championship was to decide the most effective martial art in a real fight (the answer was going to be Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, of course!). In theory, the event should have featured the best masters of their disciplines that the world had to offer. What the UFC instead got was a selection of flotsam and jetsam from the combat world.
They didn't even get the strongest member of the Gracie clan. That was widely considered to be Rickson, a magnificent physical specimen and accomplished technician. However, Rickson had fallen out of favour with Rorion following a dispute about money, so instead the duty of defending the family name fell to Royce, who ran the Torrance classes with Rorion.
At 6' 1 and 178 pounds, Royce was the lightest competitor in the eight-man tournament. He had no professional fights on his record, but had competed in Jiu-Jitsu and fought in challenge matches (notably against Jason DeLucia, who also participated in UFC 1 as an alternate).
The rest of the line-up wasn't so much a who's who of martial arts as a Who's that? Many of the participants had answered one of the ads placed in martial arts magazines asking Can you fight for real? Kevin Rosier was a retired kickboxer who spent just three weeks trying to get back into shape ahead of fight night. Kempo stylist Zane Frazier earned his spot by beating up Frank Dux, the Bloodsport guy, following a business dispute.
Art Davie even approached WCW about getting Tonga Fifita, better known as Meng, in the event as he had a fearsome reputation as a street fighter, but nothing came of it. Instead they turned to Ken Shamrock, who had worked on smaller wrestling shows in the US before joining Pancrase in Japan, where he'd won his first three matches prior to stepping into the Octagon.
Keen to boost the credentials of the show's participants, Shamrock suddenly became the number one shootfighter in Japan and the retired Rosier was a super-heavyweight kickboxing champion. Sumo wrestler Teila Tuli was far and away the heaviest fighter on the card, while kickboxer Patrick Smith brought the trash talk.
Holland's Gerard Gordeau had fought in Karate tournaments since the 1970s, including fighting in Japan in 1991. He won the Savate World Championships in 1992 and was originally slated to meet Royce Gracie in the first bracket. Gordeau later said that Davie switched the line-up to keep him away from Gracie after a group of Japanese photographers told Davie how good he was.
The final member of the elite eight was boxer Art Jimmerson from St Louis. It was Jimmerson who faced Royce in the opening round of the tournament, not the tall Dutchman.
AS REAL AS IT GETS
The commentary team at cage-side was intended to lend some credibility to the event. Bill Superfoot Wallace was a former full-contact Karate champion, but his lack of broadcast experience was clear from the get-go when he belched during his opening introduction and called the event the Ultimate Fighting Challenge. Kathy Long was another full-contact champion, although like Wallace she seemed shell-shocked when the fights started.
Jim Brown was an ex-NFL player, often considered the greatest professional athlete the US had ever produced. What he knew about combat sports was questionable; his credentials for the job seemed to be that he knew Joe Frazier. Really, Brown was there to add an air of legitimacy to proceedings. Finally there was Rod Machado, whose job title should have been Gracie Cheerleader'. From the moment he opened his mouth, Machado was singing the praises of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
The rules for the first UFC stipulated no eye gouging, no biting, no groin strikes and five rounds of five minutes duration each. Two referees were brought in from Brazil, although the officiating throughout the first show was awful. With the fighters backstage unsure whether they were really going to be allowed to go at it, Gerard Gordeau and Teila Tuli were the first to enter the octagonal octagon as Wallace described it.
Tuli wasn't wearing a mouthguard. He charged at Gordeau, went down off balance and Gordeau promptly kicked his teeth out. One landed in front of the representatives of Gold's Gym, who withdrew their sponsorship after the first event. Gordeau's follow-up punch broke his hand, but Tuli was all done.
Two of Tuli's teeth stayed embedded in Gordeau's foot; the medical staff at the show decided to leave them in and just bandage the wound. The opening match had lasted just 26 seconds but it sent a message to everyone backstage (including Shamrock, who still half-expected the whole show to be a work) and watching on PPV: this was for real.
The second match was a battle of strikers as Zane Frazier and Kevin Rosier slugged it out. It was an unedifying experience, complete with hair pulling and a knee in the groin. The match finally ended with Rosier clubbing Frazier to the floor with a series of blows to the back of the head, then stomping on him before Frazier's corner threw in the towel.
At 4:18 it was the longest fight of the night, but it left both winner and loser in rough shape. Frazier suffered respiratory failure and was rushed to hospital while Rosier's ribs were busted.
EASY MONEY
Finally Royce Gracie made his debut opposite Art Jimmerson. However, Jimmerson wasn't there to fight, but to collect a payday. The boxer's manager at the time was Phil Adams, who years later wrote to the Wrestling Observer about his fighter's participation in the inaugural UFC. He was a journeyman light heavyweight. We got him ranked #12 in the WBC by running up several consecutive victories against suspect opponents after he lost a couple nationally televised fights, wrote Adams.
We found out he would be fighting Royce Gracie, a Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. We had no idea what Jiu-Jitsu was, so I bought an instructional book about it. Looking at it, it didn't seem like Arthur had much of chance to win unless he got in a lucky punch. Since there were no gloves in the first UFC, Arthur didn't want to get his jab hand hurt, so he wore a boxing glove in the match on his left hand, gloveless on his right.
Our strategy was that this was basically a free $15,000, so if Arthur got taken down I would throw in the towel. Adams didn't have to bother. Gracie took Jimmerson down, passed to mount and without Royce so much as setting up a submission or landing a single punch, Jimmerson tapped out.
Ken Shamrock made similarly short work of Patrick Smith. The wrestler took Smith down and tapped him out with a heel hook. The crowd went berserk, chanting Bullshit! thinking the fight was a work, because in 1993 who the hell knew what a heel hook looked like? It didn't help that once the fight was over and Shamrock had released the painful submission, Smith wanted to go again.
In the first semi-finals, despite a busted hand and the teeth in his foot, Gordeau demolished Rosier in under a minute, using his elbow instead of his fist to batter the big American to the canvas. In what many expected to be the most competitive match, Ken Shamrock sprawled on Royce Gracie's takedown attempt but gave up top position to go for a leglock that he couldn't secure.
As Shamrock worked back to all fours, Gracie slipped his arm around his neck and choked him, forcing the tapout. The referee didn't notice and Ken could easily have chosen to deny the tap, but he admitted defeat. Despite his apparent good grace at the time, the defeat haunted him and he became obsessed with getting another shot at Royce.
THE FIRST ULTIMATE FIGHTER
That made the final pair Royce Gracie, who was unscathed and unmarked, and Gordeau, who was the walking wounded. Before they met, there was time for Rorion to make a special presentation to Helio Gracie, declaring the old man the first Ultimate Fighter as the Denver crowd looked on in utter contempt. Who was this old geezer in the cage? No way was that skinny old man a fighter.
Then it was time for the finals. Gracie rushed Gordeau to the fence, took him down and Gordeau, panicking, bit his ear. Gracie took Gordeau's back and sunk in a rear naked choke, releasing it only after Gordeau repeatedly tapped to pay him back for the bite. Fighting is not what we thought it was, declared Jim Brown displaying a hitherto unknown gift for understatement
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 34 of FSM - available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders and Barnes & Noble, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
From the Fighting Spirit Magazine archive. Byline: David West.