Let’s Get It On! Read online

  Published 2011 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  Copyright © 2011 by John McCarthy with Loretta Hunt

  Cover design by James Tampa

  Cover photography by Eric Curtis

  Back cover fighters: Alan Shook, David Weber

  Edited by Emily Steele

  Interior photos courtesy of John McCarthy and Loretta Hunt

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Ultimate Fighting Championship®, the titles and trade names of all Ultimate Fighting Championship televised and live programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, and moves, and all Ultimate Fighting Championship logos and registered trademarks are the property of Ultimate Fighting Championship.

  Images on color insert #2, page 2 courtesy of MAD # 348 © 1996 E.C. Publications, Inc. Used with Permission.

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  DEDICATION

  To my dad, who always has been and always will be my hero. You have shown me from the beginning what a real man is and have lived your life with honor, integrity, and humility. You are a force of nature.

  To my mom, who was always there for me while I was growing up. You patched me up and got me back into whatever I was doing at the time. You were at not only every game I played but just about every practice too. Thank you for everything. I love you.

  To my children, Ron, Britney, and John. I know I was far from perfect, but I was always trying. I am sorry that I sometimes missed things I should have been at because of MMA. I made some bad choices, and I apologize.

  To Rorion and Royce. Thank you for what you did. You inspired me and made me a believer. Your father, Helio, is the creator of MMA, and you both are responsible for putting it on the map.

  To Bob Meyrowitz. Thank you for believing in MMA and me. You kept the sport alive when everyone was trying to kill it. Everyone who loves MMA owes you a thanks.

  To Lorenzo, Frank, and Dana. Thank you for saving the sport of MMA. When you came in, things were looking rather bleak. I know it did not turn around overnight, but through your hard work and vision, you made it happen.

  Last and certainly not least, I have to talk about Elaine. Thanks would not nearly cover what you have meant to me and how you have made my life complete. You have been there since the beginning and have put up with all of the craziness that has surrounded my life. I could not have asked for a greater partner in life. You have made the ride special, and I will always love you.

  I am the last of a dying breed. I talk, walk, dress, and act the way I want in a world where few others do. I will tell you the truth, even if you don’t like it. Many of you don’t like me, are even afraid of me because I tell it like it is and you don’t like to hear it. I am always there for my friends and will tell them the truth even if they don’t like it, because that is what a friend does. Strength and Honor is my bloodline. I take the lead, back my friends, and will stand with them no matter if it is an army standing in front of us. I will fight until the end. Death before Dishonor is our motto. I am a man of Honor.

  —Nick Castiglia, for his sensei Pat Cooligan

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Bas Rutten

  1 Son of the Gun

  2 Water Ballet and Bloody Noses

  3 Elaine

  4 The Badge

  5 Vices

  6 The Riots

  7 The Beginning

  8 Best Seat in the House

  9 This Thing’s Going

  10 Renegades

  11 The Third Man

  12 Writing on the Wall

  13 Changes

  14 The Hail Mary

  15 The Art of the Call

  16 All in the Timing

  17 Let’s Get It On!

  Acknowledgments

  Bas having a “moment” with Maurice Smith

  Bas is pointing out who’s number one. Really.

  I really like the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. In that book, the author talks about omens: things or people that you meet for a reason and that, if you listen, will help you to find what you want in life.

  John McCarthy has crossed paths with many omens in his lifetime and often listened.

  His first omen was his father, a tough, no-nonsense Los Angeles police officer and Medal of Valor winner credited with originating the modern-day Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) program still used to this day. Both his mom and dad loved sports, and his father once told John that if a sport had no contact, he wouldn’t consider it a sport. I love that advice.

  Following in his father’s footsteps, John was always interested in learning how to keep himself and his fellow officers safe. He was ahead of his time, because when everybody still believed that stand-up fighting, like karate, tae kwon do, boxing, or Thai boxing, was the most effective type of martial art, John already knew he could take guys down and simply sit on them. Then it was pretty much over for them.

  So when, after the Los Angeles Riots, the LAPD was looking for the best ways to subdue a person, they invited a plethora (I had to use this word, being “El Guapo” and all) of martial artists to the table. When John challenged some of the teachings of the other instructors in real-life police settings, he grabbed the attention of Rorion, who invited John to train at the Gracie Academy. You see? Rorion Gracie was John’s omen that day because that was the person who, a year later, started the UFC.

  Rorion saw in John the qualities that we all see. John was imposing because he was big and strong but, most important, he had great insight and knowledge of skills and was a decision maker. After UFC 1, Rorion asked John if he wanted to referee at UFC 2, a show John wanted to fight in himself. Nobody knows all this stuff that happened when MMA became important, but guess who was right there from the beginning? That’s right: John!

  A month and a half before the UFC held its first show on November 12, 1993, I started fighting in Japan for the organization Pancrase. What I did was called free fighting, while the UFC called its fighting No Holds Barred. We had rules and were wearing shoes plus shin protection, but it was fighting. And since I was right there when it all started, I always thought I knew a lot about what happened in MMA from its birth. After reading this book, I guess I was wrong.

  For instance, I thought the phrase “intelligently defending oneself” was something made up in the last ten years with all of the newer rules. Nope. John came up with that after UFC 2, as he did many of the sport’s rules still used to this day. (Sound familiar?) There are so many more cool facts that I jotted down to share with you here, but I realized I’d ruin all of the surprises!

  I also always believed I was so cool for coming up with a good way to explain to the nonbelievers that MMA is not a violent sport. I always said MMA is a combination of four Olympic sports and while Olympians train solely for one sport, a mixed martial artist has to know them all. It turns out that John was years ahead of me, telling that same story, because he’s the one who actually made it up. I probably just heard it from him and stole it.

  Reading the book, I was shocked to see the similarities John and I had growing up. We were both kids who got bullied early on in life, were called “four eyes,” had asthma, and because of that were in the water a lot. We both loved sports, watched the same
movie that changed our lives, like to push things to the limit, and like to make things perfect. Heck, even our daughters were born on the exact same day and year! When I read about all these similarities, I even began to wonder if I was an omen for John in writing this foreword, or is he the omen for me?

  Because we have so much in common, it’s not surprising to me now that we all clicked when I met John and Elaine for the first time at UFC Japan in 1997. We’ve been friends ever since, and I’ve always had and still have, of course, great respect for John. If you need somebody to be there for you, that’s John. I actually asked him one time for advice in the middle of a fight because I got worried about something. Thank God he gave me good advice! (You will read what I mean later.)

  I’m not the only one who respects John. I know the fans, promoters, managers, cornermen, cutmen, athletic commissions, and most important, all of the fighters, respect him tremendously as well.

  Luckily for us fighters, John’s omens directed him to the cage, where he’s kept us safe for nearly twenty years. I know I always felt safe when John was in the cage with me. I think you should have that feeling with every referee.

  And when the godfather of mixed martial arts, Helio Gracie, tells you, and I quote, “Everything that I have done with jiu-jitsu, you have done with the sport. You are the best there ever was or ever will be. I am proud of who you are and what you have done,” you know you really are the best at what you do.

  Godspeed, John, up to your next omen. “Let’s get it on!”

  —Bas Rutten

  P.S. I might not have come up with the “four Olympic sports” explanation, but I did come up with the word “Livershot.” Party on!

  Christmas with my mom and sister: probably the only picture where I can say I look kind of cute

  Fishing with my best friend, Chris Lingwall, who caught a cool stingray while I got a lousy crab

  SON OF THE GUN

  Tiger father begets tiger son.

  —Chinese proverb

  His eyes tell me he’s had enough. Not his midsection, bruised and tenderized by a round of short, sobering body shots and unmerciful knees. Not his legs, discolored and swollen from a steady attack of low kicks from his opponent. Not his broken nose or forehead, sliced open and dripping red from a perfectly placed elbow shot.

  It’s his eyes. I look into the fighter’s eyes, and they tell me he’s scared. He doesn’t know how to get out of this predicament, but he continues because that’s what a fighter does.

  It’s in this moment that I know the fight is over. I know he won’t come back. This is when what I do counts most.

  I am a mixed martial arts referee. The first of my kind in the United States, I started with the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1994. Before MMA was even considered a sport, back when it was called No Holds Barred and Ultimate Fighting, I officiated the fights. A one-off pay-per-view spectacle evolved over eighteen years into something followed and cherished by millions of die-hard fans worldwide, and I’m lucky to be able to say I was a part of it.

  In its simplest definition, mixed martial arts is the execution of multiple combat sports’ disciplines with the goal of knocking out, submitting, or outscoring an opponent before he does it to you. Fighters jab like boxers, kick like kickboxers, throw knees and elbows like muay Thai stylists, take down opponents like wrestlers, and contort and trap appendages in chokes and holds like jiu-jitsu practitioners. They can perform one or all of these elements in a matter of seconds to win, which makes the sport excitingly unpredictable. A bout can stay on the feet or go to the mat or even dabble in a little of both, wherever the greater athlete or tactician chooses to take it.

  There are no guarantees in MMA other than that no two fights ever look the same. An experienced champion can get knocked out by an underdog’s single punch. An overwhelming favorite can make a mistake, and his opponent will capitalize.

  For me, MMA is competition. There’s nothing like witnessing two well-trained fighters engaged in battle. There’s an artistry to it. Like a choreographed ballet, when it’s done right, with two well-matched partners, it’s beautiful. It’s poetry in motion, and I can’t take my eyes off it. It’s my sport.

  Some people don’t understand MMA. They say it’s dangerous, brutal, and barbaric. They don’t understand the motivation because they personally fear the thought of being in a fight, the rush of adrenaline that will make them shake uncontrollably, the possibility of pain or being dominated with no way to end it.

  My job is to stop the competition at just the right moment, in that split second when a fighter becomes overwhelmed and can no longer protect himself. It can happen in the blink of an eye, with one punch, kick, tug, or squeeze. Sometimes I’ve called a fight right on the money. Other times I’ve missed that crucial moment, the one that decides whether a fighter will walk out of the cage on his own accord.

  Thankfully, my life prepared me for these moments. I grew up around violence and made not one but two careers out of controlling it.

  As a twenty-two-year LAPD veteran, I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun thinking my next move could either save or destroy a life. In situations like these, I’ve learned to think quickly. I push aside the nerves and distractions and just act.

  It’s the same in mixed martial arts. Making fast, clean decisions is paramount, and not everyone is cut out for that. It takes a certain temperament, an ability to stay focused in pressure-filled situations.

  How did I learn this? I think it has everything to do with Ron McCarthy, my dad, the man who made me who I am. Ever since I can remember, he’s been my idol. Through my young eyes, he was my Incredible Hulk, Bruce Lee, Spider-Man, and “Smokin’” Joe Frazier all rolled into one. He’s the most fearless man I know, and he taught me how to go after life and live on my own terms.

  That’s how he did it from the hardest of beginnings. He was born in Oregon in 1937 and raised in Winslow, Arizona. Far from the quaint scene of Americana described in the Eagles song “Take It Easy,” the dust bowl town greets visitors with a big “Welcome to Winslow” sign and then, after what feels like five feet, sends them off with a “Thank You for Visiting.” Apparently those famous lyrics didn’t apply to my dad either. His childhood was far from easy.

  His father, my grandfather Joseph McCarthy, had a wife and five kids, whom he gave up to be with the woman who gave birth to his son, my dad. Supposedly she was very beautiful and had a penchant for marrying rich men, which my grandfather, the owner of a small-town car dealership, certainly was not. She soon left my grandfather, who returned to his wife and five kids with his two-year-old in tow.

  Be it by accident or suicide, my grandfather killed himself, I’m told, while cleaning a gun that went off and shot him in the stomach.

  My grandfather’s wife cared for my dad until his biological mother came back for him when he was two and a half. The McCarthy family tried to stop the separation, and afterward they searched for him for years.

  When my dad was four years old, his mother abandoned him in a local orphanage and nuns raised him for the next few years, until his maternal grandmother took him in to her Arizona home. He lived with her until he was eleven, when his grandmother died.

  His mother returned to take him to Oregon, where she was getting remarried. Along with a new father, he now also had a new older stepbrother, Jack, who would hold him down and spit in his face or throw darts into his back.

  My dad, miserable in his new home, ran away at age thirteen to manage on his own in Arizona, living in a boxcar in a local railroad yard and working at a gas station. He wouldn’t see his mother for the next fifteen years.

  To this day, I’ve never met my grandmother. I don’t even know her name and have never asked for it. The last time I heard, she’d been married something like seventeen times. I wouldn’t recognize her if I bumped into her on the street.

  On his own, my dad couldn’t work to support himself and go to school at the same time, so he dropped out until he met the Lacey family.
When a classmate named Terry Lacey told his dad, Tom, about my dad’s predicament, Tom allowed my dad to live with them on two conditions: my dad had to keep going to school and get good grades, and he had to play sports. The Lacey family’s generosity allowed my dad the opportunity to go back for his junior and senior years.

  Though he was wiry, my dad was nimble and could play football positions usually reserved for the bigger guys, including defensive end and noseguard. He’d prove himself on the basketball court as well. In both football and basketball, he earned all-state honors.

  While Tom’s son, Terry, was an all-state quarterback and earned a scholarship to Notre Dame, my dad won a scholarship to a local college. I suspect my dad was afraid he wasn’t good enough to go to college, however, because he didn’t follow through with it. After graduation, he moved right out of the Lacey’s house. Maybe his overwhelming sense of independence got the better of him.

  Hard as nails and not afraid to prove it, my dad decided to enlist with the Marines. When he arrived at the row of recruiting offices, an officer said, “Could you come back tomorrow to sign the paperwork?”

  My dad agreed and, having nowhere else to go, slept on a park bench outside all night.

  The next morning, a Navy recruiter greeted him. When he learned what my dad was doing, he said, “The Marines representative isn’t coming in today.”

  Eyes bleary and stomach rumbling, my dad signed with the Navy instead. The Marines recruiter walked in shortly after with a stunned look on his face.

  The military led my dad to my mom, Charlotte Gold, whom he met while he was stationed in Long Beach, California. Two years later, they married. My sister, Sheri, was born a year and a half after that. On October 12, 1962, I came into the world.