Me and the UFC: Part I

“A Lot of Bad Fish Are Being Sold as Fresh!”

UFC I: Dutch kickboxer Gerard Gordeau knocked massive sumo wrestler Teila Tuli down with a thunderbolt kick and punch sequence that announced, in 26 seconds, that the martial arts world had changed forever.

I first heard about the Ultimate Fighting Championship in November of 1993 when Howard Stern, The King of All Media, launched into a ten-minute rave, an uncharacteristic wonderment at the inaugural UFC event he had seen the previous night on Pay-Per-View. Stern was incredulous at the skill exhibited by Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert Royce Gracie.

The Night Royce Gracie Changed the Fight World

Royce fought three times in one evening. He submitted American boxer Art Jimmerson in 2:18. Forty minutes later Royce beat future UFC Hall of Fame member Ken Shamrock in 57 seconds using a gi / sleeve-style choke. In the finale, Royce strangled Dutch kickboxing champion and grizzled street fighter Gerard Gordeau in 1:44 with a rear naked choke.

At the time Gracie weighed roughly 175 to 180 pounds. By generating about 85,000 Pay-Per-View buys, the UFC proved it could be financially viable. More importantly, it proved something far more profound: a small man with real grappling skill could wipe out bigger men who had no idea what to do once the fight hit the floor.

The Backstory: Davie, Milius, Rorion, and the Octagon

I later learned the UFC backstory. In the early 1990s businessman Art Davie proposed to famed Hollywood screenwriter and film director John Milius and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert Rorion Gracie that they combine forces to create an eight-man single-elimination tournament that would be called War of the Worlds.

John Milius is a Hollywood legend, a writer-director with serious combat-story credentials: Apocalypse Now, Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, and a long Dirty Harry orbit. Milius was also a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu student. He agreed to act as the event’s creative director. Davie drafted the business plan and helped assemble the investors who contributed the initial capital to start WOW Promotions. The intent was to develop the tournament into a television franchise.

Milius insisted that the event have a combat feel, not a sport feel. He and Rorion helped shape the famed Octagon. I became an immediate fan. This was real world. This was combat fighting. This would sort out which martial art worked and which ones were bogus.

What was the premier self-defense system? What system worked best in violent street situations? Everyone claimed their martial school, their martial system, was superior — so let’s find out.

What the Early UFC Immediately Exposed

The UFC fights occurred about every six months, and it soon became apparent that certain fighting styles had glaring inadequacies when forced to fight in any format other than within their specific school or style. The western boxers were defenseless when taken to the ground, not too difficult because boxers had no defensive training against shoots or takedowns.

The most mind-blowing revelation to emerge from those early UFC fights was how easily the Jiu-Jitsu fighters and American wrestlers, the ground fighters, dominated. The standup fighters could not stop being taken to the ground, and this eliminated the critical distance needed for the striker to ply his trade. It is hard to strike when you are being smothered or strangled.

Showy karate high kicks proved fatal for the kicker. While high kicks and acrobatic moves are fabulous in the movies, any acrobatic high kick could be captured, with tragic consequences for the kicker: either a counterstrike to the now-exposed groin or a fundamental sweep of the grounded foot.

Equally mind-blowing was how poorly some elite judo practitioners performed when transplanted into the UFC / MMA world. The fatal flaw was not judo itself; the flaw was the rule-set dependency. In sport judo, tie-ups are legislated. Therefore, the judo champion has no need to master the wrestler’s shoot, nor does he necessarily learn to avoid boxing head shots, low kicks or dirty-range striking.

Years later, the same lesson reappeared when Olympic judo gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida faced a killer like Wanderlei Silva. Yoshida was a magnificent judoka. That did not automatically make him an answer to mixed martial arts. The UFC and its offshoots taught a harsh lesson: expertise in one art does not guarantee dominance in a broader fight.

Wendell Pyle and the Local Street-Fight Laboratory

I had similar experiences growing up. Jhoon Rhee’s original karate studio, later a nationwide chain, started in my neighborhood, initiating the karate craze of the 1960s. The real fighters, the street fighters, would gather on Saturday night at a local Little Tavern, an eight-seat burger house with incredibly excellent steamed burgers. The reigning heavyweight street-fighting champion in my neighborhood was a pain-impervious 6-foot, 300-pound rhino of a man named Wendell Pyle.

Wendell would always be at “the porcelain room of the Club LT” on Saturday night, ready for any taker who had $50 for “easy fights” or $100 for fights against formidable fighters. Wendell loved fighting the Jhoon Rhee karate fighters. It was free money: he just waded through their weak-ass punches and kicks, all accompanied by “HEE-YAH!” He grabbed them, bear hugged them and either squeezed them into unconsciousness or body slammed them on the pavement — that last part reserved for those who actually hurt Wendell during his one-man stampede.

Wendell never went to the ground because, “I don’t want to mess up my best clothes.” He would sit eating burgers and the excellent fries on his favored stool between fights. He would routinely rhino-charge two or three karate guys at $50 a fight on a busy Saturday night. Wendell also hit really hard, and the point-karate fighters had never experienced blows that stun and break bones. Getting punched by Wendell was like backing up, getting a running start, and running into a concrete wall face-first.

Robert Smith, Internal Arts, and the UFC Reality Check

I studied the Chinese “internal” martial arts for five years under American master Robert Smith, and I broke with him over his snide dismissal of the UFC. I had fallen out of love with the internal arts as any kind of legitimate fighting form years earlier. Still, as a centering device, Tai Chi, or as vigorous cardio, Hsing I, I felt the forms had value.

In training, Smith would always regale us with legendary fighter tales of the Pa Kua, Hsing I and Tai Chi masters. Smith considered Tai Chi the finest fighting art on the face of the planet. He would relate Tai Chi mottos like, “Two ounces of force can redirect 1,000 pounds.” He told us how easily Ben Lo would whip linemen from the Washington Redskins. I got suspicious when I discovered none of the internal arts ever sparred or actually hit or got hit.

I would have loved to have seen 145-pound Ben Lo enter UFC I and easily dispatch Gerard Gordeau, a man with stab wounds and a lifetime of underground fighting behind him. He could submit Gerard with a dinky throat punch using three bunched fingers. Then it would have been great to see Ben Lo repeatedly use two ounces of force to redirect every one of 260-pound international-level wrestler Dan Severn’s takedown attempts.

After submitting an exhausted Severn with a wrist submission, Lo would then win the title by accepting Royce Gracie’s takedown and rendering Gracie unconscious by touching an acupuncture meridian on the side of the Brazilian’s neck.

That never happened.

This was the type of bollocks we were told would occur, yet when the opportunity arose, Smith turned venomous. The Aikido guys always talked big talk, but none ever entered the UFC and showed us how easy it was to defeat opponents without hurting them.

Why Fighters Fight

Fighters fight.

Why would a fighter, confident in his school, teacher, and tradition, not want to assert that confidence and be thankful for the opportunity to fight and demonstrate his art’s superiority? Wouldn’t a real fighter want to know how his art stacked up against other schools of fighting?

In the original UFC format, there were no weight classes, no judges, no rounds in the modern sense, and a lot more now-illegal blows and kicks were allowed. Rorion Gracie was all about making the UFC as real as possible.

I interviewed Rorion Gracie, Royce’s older brother, way back in the early 1990s when the Ultimate Fighting Championship was experiencing a difficult birth. I wrote a series of pro-UFC articles for MILO and Muscle & Fitness. My favorite compliment came after a MILO article. Rorion called and said, “Brother! We must break bread together! You get it!” I always regretted not following up on that invite.

McCain, Human Cockfighting and the Martial Arts Backlash

The UFC as a concept was attacked on two fronts. In 1996, political powerhouse Senator John McCain proclaimed a vendetta and swore he would stamp out the UFC, branding it “human cockfighting.” The early UFC bouts were chased around the country, one step ahead of law enforcement and frequently forced to shift venues at the last instant. Bouts were put on in remote locales, and no-holds-barred fighting was eventually banned in many states.

The second source of resistance to the UFC came from an unexpected source: the martial arts community. I had thought that the various martial arts schools would jump at the chance to show the superiority of their fighting style in this unbelievably real format. Every martial school on the planet stressed the self-defense and real-world applicability of its fighting style. Yet when a reality format came along, excuses were spewed like machine gun fire as to why famed fighters would not participate.

Rorion summed it up eloquently. In his view, many martial arts fighting styles were ineffectual or fraudulent, at best highly choreographed dance routines with zero real-world self-defense applicability. In his suave style, he said, “A lot of bad fish are being sold as fresh!”

The excuses for not competing were ridiculous. My favorite was that one particular martial art was so deadly that its masters were afraid of killing a UFC opponent. It was suggested that perhaps they might try this death art on biker-gang bad-ass Tank Abbott, a giant, hard-hitting brawler with compressed rage, concrete fists, and the pain tolerance of a drugged rhino.

No reply from the Aikido and Tai Chi masters, men who routinely told students how quickly and effortlessly they would dispatch a thug like Tank Abbott if confronted. The Jeet Kune Do boys were a disappointing no-show, this despite building their reputation and business on the assertion that JKD was the ultimate for “real” self-defense and unbeatable in street situations.

Gracie’s contention was that the dead-fish sellers had everything to lose if their top students participated and got their asses beat. Meanwhile the cauliflower-eared wrestlers, Russian Sambo thugs, Jiu-Jitsu masters, hardcore Kenpo dudes, real street fighters, foreign gutter fighters, and Dutch kickboxers begged to be allowed to fight in the Octagon.

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

In the intervening decades, the thesis — the pretend state of martial arts before the UFC — gave way to the antithesis, the battleground of styles. The early UFC sorted out what worked. The synthesis was the emergence of mixed martial arts. Rather than be confined to a lone style, study all styles, then pick and choose the most effective and innovative techniques.

The UFC format has evolved beyond recognition and attained unimaginable worldwide popularity. The Octagon has become the worldwide symbol for modern MMA, and the UFC truly became the “war of the worlds” the three visionaries envisioned.

Equipment Notes for MMA, Conditioning, and Strength

The early UFC proved that fighting skill must be pressure-tested. Modern combat athletes also need conditioning, strength, durability, and repeatable tools. Facilities and athletes building a combat-style training space can compare cross-training, boxing and MMA equipment, dumbbells, kettlebells, treadmills, and exercise bikes.

For general strength and conditioning, tools such as IRON COMPANY premium powder coated kettlebells, IRON COMPANY urethane dumbbells, the Throwdown HIIT Bike Pro, and the TrueForm Trainer non-motorized curved treadmill can support conditioning when matched to the athlete, coach, facility and program.

The equipment does not create a fighter. Pressure, coaching, skill, conditioning, courage, and repeated reality testing do that.

Safety Note for Combat Sports and Real-World Fighting Claims

The early UFC was a historical pressure test, not a safe template for untrained people to copy. Combat sports carry real risk: concussions, cuts, fractures, joint injuries, neck trauma, eye injuries, and long-term neurological concerns. Street fighting carries additional legal, medical and moral consequences.

Anyone training boxing, wrestling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, judo, Muay Thai, MMA, Sambo, karate, Aikido, Tai Chi, Hsing I, or any other martial system should train under qualified instruction, use progressive contact, respect injury signs, and understand the limits of theory without sparring or live pressure.

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW personal history and opinionated martial arts commentary. It is not individualized self-defense, medical, legal, rehabilitation, or fight-training advice.

Related MMA Reading

For more Marty Gallagher fight-culture commentary, read In Praise of UFC Fighter Nate Diaz. For a companion piece on fight conditioning, read Cardio Capacity - The MMA Gas Tank.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.