Big John McCarthy: The Man Who Decides When Fights Are Over | EP 45

Big John McCarthy is one of the most influential figures in MMA history — not as a fighter, but as the man who helped write the rules that shaped the sport.

In this episode, we sit down with the legendary MMA referee, BJJ black belt, and founder of the COMMAND referee training program to talk about what it really takes to protect fighters inside the cage. Big John breaks down why fighters are wired to hide their pain, how referees decide when to stop a fight, and why getting a fighter out at the right moment can save their career — and their life.

We also go deep into the early days of the UFC, the creation of the Unified Rules of MMA, and what most fans fundamentally misunderstand about the referee's role. Plus, Big John reflects on his recent return to refereeing Netflix's first-ever live MMA event featuring Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano — and what it felt like to be back in the cage.

Topics covered:

1. How referees read fighters who are hiding damage
2. The hardest calls Big John has made in his career
3. The birth of the Unified Rules and how they saved MMA
4. Early UFC chaos and how the sport evolved
5. Netflix's first live MMA event — Ronda vs. Gina
6. The COMMAND officiating program and the future of refereeing

Contacts for John McCarthy

Instagram & X - @JohnMcCarthyMMA

COMMAND MMA Referee Training MMAreferee.com 

Podcast: McCarthy Mondays with Josh Thomson on the Weighing In Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@WeighingIn/featured

Topic Links:

Felicia Oh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Oh

PFC – Executive security training company with Chad Lyman https://pfctraining.com/chad-lyman/

Joao Baretto  https://www.bjjheroes.com/bjj-fighters/joao-alberto-barreto

Helio Vigio https://www.bjjheroes.com/bjj-fighters/helio-vigio

Gerard Gordeau vs. Teila Tuli in UFC 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prcWJgfeuJg

Pat Smith vs. Scott Morris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IABbQrQXlVk&t=7s

Tank Abbott vs Oleg Taktarov – Fishhooking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LufiBRFE2Iw

CAMO (California Amateur Mixed Martial Arts Organization) https://camomma.org/

ISKA https://www.iskaworldhq.com/

Unified Rules of MMA https://www.ufc.com/unified-rules-mixed-martial-arts

Zuffa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuffa

Tito Ortiz vs Evan Tanner UFC 30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s110EQz0Ohg

California State Athletic Commission https://www.dca.ca.gov/csac/

ARP (Association of Ringside Physicians) https://ringsidearp.org/

Big John giving pre-fight fighter instructions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HGpSp8aS30

Nick Diaz vs. Paul Daley – Strikeforce San Diego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_vrF7N7Cu8&t=307s

Anderson Silva vs. Rich Franklin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDLz0THYPAs

Rose Namajunas vs. Joanna Jędrzejczyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIO4WKIHP0

Georges St-Pierre vs. Michael Bisping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOREpJ7ANPA

Brian Johnson vs. Reza Naseri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxtXLGR2h7Y&t=61s

Music “Disambiguation” by Robel Borja https://open.spotify.com/artist/7j0DUZ79z4edeLkU2H1UoJ?si=eISl0YfaQ-yLThljs48j5A

This episode was directed and presented by Dave Meyer, editor & coproducer by Ryan Turner, producer & marketing Robbie Lockie, music kindly provided by Robel Borja.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Fighters are they're great at playing poker. That's their job. Their job is to mask when they're hurt. To say, no, that didn't hurt. Your job is to say, you're right, you didn't get hurt. Or nope, you're lying. That hurt. I can see it. What's best for this fighter? What's best for the sport? What's best is let's get him out of here and let him come back another day. All I'm doing is keeping him from possibly having one of those nails put into his coffin that's the one that doesn't allow him to come back.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome to the Ageless Warrior Lab. I'm BJJ Coral Belt and Dirty Dozen member Dave Meyer, here to draw wisdom from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the martial arts and explore how it applies to success in business, relationships, your long-term health, and making the most out of your life. What you're about to hear is a discussion I had with Big John McCarthy. John is a retired LAPD officer, a longtime MMA referee, a key figure in the creation and interpretation of the unified rules for MMA. He is a BGJ black belt. He is a former MMA school owner. He is the author of the book Let's Get It On, the making of MMA and its ultimate referee. He is founder of Command, which teaches MMA refereeing and judging. John's a former Bellator and PFL commentator, and he's a regular on Josh Thompson's Wig In podcast. Big John is again now an active combat sports official, and you may have seen him recently on Netflix's first live-streamed MMA, where he was the referee for the Rhonda Rousey and Gina Carano fight. We talk about the early days of the UFC, the evolution of the rules, and therefore the sport itself, and what it takes, what's needed to be an MMA referee, and much more. Now, this is a lab and I value your input. So I may pop in a little bit and ask what you think. And you can respond in the comments on the YouTube video. And if you are watching on YouTube, please be sure to subscribe and hit that bell for notifications when new episodes drop. And now sit back and enjoy my discussion with Big John McCarthy. Okay, Big John, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Hey, thank you for having me on. It's been a long time since we got to talk, Dave.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yeah, it is. I think it was many years ago back at John Jacques Bachado's uh academy when we first met. I think at that time you actually maybe already had started your school that you had out for a while in Valencia, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Or no, back I didn't have the school back then because we probably met out, I'm guessing here too, probably somewhere around 2003, 2004. And I opened that school in 2006. So it was a little bit after that.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Okay. And of course, we have lots of mutual friends. I know you've done a lot with Eddie Bravo, who is an old friend of mine, Felicia, who I think used to teach at your place.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

I still see her all the time. She's doing fantastic as a judge now with California and other states.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

I've done, oh, I don't know, 40 episodes or something. Not all of them have been interviews of this podcast, but I have had a few women on as interviewees. But Felicia's the person that I want to get on because I think she's gonna have a very interesting perspective.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

It's weird because you know, and I know as far as some of these people and who they are and what they've done, and it's amazing. The background on Felicia is just incredible, and there's people that sit there, and I'll she's judging now in the state of California, Arizona. Uh, soon she'll be in Nevada, and I've I've seen people writing on social media. Who is this person? What does she know? And I'm like, just shut up, okay? She knows more than you will ever have a clue of knowing.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

So Felicia, Felicia is this like teeny teeny woman who is just a killer on the mat, um, one of Eddie Bravo's black belts, and she's been around the scene for such a long time, and yeah, so she's great. And of course, I've seen you like everybody has, so for the whole lifetime of the UFC, up until you stepped away from that, and you've trained with Nick and Nate. I know Nate has a fight that's coming up now that you're gonna be in the ring on, and Rico Rodriguez and I were training partners. So we have lots of old friends.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

That's we go back a long time, which is saying unfortunately, we're both old.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

We are we are almost exactly the same age. I'm 63. I think we're almost exactly the same age.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

Yep, we are.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

So big John. Should I just call you John? You want me to call you John?

SPEAKER_03 4:33

You can just call me John, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Okay, John. Near as I can tell, you've had three public careers. You may have done something before that. You of course had your a long career in the LAPD, and then you moved into MMA officiating, and then you moved into media commentary. And I understand now that you're stepping away from the media commentary because you're back to officiating. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 4:51

That is true. I just I can't figure out what I want to do. I keep bouncing.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Well, so that's what I was gonna ask you. There's obviously a through line. How did LAPD prepare you? I know that's how you met Hoyce. It is how did that sort of prep you for reffing? Obviously, through line going from refing to commentary, but yeah, what is the through line for John McCarthy on this career?

SPEAKER_03 5:12

I don't know if there's a through line. I think that line does all this twisting and and and things, but uh the LAPD was my dad was an LAPD police officer. That's him back there. That's his first gun that he had, so that's why it's up on the wall. Nice, but he was pretty well known in the law enforcement community because he was considered the godfather of SWAT. The very first SWAT team was on LA that started back, I want to say, in 68, you know, so a long time ago. Wow. And he was with LAPD, he was a sergeant with the SWAT team forever. Never wanted to go anywhere because if he wanted to go up in rank, he would have to leave. And so he was like, that's not happening. And he had an amazing career. I got to do things as a kid that you wouldn't think, first off, you wouldn't think any father would allow their kid to do it. But it was like I got to do what was called spy rigging from a helicopter, which is you have this harness on and they clip you on the back, and the helicopter takes off with you, and you got your hands out with depending upon how many people are with you, four, five, two, but you're flying as the helicopter takes off. You're flying in the air because you're just hooked on by a carabiner there, and it's like the greatest things in the world. I got to do it. Eventually, he told me his exact statement to me, you better figure out what the hell you're gonna do because you're either gonna end up, you know, you end up being a cop or you're gonna end up in prison. So you figure out which one's best.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

You know, that is so funny that you say that, John, because I've trained with a lot of cops and a lot of people who were ex-cons or whatever, and sometimes the line is not super clear.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

No, that line is in fact, it sometimes it rides the line on both sides. I always say, look, the best cops are ones that are close to being criminals, but it's just the way that their mind works and understanding what would be a common thing to do here, what would be smart, what wouldn't, because you know, there's a lot of criminals out there that are really stupid. There's some that are very smart and they do things in an intelligent fashion. So you look and you go, it just sometimes it takes one to know one. I always looked, and one of the things that bothered me with some police officers is some were people that never got their hands dirty. They they took the route of, I'm gonna be safe and they're writing tickets and things like that. And that's great, that's what you want to do. I always looked and said, that's horrible as a police officer. Your job is to make other people's lives hopefully better by getting rid of the really bad people. No one needs a ticket, people pay enough taxes, but that's the way I looked at it. So it was much, it was just the same for me to say, hey, do me a favor, you know, watch yourself, slow down, any of that, and not write the ticket. I wrote like five tickets in my career. You had to be a flaming asshole for me to write you a ticket because I just didn't do it. But I did like putting the people that I thought caused grief for the citizens of LA in the time, the ones that were doing bad crimes, that's what I wanted to look for. And there's those guys out there, and there are the ones that are not, and I'm not saying anything wrong with them, but I always liked the people that they went after what was important, and that's making other people's lives better by getting rid of the bad ones.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

I hear you when you say takes one to no one. I say, like, you know, if you're gonna wrestle the devil to the ground, you got to get your hands on him, right? And I do think the connection there is guys who do not shy away from excitement, guys who are willing to get in the mix, so you could do it on either side of the law, but we need the good guys. We need good guys who are willing to get in the mix. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 8:29

I mean, and think about it, David. You knew I I'm not gonna say his name, that there was an individual at Higue Machados, he was really good and used to tear up Rico Rodriguez for a while and stuff on the mats. And you know, he ended up going to prison. He got into an altercation off of, you know, just I guess you want to say road rage. Yes, it was road rage. Yeah, he became someone that was the number one shot caller up in Pelican Bay and stuff, and so yeah, but he was a good guy. I know you knew that.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

I like I liked him very much, Matt. I liked him very much. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

And so, and this is why I say it doesn't take much to cross that line. It really doesn't. It doesn't mean that someone someone can do something that at the moment is really stupid and they get caught, and bad things just tend to compound themselves with it. Or lucky you don't you don't cross that line, and you but it only takes one mistake to change the perspective of everything.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

You know, you're actually the third uh former police officer that I've had on the podcast. One was Rick Williams, who got his black belt the same day I did, along with Chris Howder, and one is Adam Trainer. I don't know if you know Adam, he retired a few years ago. He was oh shoot, he's gonna be upset if I say it wrong. I think he was Culver City for a while. I know he was maybe in LA County Sheriffs, and he was very instrumental in getting the LA County Sheriff's Department to actually pay for people's BJJ training. Like he's a big advocate of cops need to have Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And I'm curious your thoughts on that. What he was saying, of course, is first of all, it just builds cops' confidence so that they're not as likely to get into altercations at all, just because a bad guy can see that confidence in them. So you have the ability to de-escalate something or to take control of something in a way that you don't have to resort to lethal force. And he thinks it saves the city a lot of money.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

There's no doubt. The last, let's say, 13 years, I was a trainer up at the academy doing defensive tactics and all the things that we would do. One of the things that I came up with at the time was like I called it the tack challenge. And that was to try to incorporate everything that we did into an aspect where you got into a foot pursuit, you had to run, and so and the run was about 600 yards, meaning you're chasing a suspect. And when you came back, you ran into a room, it was a mat room, and we had at when I started in the beginning, it was another recruit. Then it ended up being us as instructors because I learned that first off, you didn't know which recruit didn't like which recruit. And the whole purpose was to make somebody work and put them in bad positions, and then if they're working hard, let them get out of the bad position, then put them back and make it so they don't quit and make them understand that hey, this training that you received in the academy, it's a start, but this is definitely just the beginning of that road, and you need to understand your job is to be a professional. Your job is to make it to where people, if they were able to pick who was going to come to their problem, they would pick you because you have all these skill sets. I always used to tell them shooting is a perishable skill. And if you're not good at it, all it takes is hard work and dedication, time and effort and money to make yourself good at it. So do you want to be sitting next to the person that can't shoot, or do you want to be sitting next to the person we call it a distinguished expert? Do you want to be sitting next to the distinguished expert that can put rounds on target when they have to? Which is better for you? Which one would you choose? You're always going to take the person that can shoot. And I would say same thing when it comes to your physical abilities in a confrontation, in a physical altercation. Do you want the person that only had the academy training, or do you want the person that then went and went to, I don't care what it is. I used to push Brazilian Jiu Jitsu because I believed in it, but I would push any martial art. Do you want someone that spends time in a martial art, in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, on the mats, in the rings? Which person do you want sitting next to you? If you want that person that is training, then be that person. Don't sit there and expect them to do it and you don't have to. It's an insurance policy. Your life every time you go out there, it's on the line. It's not that it's all you're sitting there and oh my god, everyone's going after you to try to take your life, but you never know when that one instant is going to occur. And so your ability to do all these things to limit someone else's ability by enhancing yours, that's a life insurance policy. Why would you not take and get that life insurance policy when it's available? It's there. All it takes is again time, effort, the dedication, and some money. So what? In the end, all it takes is it to pay off one time, and that's you saving your own life.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Absolutely. And frequently saving someone else's life in the sense that if you didn't have to use lethal force, I mean, that's good. Society wins from that too. I know that, at least in Southern California, which is where Brazilian Jutsu landed in the late 80s, I think there is good understanding within law enforcement. I think there's a lot of law enforcement officers are taking upon themselves to train. And of course, Adam was talking about various departments that either provide ongoing BJJ instructor in the department, maybe it's one of their officers, or they bring somebody in, or they contract with a local gym and officers can go train at the local BJJ school for free. I think there was another option that he put, oh, they'll reimburse just like they might do if you're gonna go take some courses on criminology or something like that. They'll pay for a certain amount, or maybe all of your Brazilian jiu-jitsu training. Would you advocate that, either for BGJ or martial arts in general?

SPEAKER_03 14:03

Oh, but the biggest problem with the perception is the perception from the politicians is oh, we train someone in a martial art, they're gonna become aggressive. When it works absolutely in a hundred and eighty-degree reverse to that, in that the person that is trained in a martial art, Brazilian jiu-jitsu or whatever else you want to say, that has confidence, they're the ones that first off, they're able to control the situation, usually without force or a limited amount of force compared to the person that has to escalate so high right from the very get-go. And once you escalate to that point, there's no backing out of it. You're stuck there. And so the ability for a county or a city to put on a program that can only benefit the officers will only benefit that department. It will benefit the department in a lack of use of force comparatively. You'll have much less use of force done. And then the lawsuits that follow, when you do have those use of forces, those get mitigated by the fact they're not happening. And so the whole thing, you look, it's an insurance policy. And the cities should be paying for that insurance policy by giving that training or having that training available to their officers. But a lot of the politicians will look and say, oh, well, no, that would just enhance, which is totally wrong, but it is what they think. I have a friend in Las Vegas, Chad Lyman, black belt and Brazilian jujitsu, and he was on Metro Vegas for years, and he's done training for those officers throughout. He still teaches at Extreme Couture. He works with a company called PFC that they do executive security training and things so people can protect other people. And he's done an amazing job of putting together a program for law enforcement officers to learn how to utilize the skills that come with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or any martial arts in their field that allows them to get away with not having to use force, having the confidence to say, yeah, look at a lot of people don't want them to get too close. And so a lot of, you know, that's just that little bit. They're saying, Yeah, you can, you know, come here. It's okay. You can come close to me. It's all right. You want to yell, go ahead and yell. It's all right, but it's not going to get you anywhere here. So let's be smart about this. And they'll talk them through the thing and they won't have to use the force. And so the confidence that comes with the training is it's priceless. It is absolutely priceless.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Just pausing the interview here for a second to ask you, the audience, a question. What do you think about your tax dollars being used to pay for police officers to train BJJ? John and many other police officers I've talked to think it absolutely saves public dollars in the long run. But what do you think? Go ahead and leave your comment on the YouTube video and I will respond to it. And now back to the discussion. And you're speaking from over two decades of service as an LA PD officer. And thank you for that. I was living in LA at the time and I appreciated your help there. But that, of course, is not how most people know you. Most people came to know you through your being the iconic referee for the UFC. A little bit of trivia. I think people may assume that when you started your work in the UFC, that you left your work as a police officer, but that's not true, right? There was a long overlap where you were still an active duty, at least a trainer.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

Yeah. No, the UFC started in 1993, November 12th of 1993 was the first show. Right. I started with the Gracie's somewhere in 92. And I left Cell A PD at the end of 2007, the beginning of 2008. So 93 to 2007, 2008. I loved it. I loved what I was doing. The biggest problem is the sport started to grow so much. Right around 2005, it really started to explode because you had the ultimate fighter come out, and that really helped turn the UFC around and everything. So that's when it became all of a sudden there was more shows. No, no one really recalls, but back from '93, there was four shows in a year in in '94, and it got to six shows, basically one every other month. And that that held for a long time. And then the Zufa came in and bought, and they went to like 10 shows. That was all workable for me. I could get days off from the department and be able to go. Luckily, my chief of police he liked combat, he liked fighting, he liked boxing. So the fact that I was doing it, he liked to come and talk to me about it and things like that. So that helped me. But when it got to the point where the sport really started to blow up, and then they were doing 24, then 30 some, then 40 shows, it became impossible for me to be able to do both. And so it was a choice. It really became that, well, I can retire. It's not the perfect time for me to retire. I'm gonna end up losing some of my percentages on the pension. But I looked and said, Well, where is my heart lying in what I think is the fun thing to do while the fun thing was still doing the UFC?

SPEAKER_01 18:58

I would have thought, oh yeah, you were the first referee from the first UFC. I forgot. And then when I did a little research on you, I remember like, oh, that's right. Then you started like in UFC two, I think, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:08

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

And I didn't realize that at UFC one you were training with Hoyce, that you were part of his training for UFC one.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

That's right. Yeah, it was when the whole thing came about, and there's so many stories on how things happened. But when it was finally decided that Hoyce was gonna be the representative from the Gracie's, you looked at all the people that Art Davy, who was the guy behind the scenes putting together the show and basically gathering the fighters for it. A lot of them were bigger guys. Well, I was big at the time, I was 295 pounds or so. And so Hoyce looked and said, Hey man, I need I need big people to move with, to roll with, to stand up. I need someone that can work me with takedowns, and just I'm used to that strength. I said, Sure, let's do it. So I would come from my job and I would go to at the time the Gracie Academy had just opened. It was like that was a good place to go. And so I would go there at night and then drive home, go back to work the next day and come and do it again. And I had a blast doing it. But it's really funny because you you talk about UFC one and the two guys, there were two referees. There was a guy named Jiao Baheto, who was a black belt under Elio Gracie, and another one named Elio Vigio, who was a police officer there in Rio de Janeiro. Jiao Baheto had the very first fight, and it was Girard Gordeaux against Taylor Thule. And that's how I got the job. Because the whole point of the UFC was this style confrontation, and that the rules basically for the referee was you couldn't stop the fight. You either had to have the fighter tap out or the corner throw in the towel. Right. Well, Girard Goodot goes and he kicks Taylor Thule in the mouth. One tooth goes flying. One tooth goes flying, one goes in his foot. He hits him with a right hand that opens tail up, but it breaks Girard's hand. And Jiao Beheto had compassion for a human being. He goes, Hey, boom, stop. And if you watch it, Horian Gracie is standing at the cage, and Jiao Beheto is in the cage, and Jiao Beheto's saying, Hey, you know, this is not good. And Horian's going telling him, You're not supposed to stop the fight, right? And he's saying, This guy can't fight. And it's in Portuguese, but that's what he's telling him. And it was based upon that that Horian came to me and said, I need you to referee for me. And I was like, I don't know how to referee. And my honest to God, my qualifications within with he said, he goes, Oh, look, you know more than most of these guys. And he says, You don't mind seeing people get hurt. That was my qualifications by Horian. So I actually became friends with Jiao Beheto and told him, Hey, I want you to know I am sorry that they didn't understand how you did the right thing. And I want to tell you that I absolutely acknowledge you were right in what you did, and you should be proud of the fact that you were there to help another person when they couldn't help themselves. And that's just the truth.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

It's interesting. We talk about no rules fights, and that's how it was built. I remember that very well that the early UFCs was very much uh this style against that style, a sumo guy against a kickboxer, against a jiu. Jitsukai guessajogai boxer, whatever. And obviously, we'll talk in a little bit about the evolution of MMA and what's going on with the various styles. But there's basically people talk about a no rules fight. And even at the time, I thought, well, it's a no rules fight, but you can't eye gouge. I mean, there's a couple of rules. And one of the big rules is there's not anybody else that's going to jump in and pile on. No one's going to pull out a weapon. I mean, there's lots of rules. Honestly, even in what we call a street fight, which of course you know as well as anyone, could be anything. I mean, people say, here's what I do on the street. Is that like one against 10? Is it a guy on an airplane? Is it you're walking with your daughter and someone's, I mean, there's so many different permutations of a street fight. But even then, when people use that as a there's no rules, well, you know, if someone takes a swing at you in a bar and you pull out a knife and stab him, there's rules. The society has rules. So there's always spoken or unspoken rules or something like that. And finding one of the things that I'm going to want to talk to you about is understanding what is the role of a referee. Because even when there's no referee, like I think of these fights that Hickson used to have out on the beach, but there would be a ring of guys around and they would make sure no one else would jump in. So there was like there was rules. There was an etiquette to it.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

Yeah. There was an etiquette.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah, exactly. But just before we talk about the role of a referee, I just want to observe. Well, first of all, I wanted to ask. I am friends with Eric Paulson, and Eric was also training back then with the Gracie's, and he entertained going into the UFC, but then realized, no, then he would have to fight poise, like being in UFC one. And so he went to Japan and did his fighting there. Did you, I'm assuming the same thing would have been there for you. Did you ever entertain at any point thinking, hey, you'd actually like to be a fighter in the UFC as opposed to a ref? I guess is my question.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Yeah, early on, I you know, it was I always say it was a mistake. Okay. And I'm honest with people when they sit there and I said, look, in the early days, I'd have done okay. Okay. But it was a matter of I looked at it and when the whole thing happened, I was like, dude, I want to do that, right? And I filled out the application and put it on Art Davies desk, right? And I got called up by Horion. And Horian goes, What's this? Right? And then he goes, What do you what do you want to, you know, you're with us, you're either with us or you're against us. Do you want to fight Hoyce? And I go, Of course I don't want to fight Hoyce. I go, that that's not what I just I go, I was of the opinion that, oh, it was a one-time thing when Hoyce won it, right? And then that's when I put it in there, and then I realized, well, shit, they're gonna want him again. He's gonna do it again. Yeah, stupid. So I go, of course not. No, you can hey, I totally understand. But if there was a point where Hoist is not in, I would love to do it, right? And he goes, Oh, okay, I understand. Okay, that's fine. And that's when he offered me the refereeing thing, was just shortly. So it was like, okay, it was a matter of I was too clueless to figure out, oh, Hoyce is a star. I I look at it and I'm honest when I say getting the role of referee, and it became this whole thing where, well, the fighting had to go out to the side and stuff, and it was, hey, Horian gave me the greatest job I could have ever had. He gave me a career that lasted way longer than any fight career could ever be, or anything like that. I lucked out by Horian asking me to be a referee.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Oh, and we all look lucked out too. I mean, honestly, because you're so good. I think you well, first of all, I observe that an MMA referee certainly has the most unique vantage point, right? So you have the mass of people who watch on television, they have a vantage point and they get to see camera angles and stuff like that. That's good. You get people who is a smaller number, but still many hundreds of thousands have been in MMA events. They get a vantage point too from the crowd, or they get to see the big screen. I have been on by the ringside in the corner of people. That's an interesting vantage point, right? Where you're sitting just outside of a cage looking in on a fight. The fighters, obviously, have their vantage point, but for every fight, there's two fighters, but there's often one referee through many matches. So you are in this class of people that is such a small class of people that has such an up-close, interesting view of the fight. I just observe that. But obviously, now talking about the role of the referee, you're not there to be like the best spectator, right? You're you're in there to do a job. So let's talk about the role of a referee. What do you see? I mean, I can guess, but I'd like to hear it from you. What you think the role of the referee is, and let's talk about being a referee. So, what's the role of the referee in MMA?

SPEAKER_03 26:24

The basics, if you're going to get down to it, for the role of the referee is although it sounds strange for most people, it's the health and safety of the fighters that come into that cage or ring. You're responsible for their ultimate health and safety. You're the one that is in a position to take care of a fighter when it comes to a point where they can't take care of themselves. And you're supposed to do the right thing at the right time. That's what becomes the difficult part. When I teach courses or anything, look, 50% of the people want the fighter in the red corner, 50% of the people want the fighter in the blue corner, we'll say. Obviously, sometimes it's different in percentages, but that's the close thing. And no matter what you do, the people in the corner of the losing fighter look at, they're gonna say, You screwed up. You cannot please everyone. You never will. All you can do is do what's right. And it's one of the things that I did learn from being a police officer. Being a police officer, especially out on riot scenes and things like that, it doesn't matter what the people are protesting about or anything. You could a hundred percent disagree with them. You could a hundred percent agree with them, but you don't go off of what your belief is, you go off of what the lawful order is that you are instructed to do at the time. And so, like I said, you could a hundred percent believe that these people are right in what they're saying, but if they need to move out of a location for the safety of the general public, then you're gonna move them out of that area. You do your job, but you don't put your own personal takes in on it. You sit there and say, Okay, what is it that is my job? And your job as a referee is I came up with when a fighter cannot intelligently defend themselves, you know, you're gonna stop the fight. Well, that came up out off of UFC two because at the end of UFC two, I did 15 fights on UFC two. That was the first 15 fights, and I was horrible. I know I was horrible. I don't think that's true, but okay. It's a matter of at the time I was following Horian's instructions on hey, don't stop the fight. The corner stops the fight with the towel or the fighter taps out. Well, I did the first couple fights and it was like, all right, this is easy. I got a couple of tap-outs, I got a guy that got choked out, I stopped it, no problem. And then it became a nightmare because I had people that were getting killed. And I had told the corners, hey, if your fighter is having problems, I'm gonna point to you and I'm gonna tell you, watch your fighter, because that was me trying to tell you, hey, you might want to think about throwing that towel. And we had an incident where Pat Smith was on top of a guy named Scott Morris. And Scott Morris was with Robert Busey's Warriors International, and he ends up trying for a belly-to-belly suplex. It's not close, his foot slips out, and he ends up mounted quick, quickly. And Pat starts going after him with elbows, and I'm screaming at the corner, watch your finder, and then I'm saying, throw your towel, throw your towel. And they looked at me and shook their head and took the towel and threw it into the audience. And I burst out with some colorful language, but that made Pat Smith stop, thank God, because he thought I was telling him to stop. And I knew, oh my God, I'm in trouble. Because I I had seen plenty of stuff. You work in the city like Los Angeles, you're gonna see a lot of things, and you see how bad something can get and how quick it can happen. And I was like, man, these people don't understand this. They don't understand. Some of the fighters that told their corners, you're never gonna throw the towel. When you're unconscious, you're not able to tap either. And so it was this whole mess of just not being able to do something. So at the end of it, I was told by Horian and Bob Meirowitz, who owned the UFC that that was great, perfect job. That's what we want. And I go, hey, thank you. But no, I go, I'm never doing that again. Right. And what do you mean? It was great. I go, no, it's not. I said, look, you I know you don't, you're not trying to, but you're gonna get someone seriously hurt. I said, you want me to stand there while someone stomps on another human being's head and not do anything until their head caves in. I go, that's not gonna be good for me, it's not gonna be good for you. It'll be the end of your show. I go, I have to be able to have the ability to stop the fight. And then that's when I came, I said, look, when a fighter cannot intelligently defend themselves, I have to be able to stop the fight. And Horion goes, he says, All right, Leon, let me think about it. And so he I could I go home, go back to the Gracie Academy to train, and he calls me in. He goes, I thought about it. Okay, when a fighter, whatever you said, you can't fight anymore. I said, Can't intelligently defend himself. He goes, Ah, that's that's it. He goes, You can stop the fight. I said, Okay. And that became UFC 3, and that's when I started stopping fights. And things just evolved with every show. There was a rule that would come up, or something something that would happen that I say, Hey, you need to do something about this. Some of those rules, even though they were kind of stupid, are still in the sport today.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

So I think it's worth it for our listeners or for our viewers to know, especially if you're they're younger, that at the period of time that you're talking about, there's a lot of stuff that was not at all prohibited that is prohibited now. Like, for example, stomping, upkicking, stomping on a guy's head, hitting the back of the head, elbows in any direction, just like basically anything that wasn't an eye gouge or a fish hook or a biting.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Nope. Fish hooking came in after UFC six.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Oh, fish hook. UFC one had three three rules. Those three rules were no biting, no eye gouging, and no groin shots. That was the three three rules of UFC one. Well, some of the fighters complain, and so there were some other people outside that did not fight that were martial artists saying, Well, if I had groin shots that was allowed, then I would I would, you know, and so they go, okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

So when I left because I remember that they allowed groin shots.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Oh, yeah. When I started a UFC two, there were two rules no biting and no eye biting. The butt the groin shots, go ahead. So and all these things, like I said, just started to occur during fights, and it was like, hey, the fish hooking came. It was Tank Abbott. Tank Abbott is fighting Oleg Tukhtarov. And as a little kid, I had seen my dad in a fight at Dodger Stadium. And there were some people there, they found out that there was a group of police officers, and they're all SWAT officers, and they started throwing beer down on top of the reputing, and all of a sudden the two sides meet, and there's a giant brawl that happens. And I see my dad, because I and I had one of these little Dodger bats at the time. This little I remember. Yeah. So I had that and I see my dad, he grabs this one guy that had cut, he had a box cutter, so he had a razor blade, and he had cut one of the guys across the side of the neck really bad, and he grabs a hold of him and he grabbed him in a way that looked weird because it looked like he grabbed him by the collar, but he actually grabbed him by the face.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Fingers inside the cheeks.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

Yep, and picked him up and boom, and he pulled and dives down the guy's head into the seats, right? I didn't think anything. I'm looking at it. That's my dad fighting, and all of a sudden he grabs it, brings him back up, and he's the guy's out. But the guy is split from all the way down from the lip here, all the way up to the eye. And he had a mustache on it. And I remember he kind of was like, and his lip was, and I was like, What was that? Right. And my dad looks at me and he goes, That's fish hooking, don't you ever do it, right? So that's all I knew. Well, then I see Tank Abbott, he's with Oleg Tatarov and he's trying to do this. Yeah. And what's the defense? The defense is to bite. So look, I can't have someone sticking their fingers in someone's mouth when the person can't bite to try to do that. So after UFC six, it became no fish hooking. So that's how these rules came about.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

That is very interesting. So, all right, I want to talk to you about the rules, but I'm gonna hold that for a minute because I want to keep talking about the nature of refereing for a minute. To be a good referee, not learned traits. Do you think there are natural traits that someone has to have, or do you think everything you need to be a good referee can be learned? Let's start there.

SPEAKER_03 34:03

I think that there are natural traits that will help someone be successful over another person. And one of those things is the ability to make a decision. A lot of people get lost in the well, should I, should I not? Should I, should I not? One of the things I tried to tell people when I started teaching them was the more you know, the calmer you're gonna be because you understand is the person in trouble? What's gonna cause problems? Are they defending it correctly? All the things that you know will calm you down and make the job easier. It's what you don't know, it's the unknown that creates now an intensity in the elevation of your heart rate, in the elevation of sometimes people that panic. There are people that I don't give a damn what is going on, they don't panic. And there's people that panic off of just nothing. You look and you go, Why are you panicking? And panic is an emotion that will never help you, it will only do bad things for you. The people that can make decisions and that are calm throughout the storm, those are the ones that are gonna be apt to do better as a referee because they don't get caught up in that minutiae that will create the panic and the apprehensiveness of do I or do I not. So the more you know about the sport, the more you know about submissions, the more you know about stand-up and the ability to see, and not everyone has it, the ability to see when someone gets hit. Fighters are they're great at playing poker. That's their job. Masking pain. Their job is to mask when they're hurt, to say, no, that didn't hurt. Your job is to say, you're right, you didn't get hurt, or nope, you're lying, that hurt. I can see it. And so I I also say that those things can be learned to a point as far as understanding when someone what you're seeing and what did hurt someone and what didn't? But the only way to really learn those things is to do those things. There was a famous fight that took place where I was put in the position of talking to the referee that was in charge of it, and then afterwards the referee comes out of the cage and they said, Oh, hey, can we talk about that fight? I said, Yeah, let's talk about that fight. And I said, Look, I got one question for you right now. Has anyone in your life ever just beat the living shit out of you? Right? And they looked, well, no. I said, Okay. I said, that needs to happen, and it needs to happen because you need to understand what it's like. You need to understand that your job is to have compassion for a person when they're showing that they have no ability to stop what somebody is doing in a situation and you're the person that's there to help them out of that situation, but you don't because you don't understand what it's like to be that person. And I said, you know, no disrespect, but you need to have someone do that to you. If you've never been hit in the face, if you've never been put in how many people have, Dave, have you seen the talk about well, just push them off on the ground? And they have no concept of how much pressure that fighter is under at the time. He's just laying on him, right? And you go, really? And you come here, let me show you. Right. And then all of a sudden you put, you know, just you put a tiny bit of pressure on them, not even close to what you can, and they're like, Oh my god. Oh my god. Let me tell you. They're getting claustrophobic and they can't breathe, and all that. And so these are the things that the training of the referees and most of the referees nowadays, they all train. But it was a big problem in the beginning of the sport. We had a lot of referees that they did not train in the sport. They came from it something different, they came from a mue thai background as far as they were doing muy thai fights or boxing or something, and they had no concept of what it took to get someone in a certain position, had no concept of what was an advantage in the fight compared to one position over another. And it created situations where fighters were cheated. They were taken out of positions that they should never have been taken out of. And so nowadays you look at the people that are that are refereeing for the most part, all of them roll. They they may not roll in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, some do catch wrestling, but it's the submission game, and that's fine. As long as you're apt in what you're looking at and you understand, that's what you need to do. And when it comes to the stand-up, you got to know when someone is they're on their back foot and they can't seem to get off of it and what that's doing to their offense and everything. And all these little things that again help slow the fight down for you because you can see it and that wait, when you are a refereeing, you're never watching both fighters 50, 50. You're always watching one. I'll be honest. If I'm refereeing, if someone wants to know who I think is winning, that's the one I'm not watching. You're not watching, exactly. Okay, I'm watching the one that I go, this is the person that's having a problem. But that's what you do, and that's why people go, Oh, you got the greatest seat in the house. Now I'm not watching the fight like you. You know, it's totally different, it is completely different. I'm watching usually one person about 90% of the time, and I watch the other one about 10.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

That is super interesting. And of course, it makes sense to me what you're saying about it's important that the referees have their own experience as fighters. I totally agree with that. I think it especially in the early days of the UFC, it wasn't just the refereeing that was whacked out. I mean, the commentary was just absurdly because they didn't know what they were looking at either. Joe helped out a lot, right? Because Joe was training with Eddie Bravo. So then you started to get people that actually were commenting who actually understand what they're looking at.

SPEAKER_03 39:35

Hell, you were around Joe Rogan. I was around Joe Rogan as far as trading and stuff. And Joe did so much. First off, I love Jeff Blatnik, and Jeff was a guy that I would roll with and try to explain stuff to him so he got better with it and stuff. Because he came from a wrestling background. He's very similar to the way Dan Corrimier is today. And the fact that, look, he came from that wrestling background, that's his strong suit, that's where he really can give you an idea of what's what should be done or if something's being done right. Where he had the problem was the submission game just didn't meld itself. Well, when Joe came in, Joe did such a good job. And I always love when people badmouth Joe and I go, Do you have any concept of what he has done for this sport? His ability to make things simple for the average person watching out there, but to also give it some heightened excitement off of hey, this is really a good thing, what he's doing right here and stuff. That's not an easy thing to do. And he's the gold standard of and will always be. No matter, you know, someday Joe will be gone as far as commentating and stuff, but everyone will be held eventually to a his standard of the way he brought it, excitement and an educational background with what's going on in the sport.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

I agree. And honestly, I would say the same thing, and it's already occurred with you, that you are the gold standard for refereeing. And we'll talk more about your return in a minute. But I'm just noting that to the extent that referees should have some fight experience, I agree. I think it's good for them to have both stand-up and grappling experience, especially the grappling to understand what's going on. I think that the BJJ or the grappling in general is more accessible if you are someone who's let's just say you're interested in getting into MMA refereeing, and maybe you're not young, but you're very interested, you're a fan in the sport, and we will talk about your command program coming up. But it's more accessible to you to start training BJJ than it probably is for you to start kickboxing at 40 or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 41:30

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

But do you feel if someone is a uh is a stand-up enthusiast, but their actual personal experience is on the ground, is that good enough for an MMA referee?

SPEAKER_03 41:44

Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of schools out there that if you're gonna spar, they have someone there that's smart enough to say, hey, we're gonna go light, and it's a light spar. And that's really no worse than rolling. Because the one thing I love about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is you can do it at any age. And there comes a point where even if you've done it for 30 years, you're slowing down. We all do it. And with that, if you with all the knowledge you have and everything that you've accomplished in your athletic career through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Dave, it's amazing what you have accomplished, but there's just a difference. It's different, yes, and it's that's what happens with age hundred percent. So when you go in, and this is the problem, it's the same as when I go in. I go into a school, you go into a school that's not the one that you normally train at, or you get someone new there at the one that you do, and then go to roll. You got a target on your back because people go, that's Dave Myers, he's a coral belt. Oh my god. Do you realize what he's done? And so the it's just inevitable. The purple belts, the brown belts, and whatever black belts are in there, dude. They're like, I want to see if I can tap him. It's one of those you got to go, hey, I just want to enjoy myself and roll. And you want to go competitive, then we'll do that for a short bit if that's what you want to do. But you can't, it's this whole thing, and it's like the the aura of Hickson. Look, I trained with Hicks, and he was phenomenal. He was ungodly good. But the one thing I tell everyone, dude, he he was as basic as it got, and it was you look and you go, he was so good with those basics that it was, I mean, just spot on when it came to you want to have a 190-pound guy feel like 600 pounds on top of you. Hicks and Gracie is the guy to show you how that's done because he could pinpoint that pressure and he could do these things. You see people now saying, Well, I don't think Hicks and Gracie they should put Hicks and Gracie against Gordon Ryan. It's like, would you stop? He's he's close to 70 years old right now. Are you kidding me? And it's like there comes a point where we none of us can do the same things that we used to do, or if we're gonna train, we need to train smart and not have people trying to rip. Our heads off all the time because we get hurt, and that injury, instead of it healing, it just never goes away. We don't come back as fast.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

No, I think what you're saying is very true. I do think it is possible for someone who doesn't have a stand-up fighting experience to get into a good school and do some light sparring and get some experience in a way that's not going to get hurt. I think you can do that at most any age within reason. I totally agree with that. And before we started recording, you had mentioned the bling that I've got on the wall behind me here. But that bling is all grappling. Yeah. Not on one of those championships was anyone taking a swing at my face. That's right. Now, and that is a very different experience. Now I have had that because I've trained with Caesar and his guys and stuff like that. But that's not what's represented there. And I do think that is just a whole different level when someone is throwing a punch or a kick at you than they are when they're grappling jiu-jitsu. I think you want it both. You want to have some experience with both.

SPEAKER_03 44:52

Yeah. It's funny you bring up Caesar. Caesar's a phenomenal grappler and just a fantastic coach. But you go back and you know, I got in trouble with uh, and it was based not on Caesar's fault, but Caesar was gonna fight Frank Shamrock in Strike Force, the very first strike force. I remember. Uh I had at the time the guy who was in charge of the California Athletic Commission, he calls me and he says, Hey, this is gonna be the very first show that we do here in the state of California, and I want you to do the main event. And I told him, I said, Look, I do not in any way mean to be disrespectful. I said, but that's a fight that you should never make, right? And he goes, What do you mean? And I said, Look, Caesar Gracie is a phenomenal grappler. I said, he is not a fighter. There is a difference. I go, you can't tell me that he's had a professional fight. He goes, he's had 14. He's 14 and all. I said, that's not a real record. I said, that's someone creating something so he can get in this fight against Frank Shamrock. I said, look, Frank Shamrock is a real fighter. He is a true mixed martial artist. And he is absolutely one of the best there is at this time. And to put Caesar against him is just not. It's not what we're supposed to be about. We're supposed to put about evenly competitive matches. I said, if you want to put them in a grappling match, I'm going to tell you that's competitive and I'll give Caesar Gracie the edge. You want to put him in an MMA fight, I'm telling you, this is not the right thing to do. And so I said, I appreciate you offering me that. I'm going to turn it down. And that got me in trouble. Got me in trouble big time. But I thought it was the right thing to do because I know this sounds weird. I care about Caesar. And I didn't want to see Caesar getting hurt. But I knew that he was around obviously his guys that he taught, being Nate and Nick and Gilbert and Jake. They all could fight. It doesn't mean that you, as their coach, can fight. And especially when you're put into that situation where zero to a hundred, where you've never been there before. Never been there, never been through, and they had the biggest crowd in North American history at the time at 18,900 people or something. People have no concept at how intimidating that is, no matter who you are, when you've never made that walk. And so I just felt that it was unfair to Caesar at the time. So I got in trouble for that one.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Well, and spoiler alert to the people don't know, it was Caesar got knocked out in I don't know, 20 seconds, something like that. He went toe-to-toe, and I talked to him about that. I was one of those people there that night. But he came out, he says he just, and this really is, in a sense, validating what you were saying. He said he just turned into fight mode and went toe-to-toe and wanted to start swinging instead of doing what was his thing, which is keep the distance and close the distance safely. And you could say that's because he didn't have the although he had been many times at the edge of the ring, obviously. Absolutely. Very different than being in the cage, right? Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_03 47:43

It was Armando Garcia, who was the executive officer of California. And I told him, I said, Armando, that fight won't last one minute. I said, one minute, it will be over. And he he goes, I can't believe that you go. He said, make predictions. And I go, I'm just giving you facts. And so that the fight lasted 21 seconds. And he called me afterwards. And he goes, All right, I apologize that I didn't listen to you. And I go, that's okay. It's no problem. Didn't mean that he didn't give me another show or anything to do the next time. He was still mad at me, but he did call me and said, You were right. I felt bad about it. I really did.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

So I'll finish that up just by saying there had been some bad blood or whatever it was that they did that. I think they repaired that up. But kudos to both of them for getting in there and to Caesar for having the guts to do it. Oh, absolutely. And he is legitimately a phenomenal grappler and a phenomenal fighter. It's just you were stepping against the best in the world at the time class.

SPEAKER_03 48:38

Yeah. I mean, you look and you go, hey, if Caesar said, hey, I'm going to start fighting, awesome. Let's put him in a position where it's reasonable. It doesn't matter how good I can sit there and say the same thing about Gordon Ryan right now. Gordon Ryan is remarkable. Okay. Craig Jones is remarkable as far as what they can do on the mat. I wouldn't put him in a fight against a top flight fighter right now. They'd get killed. That's just the way it is.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

So moving back to refereeing for a second, obviously we're talking about the referee needs to understand the mechanics of what's going on. They need to understand when someone's in danger. They need to understand what's likely to happen. Do you think is there a value in their authority if fighters know that they have skills themselves? Like in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, in the early days, it was always a BJJ black belt who was refing the match. And that was definitely authority because if you're a blue belt, you're not going to like talk back to the black belt referee. Nowadays that's not the case, but they are, at least IBJJF, is trying to train referees better than they did back then.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

I can tell you horrible stories of stuff going on back then. But I'm guessing as I say this, basketball matches, boxing matches, they don't need a former world champion to be a referee for people to respect the position of referee. So I'm guessing, I'm answering my own question that you don't have to be a great MMA fighter to have respect from the fighters in the match, but you do have to project authority.

SPEAKER_03 49:57

Yeah, you have to project that you're in control. You know what you're doing, and you will handle something if it needs to be handled. You get people all the time saying, oh, they need to have ex-fighters be judges and referees. And it's like sometimes, sometimes there's some of them that can do it, but I've tried to train a bunch of them. And it's one of those things that's not exactly what people think. And it's the the fact of like Chuck Liddell was a phenomenal fighter, but he wasn't a phenomenal coach. John Hackman was a good coach. And Chuck he would help people, but he's not the guy that's gonna be that guy that's the greatest coach. Greg Jackson, where does Greg Jackson fight? He doesn't fight, he's a black belt and jujitsu and stuff, but man, he's amazing. And so you don't always have to be this everything. And right now, I've had fighters that Frank Trig is a guy that he came to my course, and the first time he came as a commentator to try to learn what was the mechanics of what a referee was supposed to do, the judges, what the criteria was, what the referee is they're making the decision, what it should be. And he took the course, and then I said, Yeah, you don't have to do testing or anything like that. And he goes, No, I want to do the testing. I said, Okay. So he does the testing and he failed. He comes to me, he says, Well, I I can't fail. I said, Well, you can, and you did. I said, You know, if you want to come back on another time, he says, He goes, I want to be a referee. And I go, All right. I said, You want to come back and try again this time? You can do it going through the court. And he came back and I failed him again. And one of his biggest problems was he had a very difficult time in that fighters will look at a fight a specific way, and that many times it's like, hey, they're warriors, let them go out on their shield. That's not your job as a referee. Okay. Your job is to understand, depending upon the fight, because not all fights are the same. And when people say they are, that's just bullshit. It's a lie. There are varying degrees of how much damage you're gonna allow someone to take based upon where that fight is at, as far as in their career. When it's a new fighter and there's first or second fight, you're not gonna let that person take a ton of damage because that can affect them for the rest of their career. Everyone thinks a loss is this, oh my god, it's the end of the world. It's not, it's a fight. And you know what? At the end of it, your kids are gonna love you, and your wife's gonna love you, and your mom and dad's still gonna love you, and it doesn't matter, and you're gonna be just fine because the sun's gonna come up the next day. But fans put so much onto it that it's you know, let them go out on their shield. It's like, no, your job in that early fight is to take care of them and make sure that they come out as undamaged as possible. Every professional fighter, they get paid to get damaged. I know that's not a nice thing to say, but that's part of what they get paid for. They're gonna take damage. You don't want them to take unnecessary damage, and there's a difference between the two. When you're talking about fights, though, fights in themselves, there's a difference between being the first fight on a fight card and being on the main card. And there's a difference between being on the main card and being in a main event. And there's a difference between being the main event and a world title fight. There's just differences in all of them, and you're gonna allow those fighters that are getting into the fights where the world title fights, a world title fight for the most part, that's something that's earned. You have gone through a gauntlet of people and come out with wins to move yourself into a position where now you finally get this opportunity of fighting for the world title. I'm gonna let you swim out into the ocean into the deepest waters there are, okay? But when it comes to the point when you're drowning and now your head is underwater, that's my time to get you out of this because I'm not gonna let you drown, meaning I'm not gonna let you come out of this fight. You're always gonna come out a little bit worse. I'm not gonna sit there and lie about it and say it, but I want you to be of the ability to, if you decide to come back and do this again, that is a possibility. It's not that I've let you take so much damage and let you go to the ends of the earth to try to just stay in a fight that is clear that you're not gonna win. I'm not gonna let that damage occur because you'll never get that back. So I always say, I'll let you swim out in deep waters, but when you're drowning, I'm gonna get you out of that water. And that's really what a referee is there for.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

That would build my confidence. I mean, I've always thought if I were to have, I was past the age when UFC basically started, but if I were to fight like that, I would have more confidence to do it if I had a John McCarthy in the ring, knowing, even if I have a corner, because they can't see everything that's going on, and they're emotionally invested too.

SPEAKER_03 54:33

They are emotionally invested.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

But if I have a John McCarthy in the ring that I trust, we don't need that in jujitsu matches, right? Because no one's hitting on our head. So I am watching everything happen. I know when to tap, I can tap if I need to. And if I'm conscious, no big deal. I go unconscious from a choke. That I'm not gonna have brain damage from that, that's fine. But I would feel much more confident having a John McCarthy in there knowing that in that situation you're there to do that. And that would, I think, let me fight better, actually, knowing that's there.

SPEAKER_03 55:03

It does. And you're always gonna get the fighters in there, you know, in the back when we we do fight instructions and stuff. A lot of people think we're going over the rules and stuff, and it's you know that's very minimal. What I'm really going over in the back when I talk to a fighter is what are the things that I'm gonna be saying to the fighter in given circumstances and what I expect of them for me to allow that fight to continue on. When you get hurt with a shot and you go down, if you're gonna cover up, that's fine. I'll let you cover up. You can cover up, but how long are you gonna stay there being covered up? And when you now are going from being a fighter who's just protecting himself to a fighter that has now become a punching bag, there's a difference. And the referee needs to be able to pick that difference out. And so you're gonna say certain things, you're like, you're gonna tell him. I would tell you, Dave, I'm gonna call out your name, I'm gonna say, Dave, move, get out. Okay, in that situation, those are the words I'm gonna use. What I expect out of you is I expect you to try to move the position, try to take away what they're attacking you with. I don't care if you're successful, I care that you're trying. Because if you're trying, it's telling me that is still working, and that's what I need to see. It's when you don't try or you can't, because you're stuck in a position that they have you in that you cannot get yourself out of and you're just accepting damage. I'm telling you right now, the fight's gonna come to an end. And these are the things you put out there, and every fighter says, John, you just don't stop my fight, don't stop my fight. Okay, you know what I'm gonna let go. There's ones that I let go that people will go and say, Oh, you shouldn't have stopped that. One that was Nick Diaz fought Paul Daly in Strike Force in one of the last shows in Strike Force, and it was in San Diego. And I it's the only time that I ever wish, because I hate the camera things that some of these promotions want to put on, it was the one time I wish I had a camera on me.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

So the audience could see what you were seeing.

SPEAKER_03 56:53

So the audience could actually see at a moment in time when Nick hits Paul Daly with a body shot, and you can hear all the air go out of him. And one of the things that we'll tell fighters is all the time, look, if you get in a bad situation, move, grab, hold on, do these things. I don't want to see you set your feet and just start swinging because that's telling me that you're not fighting real smart.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

You're losing your composure, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:15

Exactly. And so Paul sets his feet, he starts swinging, right? And Nick comes after him with one shot. He ends up swinging so hard he goes down, but he's hurt from the body shot. And Nick comes over the top of him and he hits him with one left hand, but hits him with a right hand, and his left eye is looking straight up and it does a left hand turn. It just goes. And so he's got one eye looking straight up, and one eye goes and does a left-hand turn. And I was like, ah, and I stopped the fight based upon what I'm looking at. Is hey, his brain's getting shut off there. I don't want him to accept unnecessary damage. The fight had like two seconds left in that round, and it's considered the best one round of MMA there's ever been. It was incredible. Those guys were just crazy. But do you think I wanted to stop the fight? I wanted to see a second round. I'm enjoying the shit out of this. But my job says you need to stop this fight, and that's what you do.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

So I'm gonna make a really weird analogy. You gotta work with me on this a little bit. I don't know if you know, I'm very into animal welfare, dog and cat stuff. And people come to me sometime when their animals are very sick, and we have the opportunity to do euthanasia. Like a pet owner can say, Look, it's time, it's not time. We have this sort of we can play God. And I tell people, and I think this could be a little bit different than the referee search, but I tell people, like, you're never gonna feel like you got it right, because if you think, well, my animal's suffering, but maybe they could have one more day, maybe they could have one more week, and you say, Let's make the decision, let's put them down. You kind of had this nagging feeling like, oh, maybe, maybe it could, they could have had another week or another month with me. Or you have the feeling of like, gee, now that they're gone anyway, why did I make them live that last three weeks because it was never going to get better? So there's this sense of you're making this decision, you're never gonna be happy with the decision because you're always gonna feel like you did it too soon or did it too late. So I just tell people the decision is done in the end, just do it and I give them some coaching on that. But it feels to me a little like the same, except I think you can have the feeling that you know when you get it right. You might do it too soon, you might do it too late, but you know when you get it right. Just pausing the interview again to pop in and ask you a question in the audience where do you think we should draw the line on when a referee can stop the fight? Do you think a referee should be more protective, or should fighters have the right to take their beating? I'm genuinely curious. So let me know in the comment section on the YouTube video if you can make a comment. And now back to the show. Do you ever get fighters who thank you after the fact, say thanks for that stoppage?

SPEAKER_03 59:47

You do. Most of the time, what's you'll get the ones that you know basify-fine, I could have gone out. Well, yeah, and this is what people need to understand is when you have a fighter and they get knocked out, okay? One shot, boom, they're out. And then you're coming in to stop it, and the fighter gets one more, and that actually wakes the person up. And this is something that back a long time ago, when I started working with, there's a an association called the ARP, the Association of Ringside Physicians. They're fantastic. And I started teaching for them and stuff. They were super uncomfortable with all kinds of things, they were super uncomfortable with chokes, especially I would bring someone, a Felicia Ode, and have her choke me out in front of them. And they're like, Don't do that. And it's like, stop. Do you understand how many times I've been choked unconscious? Okay. It's part of what we do. And most of the time, I'm not going to let it happen. I'm going to tap because it's training and it doesn't matter. But it's also not something to fear. It's not something that is. I tell people all the time, when a submission is put on, I go, Thank God. Because I know, unless it's an arm lock or certain things like you can get into heel hooks and those are nasty. But any choke for the most part, oh, thank God. It's the most humane way to end a fight. Oh, it's fantastic. And it's like, this is gonna this is great. I know they're not gonna get hurt. It's the punching and the elbows, and those are the ones that go, oh man, you know, can I let this go on? But they would be in this position where they just didn't understand what was occurring and what it was with the fighter. And one of the things I would ask them is, let me ask you a simple question. If a fighter gets hit with a shot and goes out, if I hit them with another big shot, can that bring them back? And they would all go, no, that's not gonna happen. It's just gonna intensify that and knock out the concussion. And I go, okay, here, boom. And I'd throw a DVD in and say, watch these. And you would see all of them where a person, they're out, boom, going down, and they get hit and they come back, or they hit the ground and come back. And so those are the ones that the fighter themselves, first off, they didn't feel the shot that that hurt them that put them out. And second off, that was a moment in time that was taken from them forever. The only way that they're gonna know that's what really happened is to watch it. And they sit down and watch the video, yeah. Exactly later on. Exactly. And so you sit there and you do a lot of no John, you're wrong. Yeah, yeah. I said, I know I'm wrong. Just do me a favor and watch the video. You watch the video, you come talk to me, and I'll tell you how wrong I am, right? And that's all you can do. You can't take it personal. Yeah. And that's one of the things as a referee. Referees, for the most part, they've learned. And you got to go through the fire. You gotta go through this, and you gotta understand, you know what, I can't please everyone, and I'm not gonna make everybody happy. But what I gotta do is make it to where I know it was right. And the ones that bother me the most always are the ones where I'll look and I'll go, did I let them take one too many? I'm not so concerned about the ones that, you know what, oh, someone thinks that's early. I'm fine with those. It's did I let them take that one shot that, you know what, that was one too many.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

That's the compassion in you. And yeah, people think only in terms of the fights, even the fighters think in only in terms of the fights, but we know very well that most of their life is gonna be not as a fighter anymore, and they're gonna have to live with whatever damage. So they're gonna be remembering that 40 years from now.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:55

Yeah, and they're gonna be well, and not only to remember sometimes they won't remember it, but yeah, they will be living with the effects of it for the rest of their life. And it's it's when you're close to the fighters. I always tell people, Dave, it's like when you walk into a competition, and even when you're not competing, and you walk into the arena that it's at, and you get to go and you know everyone, and you're sitting there and you see people and you start talking, and people have no idea how priceless that is. Just those moments that you get to be around and be with something that you love and around people that will love it too, and you get to just sit there and talk about things that are occurring and compare notes, and it's priceless. I tell people all the time I don't get paid to referee. I get paid to get on an airplane because I hate flying, I hate travel. I hear you. And to sit there and tell the world that, hey, I would referee for free. I would because I love just the entire package that comes with it. I love the ability to walk into arena and not have to pay for a ticket. I get to walk past the security, I get to walk down to that ring or cage, be it boxing or MMA. I get to go in the back and talk with trainers that I appreciate how good they are at what they do and the fighters themselves. Yeah. And that you can't put a price on it. It is absolutely the greatest thing ever. And that's something that I would hope that everyone has something like that that that can represent in their life.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:22

I agree. I think, and a lot of the people I've talked to about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, specifically, about martial arts in general, talk about the camaraderie, the other benefits besides fighting. Obviously, there's hopefully health, although if you don't damage your health too much. But yeah, the camaraderie, the life-affirming nature of it, it's very good. It sounds like you get that. And I can understand it's an exciting thing, and you're a part of it, and you get to be a part of this energy.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:43

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

What I hear you talking about in terms of that ability to make those calls is leadership. This strikes me as someone who can make a decision, who can take the heat from that decision if they need to take the heat, someone who can be calm under pressure, someone who maybe can make a mistake and admit that and learn from it. This sounds to me like the basic building blocks of what it means to be a good leader.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:06

Is that how you see absolutely you're 100% correct? I went to a thing where Magic Johnson was at, and there was a group that they put together and probably 35, 40 people, and he was talking to them. And it was one of the greatest experiences I ever had as far as just listening to another person talk because he's got all these people out there that talk about leadership. And Magic Johnson is being asked questions about specific things that happened in his career, and not once in that talk did he ever take credit for anything that he did that you knew he did. And as soon as someone would ask, he says, Oh, let me explain to you, he says, James Worthy in that game, and he would go into this whole thing on James Worthy. If you watch this and you do that, he made it so easy for me to be able to get free in this situation. More Kareem, he did this. And then when there was something that happened that didn't go this way, he says he would sit there and one. Hundred percent take full responsibility, even when you knew it wasn't him. He says, Well, let me tell you that was actually me. That was my responsibility. I was the one that failed in this situation. And you look and you go, Yep, that's why he's a winner. Because he doesn't make excuses. And that's the one thing that I will tell you when it comes to referee. And I I try to tell everyone that I'm associated with, don't make excuses. Don't sit there and try to tell me, well, John, this is what happened. No, stop. You know that there was a problem. Okay. So what was the problem? Let's figure that out first. Okay. So now we've identified what the problem was. How do we fix that problem? All right. Let's go through this thing and figure out here's your answer. This is how you make sure it doesn't happen again. Now that you have that answer, move on. But don't ever sit there and make the excuse that doesn't allow you to come up with the answer on how to fix it. You start to make excuses, you're never going to grow. And one of the things that I got out of teaching, and I think Herb Dean does this, he has a course, and I've talked to him about it. When you think about it, Dave, it's no different than being an instructor in BJJ. You're teaching people how to beat you, or you're teaching people how to take your job. You look and you go, is that really that smart? But the one thing that teaching has done for me is it made me better. I got so much better by teaching other people the things that I had made mistakes in and getting them past it also gave me the ability to figure out so many different ways of handling situations and making it to where those things don't occur with me. Now, there's always gonna be the ones that you never thought of because I tell people all the time I want you to sit down and think of problems and then answer the problems. I always say your body will readily go where your mind has already been. You listen to that little quote, and it's a matter of your body's gonna respond. If your mind has the answer, it's gonna go in that direction. It's similar to training. When you train something over and over again, you're doing it so your body automatically responds and just goes. And so by teaching, you learn that hey, there's so many different ways of handling this. Let's figure out those ways before they ever happen. That way, when they do happen, I'm gonna have the answer. I'm not sitting there guessing. And it sounds odd that you can come up with them, and you'll never come up with all of them. And I've had the ones where shit, never thought of that, but that caused me a problem. But it does work in the fact that you can put yourself in those situations just mentally, come up with your answer, and eventually it's gonna happen in the cage.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:39

So you're saying, and this is true in a lot of things, sometimes teaching something does make you better at it because you have to analyze it. Like you might be great at it, you might be a great referee, but if you have to impart that wisdom to someone else, you're gonna sort of deconstruct what you're doing and maybe think it through even better. Tell me about command. What are you doing with command and how does that work?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:57

Well, command is a program that I put together when Athletic Commission starts saying, hey, we need more referees. And they were right, they did. You can only have John McCarthy or her dean go or Mark go so many places. So they needed more. And so it was a matter of, okay, let me try to figure out what I can do to actually have something that I think will benefit the sport. And I'm being honest, when it came to it, I put a very high level on the pass rate was not going to be high. I was gonna put a high level on you had to attain and you still do 90% on every test that I give you. You get 100% on five of the tests, that's six tests, you get an 89%, you failed. I always looked at it and said, first off, not everyone's meant to be a pilot, not everyone's meant to be a police officer, not everyone's meant to be, you know, everything. It's just there's people that are designed for certain things and they're gonna excel, and there's people they're just never gonna get it. So I looked and said, if I'm gonna put people in the cage that I'm saying I'm putting my name behind to say, hey, I taught this person and I'm telling you that they can do this job. Obviously, they've got to come up through the ranks because one of the real problems you have, and it's with the individuals themselves, is I'll have people email me all the time. I want to be a UFC referee. It's like, stop, but you don't want that, okay? I'm just telling you right now, you have no idea pressure that you're putting yourself under, and you're not even close to prepared for it. Even the athletic commissions were a problem for me in that they would take someone that I taught and all of a sudden they're trying to push them. And I'm saying, slow down. This person is not ready for the pressure that you're going to be putting them under in that situation. Take them out of that fight. And this is someone that I like and I care about, but I because I care about them, I don't want them to fail. Now, could it be that they would have succeeded? It could have been. But looking at it with the knowledge that I had as far as the person and the situation, and I'm like, there's an 80% chance of failure here. Don't do that to them. So, you know, I had to get them to understand that they would call and ask me about a fight, and I said, Yeah, that person's ready for that fight. Or no, they're not. I was not going to put people through the situation of, oh, you just took a course and now you think you're going to go do the UFC. Think about an NFL referee. Where do they start? They start in Pee-Wee football. They go through Pee-Wee football and then get into high school football and then into either D D3, D2, D1, and then eventually they make it to the NFL. How many years do you think that takes? Right. But people want to they want to take a course, and in six months, they go, I'm ready. You're not ready. And I can show you so many failures of officials that thought they were ready. The pressure that comes with standing in that cage, you will say the UFC's cage. But when Herb Dean walks into that cage, his heart rate's at about 65. Okay, because he's done it how many times? Yeah. But you take the new guy that was with the state of Oklahoma, and yeah, you're going to put him in there, his heart rate's at about 145, standing still, doing nothing, because he's got all this adrenaline, has a fear of failure, he wants to do what's right. And you need to understand those situations and put people in positions to succeed, not to fail. And when I talk about the command course, that's one of my big things is I'm trying to put you in a position to succeed. One of those things is I test you and I test you hard. And if you don't meet those standards, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pass you. I'm not going to be the good guy that says, Oh, I'll let you slip through. And that can make me mean or whatever. And I don't care. I want people that are going to be a benefit to the sport and a benefit to the fighters. So with that, I started putting together the things that I thought were important. I used to have Felicia O and Brian Peterson doing techniques live, and then I decided I'll put it on a tape so I can do it from all these different angles and give that submission three different angles. So the person, you know, if you don't know it, that means you don't know it. But anytime there's something new, I was always throwing those things in and taking certain things out. Because if you don't know that, you know, everyone knows the mount. Okay. Well, if you don't know the mount, sorry, we got a problem. So it's always this game of trying to make sure that they understand the things that are occurring in the sport right now and then putting them in there with fighters. And the first day is mostly techniques, mechanics for referees, rules of the sport, what they're expected to do, all these things. And then the second day is mostly hands-on. And I get professional fighters, sometimes amateur fighters, to be with me. And I'll I'll take six to eight fighters because it's a long day for them, and put them through the ringer of, okay, this is what I want you to do. Don't do anything, just move around. I want you to take them down, get back up, do this, do that. But don't stop anybody, just let them move. Let them move, and so we can get them moving in the right position and understanding where they're supposed to be. And then from that, I'll tell them, hey, I want you to grab the shorts. I want you to grab the cage. I want you to grab inside of his glove, some little things. I'll give them five different things to do in that two minutes so that the person's gonna be in there. And we'll get done and say, All right, did we see any fouls? Right. The person, the other person went, nope, no, everything was good. And then everybody's standing on the outside. I said, Did we see any fouls? And everyone said, Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and they're they're pointing them out. And he goes, Oh, you're bullshitting me, right? And it's like, no, you've got to start becoming a referee, not a fan. And there's a different way of looking at the sport while you're refereeing than there is when you're watching it as a fan. So these are all the things that you're trying to get people through. And uh the course does a good job of getting someone prepared. And in California, if you pass my course, you're automatically going to be part of Camo, which is the California amateur mixed martial arts organization. And we start them off being an inspector, and you work as an inspector because you have to know what it's like to be in the back and what pan wraps are supposed to be like, and what gloves are supposed to be like, and the taping and all that stuff is part of what you're taught, but you need to see it in real time. And then from there, they'll start moving you into let's give you a fight. And it gets to a point where I believe now it's you have to have at least 200 fights under your belt for you to try to become part of the California State Athletic Commission if you're part of Camo. And so different organizations, ISKA and they have their own ways of doing things with other athletic commissions, but it's all a process. And it's a process that I tell people all the time this is gonna take your time, it's gonna take your money. Don't give me anything. How much money can I make? You're gonna lose money like a big dog. This is not about you making money. Do you love the sport of MMA? If you want to be part of this sport, you can be part of it, but it's definitely not gonna be something that's gonna benefit you financially. I don't care who you are, you get to the the upper levels, it's just not that much money.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:40

Right. That was certainly the case and is still the case with MMA, was definitely the case for fighters in MMA. You weren't doing it for the money, and even now, their money, the paydays are there, but only at the highest level. So you've got to be doing it because you actually love the sport and you want to fight.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:54

That's it. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:56

So I will be sure in the show notes to have links for command. I think it's MMA referee.com is website.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:02

That's the website for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:03

And I know you have these training sessions, they come up, they're in person. Are they always in Las Vegas?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:08

No, not always in Las Vegas. I do it in different places, but the next one that I have coming up will be at Extreme Coutures in Las Vegas, and that's from July 17th through the 19th. Okay. So that's the next course that I have.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:19

Okay. Can we talk a little bit just about the evolution of MMA? Yeah, a few minutes.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:23

Yeah, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:24

I really appreciate the time. So you, as we talked about, helped build that rule set for MMA, the unified, what are they called? The unified rules.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:32

Unified rules of MMA, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:34

Unified rules of MMA. And of course, the challenge there is to make the sport safe, keep it safe, but don't make it fake and you know keep it entertaining because it's not pro wrestling. A quick funny story. I have a memory, and I've got to talk to Art Davy about this, but I remember him coming to me. I had just started with the Machados, I had been there for a while, of him talking to me and saying that they were thinking about doing a Valley Tuto thing in the US, and me saying, Oh, it's way too violent, it'll never fly. And and I've always given that as an example of like really getting it wrong thing. But other people have told me, well, actually, Dave, you kind of got it right because what you were describing actually worked for a little while, but it wasn't gonna fly. It was gonna get shut down by the government and they had to start a student rule. So a couple questions. Is there anything you think that is generally legal today that you actually think shouldn't be legal, or vice versa, something that you think has been banned that you think is not so bad and should be allowed back in generally?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:33

If you're gonna say something that is illegal that I would say needs to be put back and support, yeah, yeah, I would tell you knees to the head of a grounded fighter is something that actually needs to be put back in. I can go through the entire realm of how things occurred and why, but back between after UFC 14, you gotta figure the UFC was in real trouble, like you were saying, because people had basically put it in the realm that these guys were thugs and that they were seriously hurting people and deaths were occurring, and that wasn't true. Let's be honest, all the way to the UFC is at UFC 328 right now, as far as numbered ones, but the UFC's probably done a thousand shows now with the fight nights and the ultimate fighters and everything, well over a thousand. Luckily, and I'm gonna say it luckily because it's part of it, but the fact that they also have done things right in having doctors that are on the staff of the UFC to help these guys and stuff, and just the sport in general, the UFC's never had that serious of injury that someone wasn't able to come back. There's some close ones, and some of them were in the early days. Cal Worsham got his ribs broken and punctured his lung and things like that. That's not that's a serious injury, but for the most part, the sport was showing itself that we had things going in the right direction, but there was a political attitude about it, and that John McCain was, you know, big about it. But yeah, yeah, and yet people have to understand okay, John McCain, was he so much against mixed martial arts? No, he you gotta figure his family owned beer distributing companies, and he was big in with boxing. And who was the biggest sponsor of boxing? Budweiser. And what did the UFC do? It took pay-per-view pennies away from boxing because people were making the decision now of which way they're gonna go. So you look and you go, All right, your motives were not exactly pure. But you know, he tried, and the way that he really almost succeeded wasn't what he first did, which was at UFC 8. He wrote letters to all the governors saying that this thing should be shut down. And that's what I first started ended up ending up in court because there was actually legal maneuvers to put a temporary restraining order on the show itself. But after those, he became part of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the cable industry, and he was he was the head of it. And with that, he had the ability to make deals, and he made deals with people like Time Warner. There was Tom Malone owned Time Warner at the time. His president was a guy named Leo Hendry, and Leo Hendry basically made a deal with John McCain, and that was hey, I'll take that off if I get this much for equipment and stuff. I need to have replaced, it's gonna take me time. I need to have these months that you're gonna allow me to have those times where I don't have to meet what you guys are trying to get. And so it became a political game, and so I wrote up at that time after UFC 14. I wrote up 18 rules for the sport and went to Denver, Colorado, where Leo Hendry was at, presented them to him and stuff, and he tried to, you know, well, first off, you guys allow groin strikes. Nope. If you look, that's not that's when I took groin strikes out. Headbutts came out, all these things, and one of them was knees to the head of a grounded fighter. And that was because we're I was trying to, all right, what doesn't look good to the average person? What is the thing that you can sit there and say, well, that's not allowed in this sport? All right, let me start taking those out. Headbutts was an easy one to take out, even though I'm being honest, at the time I knew I was creating a problem for someone like Mark Coleman because Mark Coleman was this wrestler that people would grab onto his arms and he would use his head to make him release his arms and stuff, and he was effective. And so those were the things that occurred with the rule changes, and they just kept kept occurring through time. But with everything that was going on, the rules gradually changed. Like I said, almost every show I would come up with something. Randy Couture was the one the one he would complain to me, goddammit, you're you you're changing rules. I've I've I've come up with something for this. I need to know if there's gonna be a rule change or something, and it was like, I don't blame him, but it was a matter of I would come up with something that I'd have to get it passed through things. Well, eventually, then the Zufa bought the UFC, and the unified rules came about based upon the very first show that Zufa did, which was UFC 30. And if you go back, it was Tito Ortiz against Evan Tanner in the main event. And Tito just does a body lock on Evan and picks him up and slams him, and they lost their minds because he he got knocked out from it and said, Oh, we need rules. I can't have because they had uh the IFC was a show that had been in New Jersey. Now the UFC had been there twice, and they said I can't have shows with different rules, and so that's how the unified rules came about, and that was just a that was uh an interesting time because again, you were dealing with people that had no concept of the sport, they had no concept of the ground, they had no concept of what was a true technique or not, and so there was things put in there, no downward pointed elbow strikes. It was like that's the 12-6 thing. 12-6, yeah, okay, yeah. And the truth is, okay, the 12-6 came about because I was there, and I'm trying to argue against a lot of these things that they're coming up with. And I'm saying that doesn't make sense, and this is what you're gonna end up causing a problem with. And there was a doctor that was there, his name was Dom Colletta, and he's a good guy, but he said, Oh, you know, I don't like that because they can do it. I said, Well, you've already said you can't hit the back of the head, you know, in this area and stuff, right? And they could hit back of the that's an illegal thing, so it has nothing to do with the strike itself, and it it really became well. I have a friend who he can break giant blocks of ice with an elbow strike like that, and I'm like, No, right? And so the ice doesn't hit back. This is totally different. But eventually I said, All right, let's clear so you're saying you can a sidekick, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:22

Anything, I don't care what it is. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:25

Holy cow, that's that is a powerful blow.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:28

And so you look and you go, All right, so and I tell him, I said, so you're saying that you don't want this straight up and down elbow strike. So we'll say 12 o'clock to six o'clock on a clock. Don't want that. He goes, Yeah. And I said, but if I do one, we'll say nine o'clock to three o'clock. That's okay. He goes, Yeah, that's fine. I said, So I take and I I come with a sweeping elbow like you just was allowed in Muita. That's good, right? Yeah, that's fine. I said, so then if I take and I go with 10 o'clock to four o'clock, that's fine. Yeah, you know, 11 o'clock to five o'clock, that's okay, right? Yeah, that's okay. Just not at 12 o'clock. I said, okay, great, got it. And so I'm thinking, okay, that's stupid, but I've gotten it down to where you can do just basically just not this, you know, straight up and down thing. And so then we were going with those rules. How the 12 to 6 became popular was I had Joe Stevenson was on the season two of The Ultimate Fighter, and he asked me about, hey, if I'm in guard, can I do this elbow strike into the top of their head? I said, Yeah, absolutely, you can. That's legal. He goes, Okay, great. And he goes and does his fight, it's the first fight of the show, right? He wins, no big thing. He's in the semifinals, and I'm back to do fights. But he's I have Forrest Griffin again, no, not Forrest Griffin. I have another one, and Herb is gonna have Joe Stevenson's fight. And all of a sudden, Joe Stevenson is running out to me and he says, John, yeah. He goes, Herb Dean says I can't do the strike that you said I could do. I said, What are you talking about? He goes, you know, in guard, I can hit the top of his head if I'm throwing.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:51

I said, Yeah, I said that's a 12 to 6 strike, but he's doing it while he's lying down on the mat.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:57

Exactly, which makes it it's not 12 to 6, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:00

So yes, okay. It depends where the clock is, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:03

Ah, and so and that's exactly so. I go, hey, I said, Joe, I'll go talk to Herb, right? So I go over and I I see Herb and say, Hey, but I go, Did you tell Joe Stevenson that on in the on his back in the guard he can't do this strike? And he goes, Yeah, Johnny can't do that. I said, Herb, that's not 12 to 6. I said, 12 to 6 is standing straight from the sky to the ground, right? And he goes, Yeah, but he goes, that's if the clock's on the wall, but if the clock's on the ceiling, he goes, That's 12 to 6. And I go, Herb, what have you ever seen a clock on a ceiling? Right? He goes, Well, I haven't, but it makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:36

So it's but it doesn't make sense because it's the weight behind the weight isn't behind it when you're doing it off your back, obviously.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:42

Exactly. And now that rule, there's only one place that rule still is applied. That's in New Jersey, because they still have not changed the rules since 2001, where we've made a lot of rule changes, and everywhere in the world that strike is now allowed.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:57

All right. So you think knees to a grounded fighter can come back?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:00

I would like to see it. I'm not saying I don't think it will.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:02

Yeah, you don't think it will.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:03

I don't think it will.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:04

Well, there's always a mixture, and you've articulated it so well, of what is actually dangerous and what just looks really bad and frightens people and frightens regulators and frightens politicians and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:16

Yeah. And it is perception.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:19

People uh they look at it, perception rules the world because if you believe something to be true, then you're not lying when you say, Oh, that's horrible. Because you believe that, even though you don't have the knowledge to back it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:30

Right. So these rule changes, they do affect the nature of the sport for sure. They affect what kind of fighters will excel. And actually, a lot of things do. I observe that, and I'm curious if you agree with me that if we were talking a fight that was, you know, this theoretical street fight, you would probably like to not go to the ground unless you are guaranteed this guy does not have a friend behind you who's gonna jump in on the fight. But if we know that we have a fight that is one-on-one, like any MMA fight is, I think it favors the grappler if you don't have time limits, because then there's not gonna be a stand-up at any point if you can stall. If you can make the fight go really, really long and you're a grappler and you've shut down a striker, you're probably eventually gonna win. And that's what we saw with Grazy Jujitsu in action and Hickson and things like that. If you have short rounds where no matter what happens at the end of the round, we're standing up again, that's gonna keep putting us into puncher-kicker range again and again and again. So, what are your thoughts about how this who is being favored now, or not who even, but what fighting moves are being favored by the sport today?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:36

I think if you're gonna be honest about things, if they had to do things to create a I don't want to say an advantage, but things for the striker themselves, you know, everything is about entertainment. You gotta be honest about it. People buy the tickets because they want to be entertained, they want great fights. Now action. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:55

That's the whole thing. And it doesn't matter if the action is on the ground or In the stand-up, they are happy. But it's when the especially when the fight goes to the ground and you have someone doing exactly what you're talking about of just controlling, that's when the booze will start. That's when the people will say, I'm not happy with what I am receiving for my money to be able to be here. You're not entertaining me. And so you have to have this balance. You know, obviously every round starts on the feet. Is that an advantage for the striker? Absolutely. But the whole point of this, and this is where I look at it to say, all right, makes sense. The sport started off, I say, as a spectacle, and it was a spectacle to basically promote Gracie Jiu Jitsu or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And it did it, it worked. I can remember how many students Horian had before the first UFC, and then two weeks after that for well, one week after that first UFC, he had a thousand people signing up, and then the second one occurred, and the same thing. I mean, it was just unbelievable how many people all of a sudden were now part of the school. And you look and you go, Okay, but the sport isn't about style so much anymore. Everybody does the same thing. Everybody does everything, yep. And if you don't, you're gonna fail. Really, the sport now comes down to how smart you are in the aspects of your training. How do you train? People talk about like the Dagestanis and what they're doing in the sport, okay? And you look and you go, are they really doing anything that we haven't seen? Habib wasn't the one that came up with the figure fouring the legs and things like that. Josh Thompson was doing that before. He taught it to Habib. Habib just took it and elevated it to a different level. And so there's all these things that you can look at. Their lifestyle has a lot to do with why they are so successful. They don't do things to damage their bodies. They don't do things, they don't do the drugs or the alcohol. And they're always together as a group. And so when one says I'm gonna go out for a run, they all go out for a run. When one says I'm gonna go lift weights, they all go and lift weights. Now, some of them are you know only lifting a little bit, not doing a whole lot, but they're still doing it. And they do things lifestyle-wise that you look and you go, that's what leads to being a good fighter, as far as if you have the techniques and everything, you're not doing things that damage your ability to be good. And a lot of fighters, and you know some of them, they do things that they're really good at fighting, but they're really bad at taking care of themselves and doing things that you go, oh, that's smart. No, that's the stupidest thing ever. That's counterproductive to what you're trying to do, but they'll do it, and so there's that aspect of it. Then there's also the aspect of the mental aspect, and everyone, they're different in that. Some people cannot, they cannot compartmentalize losing. They look at it as such a supreme failure in their life when you can break it down for them and go, was it really that bad? And it's not. You lost. Okay, it can happen to anyone. You know, biorhythms, just the things in our lives, everything changes, and your ability to be the successful on Monday can change from one Monday to the next.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:09

Sometimes the other there's two authors to this story, and you don't control one of them. The other guy might just be really great. I mean, but it's not a reflection on you.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:18

On this day, he does something that you just cannot stop. You haven't figured it out. But now that you figured it out, you can come back to the next one and you can be successful. But all those elements, that's what makes the sport so unique. Is first off, you have to be you don't have to be great. You don't have to be a great Brazilian jujitsu technician, but you have to be good. You don't have to be a great wrestler, but you have to be good. You don't have to be a great striker, but you gotta be good. Well, because if you're not, you're gonna be exploited in that area. And so it comes down to you don't have to be the master of anything. You have to be that person that is just good at all these things, and to figure out that you're never gonna be the master of one. When you have all these things that you have to learn and have to continue to build upon, you can't be the supreme guy that's the best at this. If you took again, I'll say Gordon Ryan, you took Gordon Ryan right now, and you say, Gordon, we're gonna be an MMA fighter, his jujitsu is gonna go down. It has to, because he can't put the time and effort into being that number one guy based upon he now has to do these other things that are diametrically opposed to what he has been successful at. And so just to be that person that is competent and good will make you a very good MMA fighter.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:42

Yeah, I agree with that, and also to excel at grappling, you're going to be doing things, some of the things you're gonna be doing will be things you absolutely should not be doing in an MMA fight.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:53

You know, as it's funny because I went, I did the Craig Jones invitational and really enjoyed the whole thing. But if there's one jujitsu has changed so much, and to watch just the top guys sitting on their butts with their legs crossed and their hands out, and I'm like, and I'm standing there thinking, and in a real fight, because everything started from what I knew from you know, the Gracies and Elio Gracie and stuff, and it was like he wanted to be a fighting system of fighting, yes, of fighting art. And you guys have compromised it now with rules to where Brazilian jujitsu tournaments or competitions do things that are diametrically opposed to you being a successful fighter. So yeah, you look and you go, everything's got to evolve in its own way, but the whole leg lock game and everything, it's all changed so much that you look and you go, that's why you can't be the best at everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:48

Because there's all this specialization. No, I'm right with you. I'm old school. I think it's so am I I think the evolution of BJJ, I think that's great. So long as people my buddy John Will in Australia, I don't know if you've ever encountered him, but he has really good perspectives on this too. And he says that what got him in is not what kept him in it for 35 years. He's also one of our first coral belts. And so that complexity of grappling and it's fun and it's never-ending and it's interesting, so long as you understand that's what you're training, right? So don't be doing that and thinking, oh, this is my street self-defense thing, if you're gonna be doing barumbolas and inversions and things like that. It's a jujitsu sport thing and it's great as that, and do that. But if your stated goal is I want to have the grappling to back me up as a fighter, then maybe you don't want to be spending too much time working on that stuff and you want to, how do I take this guy down? How do I get past his legs and how all the stuff that you described Hickson doing? Yep, it was true then, and it's true now, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:46

It's true.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:46

The fundamentals will work and they do work, right? Interestingly, John, you're mentioning as we get older, we slow down. I've taken my dings. You know, you're gonna drive your Cadillac down the highway of life, you're gonna take a few dings. So what ends up happening is you're contracting, right? You're not doing as much dynamic movement, and I obviously you've experienced this too in your grappling, in your striking, in anything. It's contracting to more basics. But for me, what it's contracting to in my jujitsu is the stuff that is timeless and always works. And people keep telling me that. They're like, I can't believe how much pressure you have. I can't believe how I can't get out of that. Because a lot of guys today in jujitsu, it's such a fluid moving game, they're not used to very much pressure at all. And then they come against an old school guy who says, That's a really interesting game you've got there. You're not gonna do it for two seconds with me because I'm gonna squash you like a bug. And then I'm gonna catch you in an arm bar from the mount like we were doing 30 years ago, because that shit works.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:41

Oh, yeah. As embarrassing as it is to say, Hickson, when he would roll with me, one of the things he would do all the time was, all right, left arm, meaning that's the only way he could submit me, and he'd freaking do it. Of course, it just pissed me off. Or he'd take his hands, stick them in his belt, and you would try to pass his guard, right? And it's just like, I hate how good you are. That's what made it so fascinating to me. And that's why I give you so much credit. You were part of the the what the first 12 American dirty dozen. Yeah, hey, when I met you, it was impressive how good you were with just with the basics and your movement and everything. And the only guy that seemed to give you problems in there was the Jean-Jacques. He gave every he gave everyone problems.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:24

Let's just be clear. So Jacques didn't give me problems, so Jacques played me like a baby.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:28

He did the same with me, so sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:30

Of course, of course.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:31

But it was like, God, it was so cool to be able to say that you were able to roll with those guys and do the things that you were able to do and I was able to do. It's like, who would have thunk?

SPEAKER_01 1:36:41

We were in the right place at the right time, yeah. Yeah. So tell me about your step away and now your return to refereeing.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:47

Yeah, well, my step away was based upon I got hurt. I got hurt in jujitsu. Well, the problem is in the position that I was at with a lot of people, is I have a lot of trainers, some officials, some fighters. They would sit there and they would, you know, hey, can you do this? Can you do that? What about this? Right. And a lot of times I go, Yeah, but that's not gonna work. And some things was like they would sit there, oh no, it works on everyone, dude. I'm telling you, you're gonna end up with someone that's definitely not gonna work. And so I had someone do something, and it was a supposed choke, it was more of a Japanese necktie. And I said, Okay, put it on me, go ahead. And so he's cranking me. It hurts. I'm I'm definitely feeling it, but I'm like, I can't tap because then it's telling him that, oh, it's gonna work. So I'm just I'll put up with it, put up with it. And finally he lets go. He goes, I don't know, I guess I'll okay, right? And I'm thinking, all right. I said, look at here's what this is what I'm telling you. When you have these things, but they're gonna work against people that are either not skilled or young in the sport of BJJ, and they're gonna tap because there's pain. I said, a real fighter is not gonna tap based upon just pain.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:55

Yeah, my buddy John, who I mentioned, calls that a mat tap. Yeah, it's a mat tap as opposed to a really your life's on this tap.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:02

Yeah, that's it. And so I got up from it the next day. I was like, man, I screwed myself up because my neck was just jacked. I was like, yeah, it and it just got worse quickly. Oh I started to atrophy, and I was getting these stingers going down my arm. If you get a stinger in football, it's the same thing, it's just nerve shooting down. Yeah, and it started off where it would happen, it would last about 15 seconds, and then about five minutes later, I'd get another one, and then about five minutes later, I'd get another one, and then all of a sudden that that time decreased to where it was. I was getting those 15-second things and to the point where it would be off for 15 seconds and back on. One uh operation they went and did, and I had a couple of discs replaced, but that didn't in the end do it. And so then they tried to do this other one where they're said I had six of the nerves are crushed, and so they could get five. And for one day, one day, I'm telling you, I had the operate, and all of a sudden I didn't have that pain. I was like, oh man, thank God. All right, it's done. One day later, it swapped to the other side. No, and I was like, You gotta be kidding me, right? And so that was my real out of what you know. Hey, I got to the point I could not lift my arm, I couldn't put a freaking backpack in an overhead thing. I would to pick up a potato chip, I'd have to use both arms. It got bad to the point where I was basically paralyzed on one side of you know, upper body, and so I ended up having another operation. I came back to referee, and there was one fight. It was the Rose Nami Units fought Joanna Janjachek the first time, and it was a championship fight, it was in New York. It was also the night I think of George St. Pierre and Michael Bisping. And I did both of those fights. But Rose ends up going against Joanna and she hits her with a left hook, puts her down, and everything. And most of the time, just the way that I realized it worked for me in referee was if I had lighter fighters, I had someone that was 125, 35, 45, all the way up to 55, I could take and hook my arm on their body and pick them up away from me.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:02

Yeah, you'd pull them up.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:02

I remember keep keep them away from being able to land those shots because it worked, and so I would do those things, and in that fight with Joanna and Rose, I'm looking and it's I got 115-pound women, so they're small, and I'm like, I don't know if I can pick her up at this point. All I do is I tell her stop, and I I banged her on the side, said stop, right? And she does, it looks perfect, no one would know, but I looked and said to myself, no, that's bad. I didn't stop it. She stopped, but what if she didn't? Now I'm running into a 115-pound woman to get her off. That's the way it was in the early days that I look stupid doing because that's what they wanted. And so I looked and said, you know what? I'm in a position where I can't do this the right way. And I started just thinking. And I actually had the UFC was doing a thing on Fox about me and stuff, and I get a call from Scott Coker, and he said, Hey, would you ever consider commentating? And I go, uh, yeah, I mean, I would consider. He goes, Well, I want you to audition for me. He goes, Jimmy Smith is gonna be going to the UFC and we're looking for a color commentator. He goes, and I want you to be one of the people that's gonna audition. And I said, uh, all right, let me think about it for a second, I'll give you a call back. So I you know, I talked to my wife, she says, This is perfect because then you're staying in the sport. So I call him back. I said, All right, when is it? Two days from now. I said, okay. So I fly out to do it, and I got the job. And so it was a way for me to stay with the sport because I love the sport and not have to worry about not being able to do my job the right way as far as officiating. I probably didn't do my job the right way as far as commentating, but I had a good time doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:41

I think you did a good job. I think you're a great commentator.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:44

Luckily, I was given that opportunity. You know, then when Bellator was basically dissolved, that was gone. I was doing the podcast, I was enjoying the podcast, but it was different in the fact that I didn't have people that I was going and seeing and just doing things with, commiserating, whatever it was, just having a beer. The camaraderie that you're looking for, that I always had with officiating and I kind of had with accommodating. And so I got to a point, I said, Yeah, I'm not happy. I'm just in a position of, hey, I just want the camaraderie. I don't know. I'm not so much that, hey, I have to go back and be the official. I called a couple of people and said, Hey, you know, what would you think about you know the we'd want you back as an official? Okay, I'll do that. But there's some there's some drawbacks to it, I know, and I go, but this is what I'm looking at. I immediately got licensed in a couple of states and they brought me back, and I'm not back with the UFC, and that's not gonna happen because Dana doesn't like the fact that I have worked with Bellator and stuff like that. That's okay, that's no problem. So I go and I do everything else, and I have a blast doing it. How's the body feeling these days? Great. My neck doesn't, you know, here, that's as high as my head, it'll go back. Okay. So I'm few there's a lot of metal in there, but it's working, and I just l I've learned to live with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:58

Well, I just want to call out the integrity that you showed when you because nobody else would have seen it, like you said. You're able to officiate, you're not expected to necessarily pull people off or dive in or whatever. But the fact that you are a very hands-on ref, which I always thought was incredibly cool, but to be able to say that and to be able to say, hey, I don't think I could do my job well when you're the only one who's seeing that, that's a lot of integrity.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:24

I'm impressed. I appreciate it. Thank you. No one likes to say that you're not as good as you once were, and I can say that, but the one thing that I have going for me now is through time and everything, I've been able to put myself in again these situations. And now it's funny because the very first fight that I came back and did. Well, it wasn't the first fight, it was the first show. But the last fight I did on that show was a really unusual knockout, one that I'd never seen. And it's one of the things that's happened throughout this time that I've come back. I've had things happen that never happened in the thousands upon thousands of fights I've done. I've had things happen in just this little brief period since I've been back that never happened before. I had a guy that, you know, he gets hit with an elbow, and I see the elbow get hit, and he takes a step forward and then he takes a step back, and all of a sudden he just starts falling, right? And I had started to move into position, and the his opponent's going after him, and I realized, oh man, he's gonna get to him. And so I kind of do the Bill Goldberg spirit. I hit him in the side to drive him away. He gets one shot out of, but I hit him, and it was like, move my head around. Okay, I'm all right, we're good. Yeah, and you look and you go, you gotta have those moments to say, all right, I can still do it if I have to, but you know, I try not to hit people. That's one of the things that I'm super embarrassed by.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:38

No, well, you mean like breaking someone's nose or something like that? Look, shut down.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:42

That was Brian Johnson. I did not break his, I did bloody his nose. That was okay. Yeah, but it was not broken, but yeah, I did blood. But yeah, that was a fight. You look and you go, You want I'm making the excuse now. He hit a guy, the guy he fought was a guy named Reza Nazari, but I remember all these things, and he hit him with an elbow that took his nose and put it into his left eye. Right? And they never showed it, they didn't show it's like they want to keep that stuff away, right? And he's looking at me and he goes, Damn, John, you hit my nose. I said, Man, I apologize. I go, but look at his. And that's what he goes, that's right. He's all and that's what they're showing is he's yelling at him, right? But yeah, I did, I did bloody his nose with my forearm. It was bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:21

Well, it's contact sport, and you're getting in there trying to break people up. You got to protect yourself too. Yeah, that's what you tell the fighters. I will also say that if people go online, they can find some of the videos of you're doing pre-fight talks with the fighters, which is super interesting. Everything that you've talked about here today. Why don't you really quick questions and I'll let you go? You've been super gracious with your time. One thing, just totally winding back, you had mentioned hearing someone was hit and you heard the sound of the wind going out of them. I just out of curiosity, how much is sound a thing for you as an MMA? Like, we're all able to see things. And you know, maybe the microphone catches uh some sound, but is sound an indicator for you of what's going on? Whether it's Absolutely Great question.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:01

Great question, yeah, because absolutely people in the viewing audience or people on TV, they don't get any of that. The real where they kind of got a little bit during COVID, you got a little bit of it. Because there wasn't a crowd cheering, because there wasn't the crowd, but there's things that are heard inside of the cage that no one ever hears but the referee. There's talk between the fighters that no one ever hears but the referee. There's sounds of the breaking of things that no one ever hears except the referee and the fighters. There's those moments, Rich Franklin when he fought Anderson Silva, back in the back talking about fight instructions, he talked to me about the clinch and hey, I want to be there. I think I'm stronger than him in the clinch. And so I said, Wait, as long as you're working, you know, I'm gonna let you go and all this stuff. Well, he gets put into the that Muay Thai clinch and he thinks that he's gonna break through, and he's got one way of doing it. He really didn't have a second way. And when he couldn't break out of it, you could see, like, uh oh, I got a problem here. And then he got hit with a knee to the solar plexus, and I heard all of his air go out of him. And this is how tough Rich Franklin was because he went another 45 seconds. I swear to you, Dave. I still remember the sound of uh as he was trying to breathe, trying to get air, and it just was not going, and he's still fighting and getting hit on, beat on. And I'm thinking of my during the time, I'm thinking, just go down and I'll stop it. Just go down and I'll get you out of here. And he tried until he got hit with a knee to the nose that put his nose over, and then that was the end. But yeah, sound is a huge indicator, and it's a huge indicator for the judges, also. It's one of the things you get a lot of people talking about putting the judges into rooms away from the actual arena itself, and you look and you go, nope, there's problems with where they seat judges at that now. The UFC at least gives them a big, they put them in a shitty place, but they give them a big monitor. So that's a good thing because they can look at that when they can't see the angle based upon poles and pads and things like that, they can at least see it there, but they can also hear it. And the ability to hear some of the things and how hard something hits or what doesn't really make an impact is can be a huge indicator that the crowd or the fan on TV they never get, but that judge gets it. So auditory is interesting. That's very interesting. Great question.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:27

Pausing the interview for a second to just ask you, the audience, now that you hear what John's saying, will this change how you watch MMA fights or think about the referees now that you know more about what their job is like? Let me know. If you're watching on YouTube, you can make a comment under the video. And now back to the show. So, as a last thought, is there anything that stands out in your mind that you just wish people would understand about your job, about MMA? Tell us what we're missing.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:55

Oh, I don't think people are missing much as far as the workings of the sport itself and what the fighters are doing. I think people have become incredibly educated as far as understanding it and things like that. The one thing that I will always look at, and people have no concept of, especially like with judges, of how much they do care. You'll get these people that they put out and they don't even give a shit. They don't even train, they don't even you have no idea how much time and effort they put into being as good as they can be. They care about every single round. Even when the fight comes to an end, they want to know was I right on that round one, or was I right on round one and round two? They text each other. There's groupings of those judges, there's groupings of officials, referees. And I get referees, every referee you can think of, they have a close call, a tight thing. I get a call. Hey, did you see it? Yep, I saw it. Let me ask you about this, let me ask you about that. And why are they calling? Because they care, they want to be right. It is a incredibly difficult. Difficult job that there's no there's no room for second place. They want to be perfect, and no one's perfect. We're human, we're gonna make mistakes, we're gonna do things after we watch and say, I could have done that better. There's always a way that you could possibly do it better. But was it the right thing at the time? And that's what we're looking for. But the fact that the fans think that the officials don't care, they have no concept of the pressure because, like, you get guys that'll judge at home, and it's like, that's great. Of course, I love that I love the fact that you're doing it. But the if you think that's the same as judging being sitting there in that seat, having that scorecard, writing your name, signing your name, and putting the score, and that one counts. There is so much pressure that goes with that, and it is an incredibly difficult job that I'm gonna be honest, they get right most of the time. Obviously, there's ones that go the wrong way, and the same with referee calls, but man, as a whole, especially now in 2026, the judging of MMA is so much better now than it ever was in the past. And the people that are doing it are doing a fantastic job.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:09

Well, I agree. And I think people I think it's good. Fans can be selfish, right? They want to see the fight, they want to see blood, but they don't realize the amount of skill that's going into the refereeing, the amount of skill that's going into the judging, and honestly, the damage and the amount of effort that the fighters are putting in. I mean, I we know this, I see that. These guys work so hard, and it's such a short career, you know, and they're putting so much out there, and then you'll see them 10, 15 years later, and they've they're living with that for the rest of their life. They've taken damage.

unknown 1:51:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:38

Well, it's one of the things the fans, especially when you get the ones that they say, oh, you stopped that too early. And it's like, you have no idea. When you see some of the fighters, I always say a fighter is like a sports car, it's like a Ferrari. And the fighter himself, I tell him, Don't put any sugar in your gas tank. And I'm righteously meaning, don't put sugar in your system, you know, and all the bad things that you're eating and stuff. Ferrari, you you only put premium food into, right? As far as premium gas, premium food, and you and the Ferrari itself, it's like, look, it doesn't take too many crashes before that Ferrari becomes a piece of crap. And every time that you watch a fighter go into the cage, and this is what makes some guys remarkable, is it doesn't mean they're being damaged. You'll you'll get the George St. Pierre's and thinking GSP right there, yeah. And the John Jones that you know what? John has not taken much damage. They seem to come out unscathed, yeah. Yeah, and it's amazing. It is absolutely amazing what they have accomplished throughout a 30-fight, third, 40-fight career, and the limited amount of damage that they have accrued during that many fights, but they're rare. And you'll get some guys that were great fighters that they do accept a lot of damage in some of their wins. And these are the fighters that most people they love them. They love these guys because they are the guys that they're dogs, they just don't stop. You have to put them out to get a win against them or get them to stop. But every time that they get stopped, there's been real damage, and that's damage when they leave that octagon or they leave that ring, they don't get that piece of them back. That piece stays. And people need to understand there's reasons why the referees are doing some of the things they're doing as far as getting them out of those fights, because there's no reason to have someone fight when you look and you go, you know, Dave, when you're watching a fight, can you tell who's winning when they're getting their ass beat? You know, so you have a fight where you've got a guy who's a grappler, that's his strength. You know his strengths, you know his weaknesses, and he's fighting this striker, and he has not gotten him down in the first two rounds, and he has taken an absolute ass weapon. He's gotten beat, we'll say 10-9 in the first round, 10-8 in the second round, and now it's into the third round. And you got to look and you gotta say, okay, what is best at this point? Does this person do they have a puncher's chance? No, they're not a big puncher, anyways. That's something that's just not logical, and they're going against someone that's a damn clean striker. So they don't have a puncher's chance. Does he have a submitter's chance? He hasn't gotten the fight down to the ground once. And now, after being basically diminished in this fight, he doesn't have that. Is there a possibility he can win on the scorecards? Absolutely not. The only way he's gonna get it would be a stoppage. Is that stoppage gonna occur? No. What's best for this fighter? What's best for the sport? What's best is let's get him out of here and let him come back another day because this isn't their day. And so you'll have those situations and you'll get them out, and people go, Oh, yo, he he he could have he could have continued on. You could you could have let him get to a decision. It's a loss. It doesn't matter. All I'm doing is keeping him from possibly having one of those nails put into his coffin that's the one that doesn't allow him to come back. And so people need to understand those things. There's a lot writing on what the referee is doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:58

You are a wise man and you are a good friend to fighters. And thank you so much for being so generous with your time, Big John. What an honor to speak to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:07

Hey, Dave, it was a real pleasure, and congratulations on all your success. You've done it not only on the mats, but now on the mic too. Good job.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:14

Thanks so much. I'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:16

See you later, brother.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:17

I hope you enjoyed my talk with Big John McCarthy. You can learn more about his command MMA referee training at mmaareferee.com. And you can listen to McCarthy Mondays on the Josh Thompson Weighing In podcast. I'll have links to all that in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this show, please do let me know. Leave a comment on the YouTube video. That would be great, and I will respond. You can also subscribe and click the bell to get notifications when new episodes drop. I'll be back next week with more lessons from the lab. And until then, keep developing your strength, your wisdom, and go out and do good in the world.