was hurt, then the winner of my fight took his place. I was only fighting so I wasnât fresh if I needed to fill in. That would have been an unfair advantage.
They paid me $1,000âincluding expensesâand put me up in a Marriott or a Sheraton or someplace like that. When we had the weigh-ins, they used a bathroom scale, which made me laugh. If you knew how to shift your weight right, the balance on the scale would change, and you could come in just over or just under weight. It wasnât exactly a science.
This was the UFC I had been training for? This weigh-in on a bathroom scale represented years of boxing lessons with my grandpa, karate lessons, getting in street fights in Santa Barbara, wrestling at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, kickboxing, teaching. All of it led to this chance, to the Mobile Civic Center for a one-shot, $1,000 fight against a guy named Noe Hernandez in front of a couple thousand people. The operation had such a shoestring budget that Scott had to call around town finding me gym times so I could stay loose in the three or four days I was there. So much for dreaming big.
I weighed in at 199 pounds, one pound under the 200-pound weight limit. But when Noe stepped off the scale, he was two pounds overweight. Apparently he didnât know the secret about tilting your body. Just like that I could have won my first UFC fight without ever stepping into the Octagon. But I didnât travel all the way across the country to win by forfeit. I wanted to go at it. I wanted a knockout. I was not going to let two pounds come between me and the fight I had been waiting to have for years. I would never let a little thing get in the way of making a big thing happen. So when they told me Noe didnât make weigh-in on that piece-of-crap scale, I said, âScrew it. Letâs fight.â
Noe was a strong guy with a buzz cut who had already had five UFC fights. Heâd won three, including one after a doctor stopped the bout because Noe was hurting the guy so badly and another because he had literally beaten his opponent into submission with punches. There wasnât a lot of tape on fighters in those days, but I had heard from friends such as Nick and John that he had a wicked right hand that had knockout power, so I should be on the lookout for that. I made a note of it.
While Nick and John were getting me prepped in the Mobile Civic Centerâs locker room, I got a visit from John Peretti, who was the UFCâs matchmaker. Heâd been a kickboxer and had been around MMA for a while promoting fights and working in corners. He also decided which fighters were invited into the cage and which ones were always stuck looking on the outside in. If youâre a first-time fighterâespecially one who is just an alternateâyou want to keep him happy.
I thought he was going to wish me luck, tell me to have a good fight, and maybe give me a few words of advice. That wasnât the case. John knew I came from kickboxing, but had heard I wrestled in college. Have you ever been to a college wrestling match? Itâs not exactly WWE excitement. No throwing chairs or jumping off the top turnbuckle or chicks in bikinis fawning over the guys. Itâs just grappling. A lot of the times the wrestlers arenât moving so much as pushing against one another, trying to tire each other out. And while going to the mat and getting a guy on the ground might be a good way to win a fight, itâs not going to bring the crowd to its feet.
John wanted to make it clear that they wanted knockouts in their fights. He reminded me that I should be aggressive and stay off the ground if I wanted to get invited back. I had to take what he said seriously if I wanted a career in the UFC, so I nodded my head earnestly, told him it wouldnât be a problem, and went back to prepping for the fight. In truth, he didnât have anything to worry about. I had every intention of coming out striking.
I donât
They paid me $1,000âincluding expensesâand put me up in a Marriott or a Sheraton or someplace like that. When we had the weigh-ins, they used a bathroom scale, which made me laugh. If you knew how to shift your weight right, the balance on the scale would change, and you could come in just over or just under weight. It wasnât exactly a science.
This was the UFC I had been training for? This weigh-in on a bathroom scale represented years of boxing lessons with my grandpa, karate lessons, getting in street fights in Santa Barbara, wrestling at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, kickboxing, teaching. All of it led to this chance, to the Mobile Civic Center for a one-shot, $1,000 fight against a guy named Noe Hernandez in front of a couple thousand people. The operation had such a shoestring budget that Scott had to call around town finding me gym times so I could stay loose in the three or four days I was there. So much for dreaming big.
I weighed in at 199 pounds, one pound under the 200-pound weight limit. But when Noe stepped off the scale, he was two pounds overweight. Apparently he didnât know the secret about tilting your body. Just like that I could have won my first UFC fight without ever stepping into the Octagon. But I didnât travel all the way across the country to win by forfeit. I wanted to go at it. I wanted a knockout. I was not going to let two pounds come between me and the fight I had been waiting to have for years. I would never let a little thing get in the way of making a big thing happen. So when they told me Noe didnât make weigh-in on that piece-of-crap scale, I said, âScrew it. Letâs fight.â
Noe was a strong guy with a buzz cut who had already had five UFC fights. Heâd won three, including one after a doctor stopped the bout because Noe was hurting the guy so badly and another because he had literally beaten his opponent into submission with punches. There wasnât a lot of tape on fighters in those days, but I had heard from friends such as Nick and John that he had a wicked right hand that had knockout power, so I should be on the lookout for that. I made a note of it.
While Nick and John were getting me prepped in the Mobile Civic Centerâs locker room, I got a visit from John Peretti, who was the UFCâs matchmaker. Heâd been a kickboxer and had been around MMA for a while promoting fights and working in corners. He also decided which fighters were invited into the cage and which ones were always stuck looking on the outside in. If youâre a first-time fighterâespecially one who is just an alternateâyou want to keep him happy.
I thought he was going to wish me luck, tell me to have a good fight, and maybe give me a few words of advice. That wasnât the case. John knew I came from kickboxing, but had heard I wrestled in college. Have you ever been to a college wrestling match? Itâs not exactly WWE excitement. No throwing chairs or jumping off the top turnbuckle or chicks in bikinis fawning over the guys. Itâs just grappling. A lot of the times the wrestlers arenât moving so much as pushing against one another, trying to tire each other out. And while going to the mat and getting a guy on the ground might be a good way to win a fight, itâs not going to bring the crowd to its feet.
John wanted to make it clear that they wanted knockouts in their fights. He reminded me that I should be aggressive and stay off the ground if I wanted to get invited back. I had to take what he said seriously if I wanted a career in the UFC, so I nodded my head earnestly, told him it wouldnât be a problem, and went back to prepping for the fight. In truth, he didnât have anything to worry about. I had every intention of coming out striking.
I donât
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