Let's Get It On! by Big" John McCarthy

Author:Big" John McCarthy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Medallion Media Group
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The UFC went to Dothan, Alabama, and all I got was this damn T-shirt. Still, it’s one of my favorites.

In the finals, Belfort faced Scott Ferrozzo, who outweighed him by more than 100 pounds. Belfort stopped the flabby Ferrozzo in his tracks with his incredibly accurate fists to win the heavyweight tournament. In total, Belfort had spent two minutes, ten seconds in the cage that night. I took one look at this young, muscular athlete and knew he’d be a star.

Shaken by the drama that was UFC 12, SEG returned to safer territory at the Augusta-Richmond County Civic Center in Augusta, Georgia, for UFC 13 “The Ultimate Force” on May 30, 1997, one of the few places left where the promotion wouldn’t be hassled.

UFC 13 would turn out to be a landmark event because it produced two future superstars of the sport. One was a young protégé of Abbott, Tito Ortiz, and the other was a four-time Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling alternate named Randy Couture.

Quiet and composed, the thirty-three-year-old Couture entered the heavyweight tournament on two weeks’ notice and won both of his fights that evening to become the heavyweight tournament champion.

It was hard to tell what Couture would be able to do as a fighter from his initial two bouts because although both opponents had been bigger than him, neither had been particularly technical. Couture’s wrestling had allowed him to control and dominate, which I’d expected. But Couture would really come into his own as a fighter in his next appearance.

That night, it was easy to recognize another fighter’s potential. The tournament’s one lightweight alternate, Ortiz, walked through opponent Wes Albritton in thirty-one seconds. The rest of the tournament also played out in Ortiz’s favor.

In the first bracket, Lion’s Den fighter Guy Mezger earned a unanimous decision against Chris Leininger to secure his spot in the final match. In the other preliminary bracket, Enson Inoue submitted Royce Alger with an armbar but took a big hit during the bout. Afterward, Inoue’s eye socket swelled up when he blew his nose; he had a small crack in his orbital bone. Dr. Istrico took one look at Inoue and told him he couldn’t fight the next match.

The bleached-blond Ortiz would be called to the finals, but because he was a wrestler in the NCAA collegiate system at California State University Bakersfield at the time, he wasn’t allowed to accept any money for the bout, including the final prize. Ortiz had agreed to fight for free.

Mezger and Ortiz faced off in the finals, and Ortiz was doing quite well with his wrestling skills. He cradled Mezger on the ground and started kneeing him in the head, which opened large cuts on Mezger’s scalp. One sliced an arterial vein, which was like striking oil: blood just started pulsing out with each heartbeat.

Feeling the heat from politicians who were calling the UFC a “barbaric bloodbath,” Meyrowitz had told me before the show to scrutinize any excessive bleeding and to stop the fight if it got bad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.