Tag: book review

BookPotato: Art Davie’s “Is This Legal” and the UFC’s Old School Age of Insanity


(Photo via Ascend Books)

By Matt Saccaro

My father was an avid martial arts enthusiast. I remember treading into the basement where he had set up a heavy bag, a speed bag, and free weights. There was also a television, and on that television was usually boxing…but sometimes there’d be mixed martial arts—specifically the UFC.

I knew about the UFC throughout most of my childhood, and sometimes I’d even watch the cards with my father. However, I didn’t start getting deep into the TapouT-clad rabbit hole until high school. When I first got my driver’s license, my friends and I headed to the mall. Our objective: Pick up as many old-school UFC DVDs as we could find. We bought one of each they had in stock (I think our first haul was UFCs 1, 3, and 8).

We decided to watch in order. We popped the DVD in, and hit play.

“Hello, I’m Bill Wallace and welcome to McNichols are-*BELCH*”

We died laughing. But Wallace’s infamous burp in the first 15 seconds of the broadcast wasn’t the only bizarre and insane thing to happen during the first UFC event. By the end of UFC 1, I asked myself “What lunacy was going on behind the scenes?” because clearly, things were chaotic behind the curtain.

It’s been a decade since then, and in that decade I’ve read several books that elucidated the circumstances around the UFC’s birth—Clyde Gentry’s No Holds Barred and Jonathan Snowden’s Total MMA being chief among them. These books, while fantastic, don’t offer the same level of insight into the primordial UFC scene than Is This Legal: The Inside Story of The First UFC From the Man Who Created It by UFC co-creator Art Davie.


(Photo via Ascend Books)

By Matt Saccaro

My father was an avid martial arts enthusiast. I remember treading into the basement where he had set up a heavy bag, a speed bag, and free weights. There was also a television, and on that television was usually boxing…but sometimes there’d be mixed martial arts—specifically the UFC.

I knew about the UFC throughout most of my childhood, and sometimes I’d even watch the cards with my father. However, I didn’t start getting deep into the TapouT-clad rabbit hole until high school. When I first got my driver’s license, my friends and I headed to the mall. Our objective: Pick up as many old-school UFC DVDs as we could find. We bought one of each they had in stock (I think our first haul was UFCs 1, 3, and 8).

We decided to watch in order. We popped the DVD in, and hit play.

“Hello, I’m Bill Wallace and welcome to McNichols are-*BELCH*”

We died laughing. But Wallace’s infamous burp in the first 15 seconds of the broadcast wasn’t the only bizarre and insane thing to happen during the first UFC event. By the end of UFC 1, I asked myself “What lunacy was going on behind the scenes?” because clearly, things were chaotic behind the curtain.

It’s been a decade since then, and in that decade I’ve read several books that elucidated the circumstances around the UFC’s birth—Clyde Gentry’s No Holds Barred and Jonathan Snowden’s Total MMA being chief among them. These books, while fantastic, don’t offer the same level of insight into the primordial UFC scene than Is This Legal: The Inside Story of The First UFC From the Man Who Created It by UFC co-creator Art Davie.

To be honest, I was worried when I first heard about Is This Legal. I anticipated it’d be 200 or so pages of self–congratulatory drivel from an ad-man seeking to squeeze as juice much out of the “I helped create the UFC” lemon that he possibly could. I became more relieved as I read each page.

In Is This Legal, Art Davie doesn’t seek to promote himself (though he has his moments), but just to tell the story about what happened leading up to the very first UFC show—and not just the weeks ahead of time. We’re talking the story of UFC 1 decades before Gerard Gordeau kicked out Teila Tuli’s tooth. It all started with Art Davie’s boxing training and a chance encounter with a wrestler who put Davie on his ass with a double-leg. From there, discussions in the barracks (Davie was a marine) about style vs. style and mixed rules fighting piqued Davie’s interest. The topic stayed with him throughout his career in advertising. He tried to pitch a UFC-like show to a client, who denied it. While he was doing research for the pitch, he stumbled upon the name Rorion Gracie.

I’d say the rest is history but that’s the point of the book—Davie unveils instances that are not part of mainstream MMA history because nobody knew them besides himself and a few others.

The relationship between Davie and Gracie is one of the book’s more interesting dynamics. Their relationship only becomes more fascinating as Davie offers insights into Gracie family politics and other dark family secrets.

And then, of course, there’s the intricacies and crazy stories behind the actual UFC 1 event itself. We won’t list them all here, but there are some crazy ones. Did you know Art Jimmerson forgot to bring his boxing gloves and shoes? Art Davie had to send someone out to a sporting goods store a few hours before the PPV started. There was also a masquerade ball the day after the event where (almost) all the fighters showed up. Furthermore, a full-on fighter revolt nearly took place the day before the event. Not only that, but the contract between Davie and Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG) wasn’t made official until hours before the broadcast went live. Seriously, there’s some unbelievable stuff to read about in Is This Legal?

Aside from the humorous anecdotes, Is This Legal is most important because it’s a catalog of an era Zuffa would love for us to forget. Their version of UFC history doesn’t start until 2001. Davie’s book is a reminder that Zuffa didn’t invent MMA. It’s a reminder that the UFC’s original founders (or at least Davie) weren’t the bloodthirsty maniacs with a predilection towards mendacity Dana White and co. paint them out to be with their “OMG THERE WERE NO RULES AT ALL BEFORE WE BOUGHT THE UFC” bullshit. However, it’s worth noting that Davie did have a bit of a crazy streak. In the book, he admits that he wanted a fighting surface where the border was electrified to discourage timidity. He also wanted a cage surrounded by (fed) piranhas and (docile) sharks.

Davie teamed up with Bellator commentator Sean Wheelock to write the book. Their style is easily readable and funny.

One of my favorite excerpts from the book is where Davie is bashing Bill Wallace’s commentary. According to Davie, Wallace’s extreme conceitedness was equaled only by his ignorance about martial arts. In pre-fight meetings, Wallace scoffed at grappling and said grapplers wouldn’t be able to handle his kicks. Check it out:

I knew that there were some awkward moments and gaffes from my constant trips back to the production truck, but I had no idea as to what extent, until they played back some of the clips for me.

Wallace opened the PPV broadcast in a very matter-of-fact tone with the words “Hello ladies and gentlemen. You are about to see something that you have never seen before—The Ultimate Fighting Challenge. Hello, I’m Bill Wallace and welcome to McNichols Arena.”

At this point he belched into the microphone, which made “McNichols Arena” sound like “Mcniquoolz Oreeda.”

Wallace then continued with, “excuse me, McNichols Arena in fabulous Denver, Colorado. Along with me is Jim Brown, and I’d like to introduce you to what is called The Ultimate Fighting Challenge.”

In his opening lines, Wallace had sad the name of our event wrong—twice—and sounded like he almost threw up in his mouth live on air.

And that set the precedent for Wallace’s night.

He gave a wide array of pronunciations—all wrong—for Teila Tuli and Gerard Gordeau. He consistently mispronounced Jimmerson as “Jimm-AH-son,” and Rosier (correctly Roe-zher) as “Roe-ZEER.” Ignoring the Portuguese pronunciation of Royce, in which the R is said like the English H, as in “Hoyce,” he called him Royce with a hard R—like Rolles Royce. He also referred to him as “Roy.”

Wallace didn’t fare much better with the names of his on-air colleagues, calling Rod Machado “Machacho,” Brian Kilmeade “Kilmore,” and Rich Goins “Ron” and “Rod.” Not once in the entire broadcast did he correctly refer to him as Rich.

Our tournament bracket was “the chart,” the instant replay was “the rematch,” our fighting area was “the octagonal octagon,” and our location in Denver was mentioned numerous times as being “a mile high up in the air,” as though we were floating around in that cloud city from The Empire Strikes Back.

And over the course of the broadcast, Wallace had these gems as well:

“Sumo is very formal, because it’s a very national sport of Japan.”

“You have a Kenpo stylist against basically a kickboxer that uses the boxing techniques along with the kicking techniques of Taekwondo of kicking.”

“Pain hurts.”

“It kind of discomboberates you.”

“I’m an old person, if you want to wrestle, we can wrestle.”

“Most fights do (end up on the ground) because you’re in a bar room and that bar’s kind of slippery with all that, with all that beer on the ground and all that glass down there and everything.”

“The mouth is the dirtiest part of the human body. You wouldn’t think so but it is.”

“Now you’re going to think how maybe those kicking techniques can set up some grappling techniques, or maybe create the opening that you need for the, what you might call the kaboomer.”

“Most boxers when they enter the ring, they’re nice and wet already.”

And, “it’s kind of ironic that Royce Gracie’s going to wear his judo top.”

Of course, it was not a “judo top” and there was nothing ironic about Royce wearing it.

That was one of my personal favorite bits of the book. Seemingly benign, I know, but part of what I like about Is This Legal is that it reminds us about the little things that we all miss as well as the big things we never got a chance to see.

Is This Legal is one of MMA literature’s more important works. If you’re a fan of MMA, you need to buy this book. You will learn A TON about the true genesis of the UFC (not Zuffa’s ridiculous version of events) while being thoroughly entertained thanks to Davie’s matter-of-fact attitude about life and quick wit.

The Way of Avoiding the Fight: Four Things You Won’t Find in GSP’s New Book

By: Brian J. D’Souza

Georges St-Pierre’s new book The Way of the Fight is a smashing success as a representation of all of St-Pierre’s ideals, both as a fighter and as a human being. Meshing the genres of biography, philosophy, and self-help, the resulting story yields an enjoyable read that is greater than the sum of its parts. Even more remarkable — the book is devoid of any trace of a bitter or vindictive tone that could taint what is essentially a book about one man overcoming adversity at every turn.

Still, this book is not a comprehensive biography of St-Pierre. As Jacob McArthur Mooney of The National Post notes, “The Way of the Fight is an account of the GSP brand…and the book’s occasional head-feints to the ‘real Georges’ are never more than teases.”

There are critical reasons why any UFC fighter should tread carefully when publishing a book. Look no further than the debacle that ensued between BJ Penn and UFC president Dana White when Penn released his own autobiography Why I Fight in 2010. Or Anderson Silva’s autobiography being pulled off the shelves in Brazil after his former manager Chute Boxe founder Rudimar Fedrigo engaged him in legal action.

But what was so controversial that it was left out of The Way of the Fight? Here’s a primer with four aspects of St-Pierre’s life and career that weren’t touched upon.

PAST MANAGERS

The Way of the Fight is divided into five sections, each focusing on a critical figure in GSP’s development. The last section is called “Conscience” and is centered on Rodolphe Beaulieu, St-Pierre’s current manager, with his other co-manager Philippe Lepage being given a brief mention.

Two names that never come up in this book are Stephane Patry, St-Pierre’s first manager and the promoter of the (now defunct) Quebec-based promotion TKO, and Shari Spencer, St-Pierre’s second manager. Why omit the two most critical people to St-Pierre’s business relationships who played a role in bringing him to superstardom?

Said GSP to YA Magazine of the time period when Patry was managing him, “In my entourage and my management, I got screwed. A lot of people were stealing money from me.”

By: Brian J. D’Souza

Georges St-Pierre’s new book The Way of the Fight is a smashing success as a representation of all of St-Pierre’s ideals, both as a fighter and as a human being. Meshing the genres of biography, philosophy, and self-help, the resulting story yields an enjoyable read that is greater than the sum of its parts. Even more remarkable — the book is devoid of any trace of a bitter or vindictive tone that could taint what is essentially a book about one man overcoming adversity at every turn.

Still, this book is not a comprehensive biography of St-Pierre. As Jacob McArthur Mooney of The National Post notes, “The Way of the Fight is an account of the GSP brand…and the book’s occasional head-feints to the ‘real Georges’ are never more than teases.”

There are critical reasons why any UFC fighter should tread carefully when publishing a book. Look no further than the debacle that ensued between BJ Penn and UFC president Dana White when Penn released his own autobiography Why I Fight in 2010. Or Anderson Silva’s autobiography being pulled off the shelves in Brazil after his former manager Chute Boxe founder Rudimar Fedrigo engaged him in legal action.

But what was so controversial that it was left out of The Way of the Fight? Here’s a primer with four aspects of St-Pierre’s life and career that weren’t touched upon.

PAST MANAGERS

The Way of the Fight is divided into five sections, each focusing on a critical figure in GSP’s development. The last section is called “Conscience” and is centered on Rodolphe Beaulieu, St-Pierre’s current manager, with his other co-manager Philippe Lepage being given a brief mention.

Two names that never come up in this book are Stephane Patry, St-Pierre’s first manager and the promoter of the (now defunct) Quebec-based promotion TKO, and Shari Spencer, St-Pierre’s second manager. Why omit the two most critical people to St-Pierre’s business relationships who played a role in bringing him to superstardom?

Said GSP to YA Magazine of the time period when Patry was managing him, “In my entourage and my management, I got screwed. A lot of people were stealing money from me.”

When Patry was unceremoniously dumped as St-Pierre’s manager in 2007 after St-Pierre’s shocking upset-loss to Matt Serra, Patry still held a valid management contract over St-Pierre that extended for multiple years. Patry sued and St-Pierre eventually settled the matter outside of court. The legal settlement with Patry most likely involved a clause making St-Pierre unable to comment on their business arrangements.

Shari Spencer, who took over from Patry, was supposed to be an improvement. While St-Pierre acquired several brand-name sponsors, he was also paying out a hefty commission to certain agencies. Spencer also had free use of an expense account. Like with Patry, any legal settlement would have precluded St-Pierre from really explaining why he rid himself of Spencer in January 2011.

Not being able to discuss the ways in which Patry and Spencer hurt St-Pierre — personally or financially — made erasing their contributions from his narrative an easy choice.

KEY TRAINERS

Virtually all credit for the GSP we see today is ascribed to French fighter Kristof Midoux for his early mentoring of the young St-Pierre, Tristar coach Firas Zahabi for becoming GSP’s coach after the devastating Matt Serra loss in April 2007, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu ace John Danaher whom GSP learned from on his frequent trips to New York City. Without any doubt, Midoux, Zahabi, and Danaher were the cornerstones that helped GSP build the skills that make him legendary today, but The Way of the Fight entirely omits several people who were also critical in St-Pierre’s development as a mixed martial artist.

Kickboxing coach Victor Vargotsky helped strengthen St-Pierre mentally after GSP’s first loss via first-round armbar to Matt Hughes in 2004. Yet there isn’t even a mention of his name in GSP’s book.

“If it wasn’t for the way Victor broke Georges down after the Matt Hughes fight, and built him back the way that he did, he would never have become Georges St-Pierre the way people know him today,” said Alexandre Choko, former owner of the Tristar Gym in Montreal.

Wagnney Fabiano was St-Pierre’s first BJJ coach; Fabio Holanda came next, with both Fabiano and Holanda teaching St-Pierre in his native city of Montreal. Neither rated a mention in The Way of the Fight, with John Danaher getting exclusive credit for GSP’s BJJ skills. It’s hard to believe that St-Pierre spent more time on the mat anywhere besides Montreal, especially during the early days of his career when he struggled to pay the bills.

While St-Pierre fell out with Vargotsky and Holanda, their omission from the narrative is partially to do with crafting a concise book about St-Pierre and partially due to the revisionist history St-Pierre wants to craft about himself.

Anderson Silva, who fell out with his first Muay Thai trainer Fabio Noguchi, and Rudimar Fedrigo’s Chute Boxe academy, still mentioned both men and their gyms in his autobiography. Whether Noguchi and Chute Boxe were more positive or negative for Silva’s career is a matter for spirited debate, but that those coaches and trainers influenced Anderson Silva cannot ever be denied.

On the next page: GSP’s sex life and the UFC’s business practices — a gentleman never tells.

Book Review: Betting on MMA By Jason Rothman Provides a Succinct Yet Thorough Examination of “Value Investing” and Its Relation to MMA Gambling

By Jared Jones

I appreciate honesty in writing. I am also a tremendous hypocrite, which is why I often resort to trickery, tomfoolery, and outright fabrications when discussing this thing we call MMA with you Taters. I’m less a blogger, more a magician — a line that I would never suggest you use to pick up women with — and more often than not I resort to a near constant influx of red herrings and other intentional misdirects to even make it through a post. But amidst all the deceit and double-crosses, I do actually manage to squeeze in a few instances of genuine honesty with you readers, more often than not in the Gambling Addiction Enabler pieces I contribute when Dan “Get Off Me” George doesn’t feel up to it.

So when I turned to the introductory page of Jason Rothman’s Betting on MMA to find the statements located directly below, I was pretty much assured that I’d be getting exactly what I wanted out of his look into the world of MMA gambling.

This book is about making money from betting on the sport of mixed martial arts. And that is the only thing this book is about.

If you do not know what a triangle choke is, then this book is not for you. 

And indeed, Rothman’s guide analyzing everything from money line odds to fighter attributes to the power of hype makes no attempt to wow you with its prose. The writing style, though sometimes cryptic and a bit repetitive, is simply a means to an end. That end is making you money, and although I have yet to put any of Rothman’s teachings into practice, I can assure you that Betting on MMA offers enough genuine insight and real-life examples to make it a must own for any MMA fan who fancies themselves a gambler.

By Jared Jones

I appreciate honesty in writing. I am also a tremendous hypocrite, which is why I often resort to trickery, tomfoolery, and outright fabrications when discussing this thing we call MMA with you Taters. I’m less a blogger, more a magician — a line that I would never suggest you use to pick up women with — and more often than not I resort to a near constant influx of red herrings and other intentional misdirects to even make it through a post. But amidst all the deceit and double-crosses, I do actually manage to squeeze in a few instances of genuine honesty with you readers, more often than not in the Gambling Addiction Enabler pieces I contribute when Dan “Get Off Me” George doesn’t feel up to it.

So when I turned to the introductory page of Jason Rothman’s Betting on MMA to find the statements located directly below, I was pretty much assured that I’d be getting exactly what I wanted out of his look into the world of MMA gambling.

This book is about making money from betting on the sport of mixed martial arts. And that is the only thing this book is about.

If you do not know what a triangle choke is, then this book is not for you. 

And indeed, Rothman’s guide analyzing everything from money line odds to fighter attributes to the power of hype makes no attempt to wow you with its prose. The writing style, though sometimes cryptic and a bit repetitive, is simply a means to an end. That end is making you money, and although I have yet to put any of Rothman’s teachings into practice, I can assure you that Betting on MMA offers enough genuine insight and real-life examples to make it a must own for any MMA fan who fancies themselves a gambler.

It isn’t often that a book cover can serve as a manifest for the book itself, but Rothman (or perhaps his pubisher) has succeeded in that right as well. The cover (pictured above) features Phil Baroni in a classic fist-pose with Warren Buffet, which although clearly photoshopped, more or less dictates the two themes that will be prevalent throughout the book: Brutal honesty and business savvy.

The book itself is divided into three segments: “The Fundamentals,” “MMA Speculating,” and two appendices providing the aforementioned real-life examples of Rothman’s theories being put into practice. Using the principles of “value investing” as laid out by multibillionaire Warren Buffet, Rothman does a great job of convincing his audience that wagering on an MMA match is much easier than it looks.

“The Fundamentals” places most of its emphasis on a mathematical process of analyzing a given fighter’s chances based on their betting lines, which Rothman dubs “Handicapping Fights.” Without giving too much away, Rothman lays out a simple method of comparing/measuring both the current odds of a given fighter against the approximate chances of victory you give said fighter to determine whether or not there is a large enough “margin of safety” to place a bet. Coming from someone who usually relied on only the latter to determine his fight picks, this section is an ingenious bit of information that will surely affect my gambling methods going forward.

Part two of Betting on MMA focuses on some of the extraneous factors that surround a given fighter in the weeks/months before a fight (hype, for instance) but also takes a look at the more discernible determinants that could alter a bet. A fighters paths to victory (a.k.a how they can win the fight), his/her age, injury rumors — these are all details that MMA gambling fans should keep a look out for before placing their bets. But Rothman goes even further than that, placing an additional emphasis on staying away from fighters who “look soft” come weigh-in time. Although he uses a perfect example in Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos 1 (Cain was coming off multiple debilitating injuries), two more recent examples that strike me are Mark Munoz in his fight with Chris Weidman and Patrick Cote against Alessio Sakara last weekend. Say what you want about the ending of the latter, but in both cases, two guys showed up looking heavier around the waist than normal and paid dearly for it. Rothman also details several other fight-alternating factors, such as a given fighters “chin” and how losing a title fight can affect a fighter’s performance in the long run.

The third section of Rothman’s book provides a couple examples of low risk, big reward bets he calls “Big Game Hunting” and displays two real-life “case studies” in which Rothman puts his teachings into practice. Again, in order to see just what fights he bet on and using what logic, you’ll have to pick the book up for yourself, but suffice it to say, Rothman was spot on in both cases and the information is presented as such.

That is not to say that Rothman doesn’t paint with too broad a brush at times. For instance, when analyzing the third fight between B.J. Penn and Matt Hughes at UFC 123 using his “Paths to Victory” assessment, Rothman claims that Hughes had no method through which he could win the fight and therefore wouldn’t justify a bet, despite the fact that Hughes had managed to both exploit Penn’s lack of cardio at 170 and his own size advantage when he defeated Penn in the pair’s second showing at UFC 63. Granted, I would have never bet on Hughes in that fight and Rothman was ultimately correct in his analysis, but to claim that Hughes had no way of winning seems a little presumptuous. It is a small complaint that is purely subjective, and truly one of the only ones I could find while reviewing the book. Other than the somewhat odd spacing of words and sentences at times, which I will chalk up as a mistake on the publisher’s part.

At 100 pages on the nose, Betting on MMA is succinct enough to read through in an hour or two, yet thorough enough to provide a lifetime’s worth of knowledge when it comes to gambling on MMA. You can purchase a paperback version of Betting on MMA here, a Kindle version here, or check out Rothman’s official site for all your gambling needs here.