Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I think a lot of the fighters back then were just looking at it as like a one time kind of thing. Don starts talking to him, he's like, you gotta quit, Mark. I don't want to hurt you. You gotta quit.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: It feels like an honest reflection on the history of the ufc, and that's what made it stand out so much more for me.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: It was completely overwhelming.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: A very poetic way to describe being there in person.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: What's real is just like two people fighting.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Have you got a favorite fight that you could potentially maybe even write a whole book about?
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Maybe my favorite moment of all time in the ufc.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Against Offense podcast with your host, Breezy. Today's guest, Michael Thompson is the author of the book Cage Kings, which takes a deep dive into the history of the UFC right from the very beginning to what we see today. I'm going to include all of Michael's links down below for his social media. I'm also going to include a link to Audible and Amazon if you are interested in buying his book after listening to this, and I hope you guys enjoy. I've got to ask you, I was doing some research and you've written some pretty crazy things over the years from. One of them that really stood out to me was the unexpected impact of Fallout 4 on a certain adult website's traffic. I don't know if you remember doing that. I think it was back in 2004.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for Forbes. Yeah, yeah, they. They used to send out these press releases that like, I think, like, I wrote that in like an hour or two or something that wasn't even, like, I've written way crazier stuff than that. That was just like a freebie kind of. As a journalist, you know, you like, oh, this will. This will hit a readership. And like, yeah, that. You know it. I started out as a journalist writing a lot about video games. And that's. It's kind of a recurring theme in MMA too, but, like, comparing video games to porn. Dana White used to do this a lot. You know, they like, they, you know, they won't.
They won't carry cage fights, but they'll carry porn. He used to be very indignant about that before the UFC was back fully on cable in the early thousands. And like, still now, you know, he's sort of like, when he's, he's promoting the slap fighting stuff, you know, porn is always like, in these people's back pockets and it's sort of, you know, I was never okay with like, kind of like, you Know, derogation of. I think sports is kind of on the same tier in terms of cultural legitimacy as porn. You know, they're very different disciplines in a lot of ways. But like, I don't think there's some, some greater moral kind of good being served by, you know, American football, you know, than having sex on film to like, you know, give some other people, like a little bit of like, pleasure or whatever. Like, I don't think that's somehow this like, unthinkable, immoral, you know, down graded cultural thing relative to like, you know, cage fighting.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Anyway, is the, the wildest thing that you would say that you've written over the past, say, 10, 15 years, because you spent quite a while at IGN, right?
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, I was there full time for about two years. Then I moved to New York. I was, I was in the main office in San Francisco, right outside San Francisco. And then I was a freelancer for like three or four years after I moved to New York. I don't know, I, like, I. I had some crazy ideas at IGN that I never actually did that were kind of.
I don't think the stuff at IGN was ever that wild. Like, I did a lot of sex writing early on in my career too, and there's probably some crazy stuff in there. I think I did a story about, sorry if this is too much, but you can just bleep me out or plug your ears if you don't want to hear this, but I wrote a little piece about masturbating upside down. And I didn't realize that, like, when I came, I almost came in my own face. It's just, I got to the moment, I'm like propped upside down against the wall kind of. I don't know why I was doing it. I just thought like, like, what'll happen? You know, maybe all the blood will go to my head and it'll feel weird or something. Like, you know, be like holding your breath. There's, you know, it was just like an experiment. Like, forward Saturday morning. Yeah. And then I got to the moment. I'm like. So I, like just like a second before it kind of just like rolled out of the way.
It's not that consequential or anything. It's like back in the glory days of blogging when, you know, it really was just full transparency and, you know, there was just a direct, you know, you would type as quickly as you could think. Kind of. There wasn't a lot of like, self editing. You know, now things, you know, even, even on the Blog scene. Everything's kind of professionalized and sterilized in a way. And like it really, you know, there's a lot of Internet content here. Just sort of like, am I even connecting with another human being right now or is this just sort of like, you know, we've, we've kind of all become like local TV newscasters in a way, you know, just stripped down. Even the stuff that's like kind of deviant. Like, you know, I'm gonna get a little saucy here and say that, you know, Tony Ferguson was actually the best MMA fighter of all time. Like, don't, don't get mad at me. Right. It's not, you know, but like that will seem like spicy, you know, and like that's not, you know, but like that's, you know, that's like spicy for a PR professional or something. Like that's not really in terms of like actual human experience and actual like human deviance and like the genuine strangeness of human thought.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean that's one of the fun things I think of like Hinata Moicano right now or like Sean Strickland. Like they're just bizarre people.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: And they don't self censor and they're not, you know, and you know, I like, I, I don't really agree with anything either of them say or whatever, but like, you know, there's a kind of honesty about just like how perverse but broad ranging the human imagination is like that. Like sometimes I think people have been like conditioned to strip out and it's really kind of narrowed the media environment that we're all kind of in right now.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And it also shows because particularly Sean Strickland, some of the things he puts on on social media there is quite following for that stuff as well. So there's the kind of two flip sides there, isn't there? Where there are people that are genuinely interested and have the same kind of opinions as him. And sometimes as a, I'd say I'm kind of a down the middle guy. It can be quite scary to see. Yeah, totally.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: I mean, but like the stuff about him trying to fight people on the highway or what, like in road rage incidents, like, you know, it's something again I think about a lot with the book, like the changing kind of character of just general like violence out in the world, like on the street, you know, I don't know what it's like in the UK, but like in the US, like when I was growing up in the 90s, violence felt very present. Like those kinds of like fist fights that like, if you made the wrong turn on a street, you didn't even know what you're doing. You could have just inadvertently pissed someone off and now you have to like you're in a fist fight on the side of the road with the car running, you don't even know why. You know, the idea, like violence could just break out. You know, that was a really very real kind of present thing. Maybe it's just I'm getting old too. So like people look at, you know, who's, who's trying to fight a 45 year old, like monotone, like writer guy walking around just trying to get a coffee or something.
But you know, again, his talk about like being suicidal and like his depression and stuff, you know, it's not just a stupid Trump crap, but you know, the anti immigrant stuff or whatever is. It's like the whole kind of like, you know, his, his fantasies about killing someone in the octagon, like wanting to be the first UFC fighter that like actually kind of, you know, fulfills what the original advertising line was. You know, like Campbell McLaren used to say that like, you know, like if you kill someone in the cage, you know, it would be against the law, but it wouldn't be against the rules. So like, you know, we don't want it to happen. If it happens, well, you know, you still win the fight then, you know, that was part of the. Yeah, so like that's sort of, there's a through line to the way, you know, he's just sort of taken that marketing kind of idea heart a little too much. You know, it's like, no, no, that was Sean. That was a marketing campaign. Yeah, he's like, no, it's my whole identity. You just imagine a five year old watching TV at like, you know, 1996 and being like, their eyes go wide and just like, like, oh, no, it was fake. It's all. Not that it was fake, but you know, it was all. Yeah, a lot of it was, you know, hyperbole. Hyperbole, yeah, it was.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: What interested me was obviously, see I, when I was doing my research, seeing that you done a lot of, and I mean, you touched on it slightly at the start of the book, but you did a lot of kind of gaming based stuff and then transitioned obviously to writing quite well, not even quite, probably the most in depth book that I've ever read or, or blog or anything about the ufc. So kind of talk us through a little bit, that kind of transition from reading or writing about whenever it comes to Mindful Forbes for IGN to transitioning into Cage Kings, as you've produced now.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it took a while, in part, because at the beginning, I didn't think there would be value to me writing a comprehensive history because I wasn't a beat reporter in the MMA scene. You know, I was covering all kinds of other subjects. So, you know, I would have felt like, a little sheepish going to a publisher and being like, I'm going to write the definitive history of the ufc. Like, just full start to finish. Here's what happened and why and how. You know, it's an idea like I wound up being very, very interested in, but it was just sort of like, well, that's not, like, why, you know, why would anyone, like, want me to do that? So the original idea for the book, like, way back when in 2015 or something, was to just write a history of prize fighting because, you know, I'd always been into fighting, you know, from like, an early age in the 80s. I kind of grew up in the golden age of boxing, where kind of before the pay per view wall kind of sucked all the big fights out. You know, you could turn the TV on Saturday night on ABC in America, and it would be, you know, a Sugar Ray Leonard fight. Maybe it was a replay from a week ago, but, like, you could see a lot of great fights for free on tv. And, you know, I got very into that as a kid. And then I got into Bruce Lee, and, you know, kind of my teenage years, I was reading with Al Jeet Kune do, and, like, you know, I took a big shine to that. And so when the UFC came out, you know, I was in high school. I think I was 16. It's my junior year. And so it was just immediately, like, something. For me, it was something new. And I, you know, kind of just like, followed it ever since. So I thought, like, you know, a book I could do and that I'd want to do just for myself was like, a history of prize fighting. And I. You know, the original idea was kind of an anthology book where each chapter would kind of tell the story of a different kind of prize fight over from, like, 400 years of, like, fighting history. Not just like UFC, but it would be like, pro wrestling, bare knuckle boxing, gouging, which, you know, was a kind of taboo sport in the 1800s, 17, 1800s, and, you know, regular boxing, you know, in the kind of, you know, the Ali era and the 80s era, the sugar Ray Leonard era, which was. That was kind of my favorite and then through to the ufc, and that would kind of be the end, the capstone on that. And I spent, I don't know, like, six months or so working on that. Did, like, a draft of, like, a chapter, and then kind of, you know, just a general sketch of, like, what the rest of the book would be like.
I did some more thinking about it. I talked to my agent about it, and this is sort of like, you know, no one wants anthologies. No one reads anthologies. Publishers don't like them. Like, readers don't like them. You know, readers want a story that's single. You know, it feels like a textbook or homework to have, like, every chapter be a new kind of thing. You got to learn. So I think that was more like a thing like writers would like. You know, it's almost like a security blanket for a writer to save you from having to come up with a story. You just sort of, like, rely on the subject to kind of, like, parcel itself out so that you don't have to do, like, the hard structural thinking.
But I was sort of like, you know, the next evolution of that is like, well, why don't I just tell the history of the UFC through 12th fight? So I was like, preserving the anthology form, but still kind of like, narrowing it down to just, like, a more contemporary idea.
And then that was when I started talking to Simon and Schuster, and they're like, why don't you just ditch the anthology idea? Just tell the straight history.
And that was a little bit like Dumbo's Feather, kind of. It was sort of like the first person that had just told me kind of like giving me permission or, like, a validation that, like, you know, they really liked me as a writer, they really wanted to work with me. They just didn't like the anthology thing. They were just like, why? Just go write the history. Just go tell the story of the ufc. And I was like, I didn't think I could do that, like, if. But with that kind of bow or, you know, vote of confidence, I was. You know, I felt like, you know, everything just clicked into place, and I was like, well, that is. That. That is the simplest thing. It was just sort of more me not, like, fully believing, like, I was, you know, capable or marketable as the person that that could or should do that. And then that was just like a whole other can of worms. Kind of. Like I was saying, like, the. The absolute hardest part of the book was, like, figuring out what the story is, you know, like, actually without that anthology structure to kind of just give you a Default. It was just like an overwhelming amount of work to try and consolidate. You know, 30 years of history and hundreds of different employees, thousands of fighters, and, you know, thousands of trainers and coaches, managers, family member, all. Like, who's the characters? Who says the most about what was happening at each point in time? Who's the most historically significant? Who has the most interesting kind of personal story? Like, there's just so many different threads of stuff to kind of consider. And that, like, really, that took years and years of just sort of like looking at what I had and trying to, you know, figure out what worked the best. That was the main kind of difficulty in, like, putting it all together.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: When I was once again doing my research, I did see that you said that you wanted to write about 400 years worth of big fights or whatever. Have you got a favorite fight that you. You could potentially maybe even write like a whole book about?
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Maybe. I don't know. I have a little bit of like, PTSD about writing books now. Like saying the word, writing book. Like, just immediately imagine, like not having two hours of sleep for like a year and a half and consecutively. And like, I. Yeah, there's this probably. I don't know if I have a favorite fight. It's like one of my. Maybe my favorite moment of all time in the ufc. And, you know, it's ironic because I always forget which UFC this. I think it was UFC 10, but it was a fight between Don Fry and Mark Hall.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: And Mark hall was. This was kind of back when they still did the tournament. They had taken it away for a couple events and, you know, they did. They started introducing the super fight on top of the tournament, and then, you know, simplifying the tournament to like two rounds instead of three or before. But it was still like winning that tournament was kind of like climbing Mount Everest for a lot of the fighter. It was sort of. It wasn't like fully a sport yet where, you know, you'd win and then just. That would be a career. People just still kind of, you know, there's an event every three or four months. You know, like, there was a lot of. It wasn't regulated. There was a lot of controversy. It wasn't clear what the future was going to be even if you became a star out of it and won. So I think a lot of the fighters back then were just looking at it as a, like a one time kind of thing. Like, I did it that night. I did it. I got to the top of the mountain and then, like, I don't need to do anything else. And Mark Hall, I think, was one of those guys. He was an incredible athlete and a really good fighter for the time, but he was just a little bit undersized. You know, like, that was kind of the Tank Abbott era, the Don Fry era. These big, you know, Paul Varlins and you know, Oleg Taktarov and like the big hulking, kind of super heavy guys. And it was still open weight still. And Mark hall had been in one other ufc.
You know, he came close, he won a fight and then he lost the second one. And he did. That's a common. It was kind of a classical arc back then where like, you know, good fighters, tough guys with big hearts would like get close and then just, you know, Pat Smith did this for a while too. He's like, I know why I failed. I could like, just gotta fix a few things and then I can get all the way to the top of the summit the next time. And it just, it never worked out. You know, the guys that, that fell short of the summit, they just kept getting further and further away from it each subsequent time. And that kind of happened with Mark Hall. He came back for this second tournament and he just, he got matched up against Don Fry. And Don Fry was just bigger than him, he was stronger than him, he was a better boxer than him. And so just immediately, it's not a very eventful fight. It's kind of a sad, slow fight, but he just, he gets him down. Don Fry gets him down. And you know, this is back before wall walking, so you just, you get the guy pinned against the fence and you just like hammer on him against the fence. And they'd be trapped. And he has Mark hall just like trapped against the fence or, you know, minute, like four or five minutes. And he, you can just hear. It's like sickening the blow. Like he's. He's not really punching his face because Don liked him. He was like, he didn't want to hurt him. He's kind of saying this. He's just hammering his ribs and you see his ribs just slowly turn purple and glossy and red. And it's just going on and you can tell it's over. He's just lost. He's like. And he's not going to. Even if he somehow won or something, like he wouldn't be able to get win another fight in the tournament. He's not. He taken so much damage. And Don starts talking to him. He's like, you got to quit, Mark. I don't want to hurt you. You Got to quit. And it's all kind of, like, bleeding through on the camera. And it's like, cameras right in there, and it's just like this intense, intimate thing. And, like, Mark hall, like, I still get goosebumps thinking about it, because it's just like, the purest expression of MMA to me. Like, Mark just looks up at him. He's like, I can't quit, Don. I can't quit. And so he just accepts the pain. He's just like, I'm not. Like, if you can kick my ass, then I have to take that. But, like. Like, I'm not breaking. I'm not gonna lose. I won't. Like, you're not gonna get me to say I quit. Like, if you're gonna beat me, you're gonna have to beat me all the way.
I think eventually his corner throws in the towel or McCarthy steps in finally after. It's just been too much. But, like, that moment, to me is just, like, the purest thing in all of MMA and all of cage fighting. And, like, the thing I respect most about it. It's not really, like, the, you know, the achievement of winning, but, like, it's people that.
That find something in themselves. They find a point in themselves where they won't break to the pain. And, you know, even in a losing effort, like, I. I think that's the most valuable thing in. In all of martial arts. It's not about who you are at your best. The GSP kind of, like, perfect. Like, you know, absolute lowest risk kind of, like, options and, like, take the least amount of damage. You know, the martial art, it was always about who you are at your worst. You've had a few drinks and you get jumped by four people in a back alley, and maybe one has, you know, a weapon. You know, it's about who you are at your darkest when you have the fewest amount of, you know, the guys are all bigger than you. Like, what can you do for yourself then when, like, it's not a fair fight, when it's not an even match? Like, and that's, you know, those are the moments when, like, spirit your fighting heart, you. And, like, intelligence and technique, all these things kind of braid together. But, I mean, it's also horrifying to see that. The reality of that, because it really, you know, it's just, like, order, like, the. The sound of punching, the actual damage. You can see the body just literally changing in real time, second after second, and you can see the reaction that, like, Fry is having. He's like, you can See the guilt, like, he doesn't want to hurt him. I think Ryan, Ryan hall talks about this. I think it was one of his seminar videos. There's a line you have to cross in your own mind, even just doing jiu jitsu, about how hard you crank on a submission, like an arm bar, because, you know, even just, you know, as a white belt, you know, like, there's a point where the elbow snaps, right? So you can hear, you can feel it. And for beginning students or people that, like, are maybe just there for fun and learning, like, they're part of your mind kind of realizes, oh, like, this is also for hurting. And now I'm like, but that's part of the deal, right? Like, that's part of how you get better, is you have to be serious about the risk of that pain with your opponent to get them to, like, develop a better response, better defense, better anticipation, like, better concept of the stakes or whatever. So, like, there is that, like, intimacy where, you know, you know, like, they have to give each other that kind of pain in order to, like, rise up. But, like, there is still that, like, compassion where it's like, I don't want to be fighting you. I don't want to hurt you. Don't. Don't make me hurt you. Like, you know, you can't win this. Like, you know, he's saying that, like, you know, mark, you can't win this. Don't make me, like, you know, and it's just like, you know, that kind of stuff is. Is powerful to me. I mean, kind of. I. That's kind of what I tried to write about with, with Nick Diaz was, you know, it's what I respect so much about his entire approach to mma, because he was really that kind of fighter, too. You know, he was, you know, you know, he was all about, like, seeing who he was, you know, in the worst case scenario, not in the best case scenarios, but, like, when everything else falls apart, like, what can you really do for yourself? You know, I. I think that approach to MMA is always going to be like, it just cuts through everything else about the sport. Like the, you know, the, you know, sporting nature of it, the rankings, all that kind of stuff. It's what produces those moments of, like, Nate Diaz and Conor Mc McGregor, where it's like, oh, they're still fighters. It's not actually a sport. The rankings aren't, you know, they're like their own kind of fiction. The belts are fictions. Like, what's real is just, like, two people fighting and, like, that's That's a wild thing. No matter how much like, narrative kind of assumptions you bring in about, well, he's the best in the world and he's such a good jabber and he's such a good leg kicker or whatever. And it's like, it doesn't matter. It's too bodies and like there's something wild and completely unpredictable that is always going to come out of that or can.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That bit you said about Ryan hall saying about something, changing it, remaining. It made me think instantly of the section where you're the. You talk about Ronda Rousey. Yeah. Fought Misha Tate and she didn't tap.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Promised herself that she would do it and. And look where it took her.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: She became famous for that. That was her, you know, it was. It was. Her pro wrestling move is like those bent backward arms, those like, you know, and the commentators howling on the commentary like, ah, I can't look. Oh, it's gross. She's got a tap.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Like, that whole thing that created the public kind of like Persona around her, it created that like, storm of like, you know, it was the same with like, Mike Tyson knockouts. This whole, like, it's almost like supernatural. You're like, this person knows like, wizardry things or something, but, like, they're horrifying.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: That's what I thought. The first time I saw someone do a twister, I was like, what the hell?
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the thing about. Yeah, I don't, like, I don't know, like, I don't train at all. I've done it in the past that just enough to kind of like feel it a bit. But like, I mean, there's a reality to even the simplest, like, jiu jitsu thing. Like the, like. I still remember my very, very first class, like a long, long time ago, just in jiu jits. I thought I might have to tap to the top pressure because I remember my, like, I couldn't lift my diaphragm to breathe. And There was about 10 seconds there where I'm like, I'm not sure I'm getting oxygen. I may go unconscious just from this guy compressing my diaphragm because he's just so good and heavy at, like, you know, getting the shoulder right in the right place, you know, and you have a real smothering kind of person on top of you. Like, you know, he wasn't like, I wasn't gonna like, go out. But, like, not being familiar with it, like, it's just like, you know, there's There's a whole separate physical reality to positions you'll get into and grappling. But, you know, it's. It's an education. It's an eye opener if you haven't felt it.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I wanted to touch on. There's one section, I think it was in chapter seven, and it, like, really kind of resonated with me. And it was the way that you had written something, and I wanted to read it to you and see if you remember writing it. And then also, I'll try and understand what you were thinking at the time. So bear with me, because it's. It's not. It's not a massive part, but it's just the way you described it. You wrote. Just as casinos bathe gamblers in the glimmering possibility of jackpots going off in every direction, the UFC fighters lived on a kind of hopelessness, hopefulness that they might one day be transformed into millionaires or moguls, even as they competed for wages that in the worst cases averaged out to less than the federal minimum wage over the course of the year. And whilst most didn't make it any further than the average gambler who found an open seat at a casino table, there was something affirming about being in the same room where people's lives truly were transformed with the roll of a dice. The chance to walk out into the hysteria of a full arena to the sound system that turned a favorite song into a pulsing quake in the air while 10,000 faces hung in the neon twirl of the house lights made it seem sorry for a few sweet moments, as if life had become a scene in a TV show someone else was watching. And the eerie clarity of the octagon so brightly lit even one. Shadows disappeared inside, leaving only a body poised to collide against another human dice tumbling along the octagon fence.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's not bad, huh?
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Like, that's. It's like I, I. When I heard it, I was like. Because I. I drive a lot. So the way for me to kind of digest this book was to do on. On Audible. Oh, good. And it really.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Patrick. Yeah.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Yeah. It really, really kind of resonated with me as, like, a very poetic way to describe being there in person. I know Dana says a hell of a lot. You've got to go. You can see it.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: And.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: And I've been. And I've seen it. And that really kind of. Yeah. Paint that picture of me being there.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's a huge. I think that's a huge part of the appeal, I think, I don't know if UFC people would articulate it like that, but I, I think, you know, they would certainly say that. Like, you know, that, you know, it's like being in the big leagues. Now you're in the big leagues. And so that's part of the gratification that I think in a lot of fighters minds will justify, like, fighting on a 10 and 10 contract. It's like, you know, it's like, because you're like, well, I'm not going to be at 10 and 10 forever because I'm going to knock all these people out, and then next year they're going to put me on 50 and 50, and then it'll be 250 and 2. Like, you know, and that's what the UFC will tell you too. And it's like, hey, if you, if you win, if you start making noise on social media, if you start bringing eyeballs in, they can track all this stuff, especially now through like, Ari's kind of famous research division that just has all these sort of metrics for like, you know, which person draws the most eyeballs and key rating and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's a big part of it. It's like, you know, like people look at their paychecks and, you know, or fighters look at their paychecks and they're like, this is just temporary. Like the, like the even, you know, the, the next one's going to be even bigger and the one after that's going to be even bigger. You don't think about, like, I believe it's still even today. The UFC contracts are structured around, I think they call them escalator clauses.
But if you do a six fight deal and you're, you know. So, like, if you win a fight, your pay scale goes up.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: For the next fight to 12 and 12, you start at 10 and 10. Let's say you go up to 12 and 12, then you go up to 14 and 14. You get three straight wins and you're at three next fight, then you're going to go fight at 16 and 16. If you lose that fourth fight, your fifth fight, you'll go all the way back down again to 10 and 10. After one loss, you know, three consecutive win, you're now at three and one, but you're still right back where you started again. It's a very sort of like casino mentality and it, like it's, you know, and we kind of tried to play around a little bit with, with kind of that in terms of what was happening to Nate Diaz after his Benson Henderson fight, where he had this big contract that he thought, like, this is, yeah, I'm gonna become the champion. No one's gonna beat me.
And he made a lot of money for the Benson Henderson fight for the time and for, you know, what he had been making. But then he lost, and he was, you know, he wasn't making that 500,000 anymore. He was back to making, you know, I think it was 14 and 14 or 16 and 16. You know, after 10 years in the sport and after having headlines some of the biggest UFC on Fox events, I think the Benson Henderson fight was, I think, the second highest rated UFC on Fox at the time.
You know, it's definitely bigger than any of the audiences they get now for, like, UFC on ESPN or UFC on ABC. You know, I think it was 2 or 3 million concurrent viewers all at once.
And, yeah, like, you can have a fighter like that with that appeal. And because they lose one fight, they tumble all the way back down. You know, it's kind of like a craps table or something. And, you know, I grew up in California, so, like, Vegas was always, like, very present. You know, California is filled with tribal casinos. So, you know, I spent a lot of time in tribal casinos. I don't really gamble, but, like, I. I like going to them.
And then I did spend a lot of time going to Vegas as a young person, like, just, you know, to drink, mainly, like, gambled a little bit, but, like, it was just, you know, fun, weird place to be, and, you know, just go drink on the streets there as a young person, go to a pool or something. And so, like, that was something I really wanted to kind of, like, weave into the fabric of the book is the casino culture, the feeling of it. Like, there is something really genuinely comforting about that void of the casino where there's just the right amount of stimulation and, you know, you're just losing. Even the cheap stuff is, like, a little. It's like two bucks more than you would pay for it normally, like a candy bar or, like a can of beer or whatever, but, like, it's just sort of like, it. There's something promising about being in the atmosphere and seeing, like, all these other, like, you know, people with money, big stacks of chips, and, like, you know, you see the losers, but you see, like, that one winner every 50 people, and you're like, that's. You know, it is there. If you can find the path to, like, get that kind of payout, if you just, you know, study right then you can, like, make the right sports bet or learn the numbers at blackjack well enough to kind of know what you're doing.
It's inspiring. You know, success inspires people. People, like, are attracted to wealth, and, like, you know, a part of your mind will just always kind of start thinking about, like, how. How would that work for me if I became, you know. Yeah, gambler, programmer, a rich guy or something like that.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's quite. It's quite ironic as well, because of the background of the Fatitas and the way that they've kind of had this casino empire. And then to follow in with that as well, it just. Yeah, it poises itself really well.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a huge part of how they structured the business, too. You look at, like, they brought a lot of people in from the gaming world, you know, like Lawrence Epstein, who.
I don't know what his title is now. He's the main lawyer for the ufc. I think he's chief operating officer, maybe. Yeah, something. Something along those lines. But he was an outside counsel for the Fertitta Brothers for Station casinos, and he had also done some work in boxing. I think he. He did outside work for Top rank in the 90s. I'm not sure. I have to check my notes, actually. But, like, he had. He had done legal work in boxing before he came to the ufc. Mike Murch came from the Nevada State Attorney General's office.
You know, they. They brought a lot of people from outside, a lot of people from the casino world specifically in to kind of set up this back inside of the business in terms of, like, raising capital and using debt to finance, you know, more, you know, more dividend payments, getting other people to pay for your development, and then just, you know, you taking big chunks. A lot of that was sort of like casino logic, you know, and a lot of the same logic for, you know, the you eat what you kill kind of stuff. That's a very casino kind of mentality. So, like, you know, I mean, the idea of, like, fighters unionizing it, you know, I think to them it sounds as crazy as, like, blackjack gamblers unionizing, saying, like, well, hey, we're like, we're. We're losing money here so you can make a profit. So you should give us a kickback. You should give us some, like, vig or something. Just the same way that poker dealer takes a. A coin out of the pot, you know, we should all get a dollar back or a dollar rebate or something like that, you know, and that's like, you know, the craziness of, like, that idea to a casino is like, no, I don't owe you anything. Like, you want money? Go win money. Win your hand. That's how you. That's how you want money. Like you. I could just. I hear that always when they talk about eating what you kill or whatever, and it's not really what they mean, Right. What they really mean is that they eat what the fighters kill, and then the fighters eat after the executives eat. You know, the fighters kill for the executives, and then if there's some, like, remnant bone or scrap left over, then the fighters will eat, like the stray dog at, you know, the edge of the village or something like that. That's a very, I think, a loaded and pretty fake kind of mantra that they've adopted. They never fully understood why people just absorbed it.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: You know, I wanted to. I wanted to speak a little bit because he's such a prominent character in the. The whole of the book was. Was Dana White. Did you. Did you ever get the chance to actually sit down with him? Was just. No.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we came close. You know, the UFC was cooperating for a while. I. I went to the office at some point, had a meeting with their communications person, and I interviewed Lawrence Epstein and Mark Ratner, and we've. I think it was about six months there. We were just constantly. You know, we had a bunch of interviews scheduled with Dana. I kept that, like, they put it on the books like you're gonna go meet. I even flew to Vegas one time. Like, it just sort of collapsed at the last minute, and I was like, well, I'm here now.
Great. But, yeah, it just kept, you know, falling through. I don't know why. Whether it was just, you know, an honest kind of logistical mix up, or if they just got cold feet eventually and we just didn't want to participate any further.
But, yeah, I never got to talk to them. I. You know, there's. There's a lot of unresolved kind of storylines in the book. I think that any kind of history book is sort of like that, especially one that's kind of like living. There's more to say about Dana than I think I was able to get in the book, but I don't think there's more I could say about Dana without having spent time with him and gone even further. But. And the fertittas, too, actually. I mean, the fertittas are Dana. There's a reason everyone talks about Dana. Dana instead of the fratita. Right. Dana. That's exactly why he's kind of the shiny distraction over here when the real thing's going on down there. But the fratitas are mostly Lorenzo, I think. I think my sense from having worked on the book was Frank wasn't as involved as Lorenzo, and I think Lorenzo wasn't actually all that involved for a long time either. He was sort of like, in and out. They really did just let Dana tinker, it was my understanding. And they were just sort of like, you know, observing him and, you know, offering advice and consultation and obviously funding the whole thing. But I think the real intense involvement happened a little bit later. But, yeah, I think, you know, the fratitas are the really interesting character, even more so than Dana. I feel like, you know, Dana is a lightning rod, but I don't think he's that complicated a person. It's my. My intuit having just basked in him for, yeah, five year. Listened to every single second of interviews he's ever given. Like, read every profile, you know, just talked to a bunch of people who knew him at various points in time. Yeah, some pre UFC, you know, like McLaren.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Mr. McLaren, you spoke. Did you speak to him in person? Because it come across in the book as if you did.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: I have spoken for the book. We did a phone interview. I think we met once in person. Since then, I actually interviewed him for another story that I was working on that got killed, unfortunately.
I think I might just throw it out on a blog or something, because I think it's an interesting story. I met him in person for that, and we did, like, a lunch interview.
But, you know, Campbell knows Dana. Before he started Combata, he went to Dana. It was a very Las Vegas kind of thing, and just said, you know, I'm not.
I'm not trying to hurt your company. It was almost like asking for permission to, like, do business, going to, like, a, you know, mafia don or something and say, so, you know, we're launching this company. It's kind of the same thing. But, like, you know, the way Campbell describes it, at least he got sort of like the blessing from. From Dana and their fertitta. Not like they're cheering him on or whatever, but it's like, you know, yeah, nothing personal. Go do what you got to do. You know, best, best wishes. But, you know, we hope we kick your ass and you go bankrupt later on. Yeah, like, I. I spoke to a guy called Tommy Rojas, who was an early fighter manager at AKA and he was a martial artist himself. He trained there originally. And, you know, yeah, that's one of the, like the back in the really colorful days, it's just to give you a sense of just like really how informal and kind of just, you know, from the ground up, this, this whole culture was built. You know, like most people even back in the 90s, like they didn't, didn't have agents, they didn't have managers. It was sort of like this is how Tommy Ross became, became a manager is like he was just the guy in the gym. It was like at Pride's Calling, they have an event, they're looking for fighters to book for this event and they wanted to book Bobby Southworth. I think Tommy was just, okay, let me get my manager for you real quick. And they just pulled him off the mat and like, here's my manager. I think, I don't think it was legal for fighters to represent themselves. Like they had to have someone acting as an outside kind of representative. So I think that happened a lot. I mean, Cesar Gracie talked about that a lot. He was just like, well, like I'm already taking, you know, 8 or 10% as your trainer. You know, you're going to pay some other manager who's going to screw you over another 10%. I'll do both jobs for 15, you'll save 5%. You know, it's very, you know, so I think that's how a lot of people like that wound up being like what AKA did with Zinken, it was kind of their in house talent management company. It was mainly about booking sponsorships to get on fighters, you know, backs. But like Tommy, you know, Tommy knew Dana from before the acquisition. You know, he knew Dana from Dana being a manager and managing. Tito Ortiz spoke to John Lewis, which was fascinating in a lot of ways. I think there's, there's probably more to be said about those early days before the acquisition with John Lewis and Dana and Frank and Lorenzo all training together at John Lewis's academy.
You know, Dana, both Dana and Lorenzo have kind of made very, very vague references to them discussing getting into fighting, maybe doing something with boxing. Before the ufc, John says John went on to run, what do you call it, totally blank wfa, which was, you know, it's where Quinton Jackson came from. It was a very short lived kind of Vegas promotion that was. But his, he told me, and he's, he's repeated it in, in other formats since and other appearances that Frank offered him to buy his fighting promotion before the UFC started. So, and if you've read Chuck Liddell's memoir, Chuck Liddell says that Dana had agreed to be the president of wfa. Before the.
Before the UFC acquisition, he gave that up to go run the ufc. So I don't know if that's true, but I think that, you know, there was probably a lot of just sort of like, ideation and kind of spitballing and making plans and kind of, like, imagining different sorts of things going on there, and I think there's probably a more interesting and fuller kind of story to tell about, like, what exactly they were imagining. I. You know, I think there's a world where the Fertittas and Dana White get into mma, even if the UFC went bankrupt and disappeared and they didn't end up buying it. You know, I think there's a lot of, you know, sometimes, like, a lot of fatalism about, like, oh, we saved the ufc or whatever, and changed culture forever. And sort of, like, you know, the culture was already there that, like, you know, the early UFC had already planted that seed in people's head, you know, and, like, it just. Things are always cyclical. You know, you get excited about something, you burn out on it, and then a new generation gets excited, and they burn out another generation. You know. Know, it's just sort of like kind of the cyclical kind of nature of things. But there were so many promotions, even, you know, 99, king of the cage, IFC. Like, just a million different promotions all over the country, and, you know, none of them were as big as the UFC outside of, like, Pride. But, like, you know, the UFC wasn't that big to start either. It kind of snowballed, you know, snowballed very quickly. It went from, like, 75,000 pay per view buys to 300,000 pay per view buys in, like, a year and a half or something like that. But, you know, I mean, there's. There's no reason to think that couldn't have happened again with Chuck Liddell. I mean, if Chuck Liddell was a king of the cage fighter instead of a UFC fighter, you know, or if he kind of made a name for himself in Japan and then some American promoter like Monte Cox signed him to go, you know, by Pat Miletich or something, and he had some, you know, I mean, there's a lot of different ways that, you know, the sport would still be a part of culture. I think that's. That's an interesting bit of history that, you know, could probably have some more we'll learn more about. As you know, there's a lot of dark corners in the UFC's past still that will keep coming out, and I Hope other people keep sort of following this. I've. You know, I've got some things I'm tracking to for potential stories. And, you know, the history of this thing, it really is kind of a communal effort. It's like all history people just add to this communal information pool and, you know, year by year and, you know, book by book or, you know, essay by essay, you know, story by story, you know, we slowly kind of like, fill in a better, deeper kind of understanding about what this all was, how it all happened. But, yeah, I think that the biggest mystery there is still kind of the fertilize. And, you know. Yeah, for better or worse, Dana just is who he is. And, you know, the one thing I got out of my reporting for this whole book, from talking to people that knew him before and after, and, you know, he's. You know, there's. He is who he is. You know, like, the good. The good parts that you can kind of see on camera are real, and the bad parts are real, too. The temper.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: The hostility, you know, so, yeah, it's.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: It's. It interests me because I don't know if you've seen it, but in the UK we've got something called BT Sports, which is now TNT Sports. And, yeah, last week, they released something called the Rise and Rise of the ufc. And I watched it, and I had a bit of sour taste in my mouth because I've just read your book or listen to your book, and obviously this book is in a hell of a lot more detail, and it feels. It feels a lot less restricted. I think that's the key thing in it is that. That what they produced on there is. Feels like it was produced by the ufc, whereas this book feels like an honest reflection on the history of the ufc, and that's what made it stand out so much more for me. Did you have any kind of. After the book was released, did you have any kind of like.
Like, not repercussions, but anything from the ufcs saying they weren't happy or anything like that, or silence?
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's silence.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I haven't. I haven't heard anything. And I mean, like, you know, if there's. If there's. Anything wrong with the book, if there's anything that's inaccurate, like, I. I want to know. Like, I. You know, I'm not. You know, I'm not trying to write, like, a Kitty Kelly book here. You know, she was. People remember her. She was just, like, gossipy, tell all kind of unauthorized biography of Princess Diana and All this stuff in the 80s and 90s, I want to be fair and truthful. And so if there's something I got. We had the paperback of the book come out and there was, I think, I don't know, 10 corrections we had to make about his pay per view numbers. I, you know, it's little dates I got wrong.
You know, it was the seventh, not the eighth. One of the interesting things we changed there. There's originally, and this is a line the UFC likes to tell about the first Ultimate Fighter.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: Where it peaked at 10 million viewers consecutively.
And now that I brought this, I'm probably going to get it wrong again. But like, what actually the, the stat was was I think that there were 10 million people who watch the Griffin Bonner finale fight on the Ultimate Fighter.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: Not all at once, but over the course of all of the reruns throughout a week. So there's a seven day period. The live thing debuted and it, I think it had like two point some million live viewers average, they average these things out.
And then they replayed it throughout the week because, you know, Spike had a pretty thin broadcasting schedule back then, so they did a lot of reruns, especially with original shows. They would play them three, four times a week. So I think you get to the 10 million figure by all of the replays. It wasn't like on the night, so I had to like reword that line. But that's a, you know, there's a lot of little things like that where it's just sort of. And it, stuff like that happens in every side. It's not just the UFC too, but like there's a lot of really convenient statistical shorthand that people use to kind of impose an impression. Like, this was a really big deal.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:57] Speaker A: And you know, that happens a lot with the Ultimate Fighter. It's like this was a really big deal. It changed the whole kind of trajectory of the sport. And it's, it's true, but it's also kind of a distortion because, yeah, it wasn't that big a deal either. The ratings were between 1 and 2 million viewers per episode on average. Those are numbers they'd kill for now. Like, it's shocking to even go back to those days when it's sort of like this brand new cable channel no one had ever heard of in this brand new kind of series no one had heard of and this disgraced brand of a sport and they're still outperforming, you know, Conor McGregor season of Ultimate Fighter now. Like even after the company's so much bigger. It's just. It's a very peculiar kind of dynamic. But, like, yeah, you know, even back then, there was a lot of other things going on, you know, in concert with that. And, you know, I still maintain that, like, the Josh Koscheck, Chris Leben part of the show, and that was the peak ratings for the whole. The whole season was the, you know, the Chris Leben punching the door and going off to the hospital and, like, sleeping outside. And like, I think they never, until the finale, they didn't get back to that ratings. And I think the finale kind of only matched what the Koschek Leben episode had done, at least in terms of average viewership.
But then you just get this lore, this myth about what the Bonner Griffin fight was. And it's a fascinating fight. It is an important part of history. But I think what kind of does distort the overall perception of why the Ultimate Fighter was important and, like, what really stuck with audiences, and I think, you know, a little bit of that is because Forrest played along. He was a company man after, and he still works for the company. Now he's in the PI Institute or the Performance Institute. And Chris Lean, you know, bought for other promotions. He left the ufc. Complained a lot.
Yeah, I kind of cited in the book his, you know, his feels a little bit like he was pushed into the Anderson Silva fight. He felt like he was right there to fight for a title. He'd won five consecutive fights. He was a star from the Ultimate Fighter.
And, you know, I mean, you can make the case that, like, you know, he was as accomplished as Nate Quarry and as exciting, as big a drive, so he should have been fighting for what he. Who knows if he would have won, could he beat Rich Franklin? You know, we'll. We'll never find out. But, you know, the, you know, the. The fact that they pushed him to take the Anderson Silva fight, and, you know, according to him, he didn't get any extra money for it. He just fought for his pre. Preset contract. I can't even remember if I put this in the book, but, like, in his memoir, he writes about Dana visiting him before the fight in his. Dude, in his hotel, he gives him the belt buckle.
[00:54:05] Speaker B: You didn't say about a belt buckle. No, you said about him meeting him, I think, and basically pushing him to do it. And then, yeah, he lost. And then it was just like, yeah.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: As a thank you for taking the fight, even though it was kind of against his best interest, Dana visits him in his hotel room. Before the fight, I think it was the day of the fight in Vegas, and he gives him a belt buckle that's like, you know, it just basically says, I'm an alcoholic or something, like I love fighting and like, not in that order or something, or drinking. Like, it's just, you know, it was like one of those tourist, like, tchotchke belt buckles.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: You know, even, you know, you can imagine he gets a text from Dana the day of the fight. Hey, man, thank you. I want to come up and say hello and thank you for, you know, and this is kind of the era of the envelope bonus checks and the, you know, the under the table payment and stuff. So you can imagine what he's thinking. It's like, oh, you know, they do respect me like this, you know, even if I lose, this will be worth. And it just gets like a ten dollar belt buck. He's like, thanks, man, you're awesome. See you later.
And then he just gets like, you know, knocked out, like from pillar to post in a minute. And like never gets close to title contention again. You know, that was his one shot, you know, and he gave up that one shot to help make Anderson Silva a star and to help, you know, the UFC build. Anderson, who wasn't popular in the beginning, who wasn't actually a draw, Leben was probably a bigger draw in a way. It was kind of self defeating to use leaving to push Anderson at that point because, you know, Anderson didn't fully get the shine from that moment. Like, maybe Leben versus Franklin would have been, you know, for fans during that period, maybe that would have been a bigger event than Anderson vs. Franklin or at least, you know, it wouldn't have been as. As it wouldn't have been any. Done any worse ratings wise. So, yeah, that, like, you know, and that it's again, that negotiation that Leben talks about, you know, his manager at the time was going back and forth and then you would have. Dana would call Leben directly and go around the manager, which is a huge red flag in almost any industry. It's like when you're negotiating, like, Simon and Schuster didn't call me when they were trying to negotiate the book deal. They were like, they were talking to my agent. You know, it's like, don't call me with like, hey, man, we really want you to take this number. Instead of like, I don't know, like, maybe, I don't know. I like it. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not like a agent. I don't know what book deals look like. But that's a continuing theme with fighter Randy Couture talked about, Ronda Rousey talks about it.
You know, it certainly happened with the Diaz brothers. It happens with almost every fighter and sort of, they get the fighters to think like the managers are working against the fighter's interests and that the fighter would be better off if they just work directly with the ufc. And you know, that in aggregate, that ends up saving the UFC money and hurting the fighters financially.
[00:57:24] Speaker B: I wanted to.
We've been going for a while now. I think it's 22, 2012 here. So I'll, I'll do one more question and then. And I think. And then we'll wrap it up. I wanted to kind of get into the kind of nitty gritty about you as an individual and the process of going through writing the book. A big thing with writers is about what they call writer's block. When you, when you hit those walls during Cage Kings, I mean, five years to write a book is an incredibly long time. What was your kind of go to method for pushing through and did you have any kind of like strange habits or rituals that helped you stay on track when you were doing the two hours sleep and going again?
[00:58:02] Speaker A: No, it, it's, there's, it's just hell. There's no easy way to do it. It's like I've, I've done a lot of hard things in my life and I just, I found a new level of difficulty in this. Like, it was completely overwhelming. It was just like being buried by information because it's just, you know, I felt like I was in a skit some nights where like I would just imagine like opening a door and then just like an avalanche just completely buries you. Like a newspaper cartoon or something. You're just like a finger sticking out from the bottom of a pile.
It was brutal. My process for the book was very different from my normal writing process because I come out of web writing like most working writers now. I think you just, you write for the Internet. You write for a website or blog or even if it's like, you know, a Tiffany Tier like New York or Style now most people are writing those pieces for the website. There's less and less revenue coming out of print and more and more. Well, not more and more coming from digital now either. Digital is kind of falling apart, but, you know, just the mechanics of web writing are as such that most people are just publishing first drafts. You know, you just do a first draft, the first pass, the first. You know, you're typing and thinking at the same time. And maybe you do a proofread and you send it. The editor does something to it, maybe send it back, ask some questions, you send it back again. It all happens, like, relatively quickly. And, you know, there's not a lot of resources for reporting to, you know, that is definitely not. I wound up spending $6,000 report the book, like, flying around to California and Vegas and, you know, Atlantic City. And we went to Kansas City a bunch of different places to meet people in person and just talk through, you know, different parts of the history. You know, it's just, you know, a lot of 80 hotel rooms and car rentals and just sad meals at Quiznos in, you know, the middle of Central California. And, you know, that was all my own money. I didn't get, you know, you know, I. I got just enough of an advance from the book publisher to be able to pay that. This was, like, one of the first times where I had the luxury of not sending just, like, the first draft and having the first draft be the draft, you know, and that was something I really wanted to do with this book was like, go.
Just make it right. Like, and, you know, whatever the book is, however readers find it, whether they like it or dislike it or whatever, the. The point I got the book to at the end was, you know, this. This is as good a story as I am capable of making out of this set of facts, this set of resources, a set of interviews, a set of information, like, there's nothing that could. Could have been done better from, like, may someone else brilliant, another brilliant writer could have done, come in and made something even better. Not say, there's not a better book out there that. That couldn't have been written. But, like, there's nothing I could have done individually as a person to. To get this book into any better condition. And there's no way to get to that point without just. Just, like, complete, like, sacrifice to, you know, to the point was like, scared. There were points where I'm like, this may never come out because it's just. The pieces don't fit. It just doesn't. It doesn't make sense. And I was a real gatekeeper on myself. I was like, I'm not. I'm not releasing a draft that I have questions about still, but I don't feel good about still. And I. I was late. I was a couple years late on the. The contract, but so I sent. I did send a first draft as just sort of like, you know, I'm working. This exists in Some form, like, don't. Don't think I'm not doing anything. But it was also like, this is very, you know, very much in process. This is, like, super fluid. And, you know, I just. I kind of had to sit with what didn't work about it, which is. It's. It's not humiliating, it's discouraging. You know, you just look at your own flaws and failures and like, what. What's not working? And just keep rereading and rereading and like, no, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. No, that doesn't work. No, I can't say that. And I can't do this. And you just live in this world of for, like, years on end, in order to kind of scrape the away so that the reader doesn't have to deal with that, you end up eating all that so the reader can just have like, a clean experience of whatever it is. You know, my only, like, technique was just like, you know, I gave up any sense of ever being individually gratified by the book. And I think that maybe that was the biggest change is like, as a first draft writer, as a web writer, that's just sort of typing and thinking at the same time.
There's a lot of narcissism in that. There's a lot of ego hits in that where you're like, this is my latest. And it's getting all this attention. It's getting all this Twitter feedback or Facebook feed, like, whatever the metric at the given time is, all these people are arguing about my little ideas. Like, that makes you feel important. That makes you feel like there's something more at stake in your own kind of thought process and idea process. And that can become a negative kind of spiral. It can become a very toxic sort of thing.
And then, you know, you get in a bad place where you sort of like, I'm not even sure I believe what I'm writing now. Just sort of like, writing in this weird kind of hallucinatory kind of engagement with this phantom audience out there that I think is going to react one way or another. It just like, what am I even saying? Like, I don't even know if. And so for this, I was just sort of like, you know, everything has to be built to last. And a huge part of the process was just forcing myself to be honest about what wasn't built to last in the book, which for about three years was just almost everything. It's just like, it was a huge, like, not almost everything, but, like, yeah, yeah, I Dramatically restructured the book after the first draft. Like, you know, the reporting was always the reporting. Like I was, you know, I had this avalanche of quotes and anecdotes and stories. It was just sort of like. And there's so many, there's so much stuff I love that I had to take out. You know, as an MMA fan and fan of UFC history, Richard Perez, who's Nick Diaz's boxing coach and before he, he was a boxing coach in the 80s. Like, he's one of the most interesting people I think I've, I've met ever just in life. Like a strange, amazing life he's, he's led. And I had to cut him completely out of the book. But like, you know, I went to his gym, I hung out with him and his wife for, you know, a whole night. Saw him train other fighters.
In the first draft, I gave him like 4,000 words or something. He told his whole life story. It was just something. He was thrown out of his house. He had epilepsy as a kid. His dad was a deeply Catholic immigrant from Mexico who, you know, was kind of superstitious. And he was a pro boxer and had trained his kids to be pro boxers. And Richard hated boxing and didn't like fighting at all. He was really conflict averse. But he had epilepsy and his father threw him out of the house at 14 because he thought he was possessed by demons. That was like a literal demonic possession. You know, Richard just. He lived in a motel for. From 14 to 18 and his mom would go sneak him money so he could pay for the, or the motel room. And the one thing he knew how to do was box. So he worked by being a sparring partner for people. This thing he hated. But as father had trained him to do, and then that went on to become his career. Even as it was his career, he couldn't support himself from it. He was, he worked as a high school janitor up until I think, I think it was Nick GSP fight where he made enough finally to not have to work. It was either the GSP fight or the Conor McGregor. Nate Diaz won. He was like, he had world champion boxers he trained in the 80s. He's a high school janitor at the same time. So it's not just the fighters that are sort of like in this deeply precarious position.
Everyone around them, unless you're at the very, very tip top level, everyone is kind of hustling and you know, I had to take that out. That's just like. But to me personally, I was like, that's the story. That's like the real heart of what fighting and prize fighting is all about. That's what connects.
And, you know, he's from California, very close to where I grew up, so I felt like a real connection to the landscape too. And it was sort of like, that. That's not going in. That doesn't fit that. That's not about the ufc. That's about the wider culture. It's about an interesting person. It's about a UFC fighters coach.
I can't. It just. It doesn't go anywhere that ties back to the story. So, like, there is a bunch of stuff like that that to me was deeply resonant and I was just like, so that stuff was painful. Then there's sufferers, just like, this is boring. This doesn't work. Like, it's like, so it was just like a lot of not being good enough. It's like producing something that hopefully someone somewhere will find meaning in. Like, it just. You have to live with your own failures and inability to be good for long enough that you can finally find those few scraps that are good and kind of weld them together and pass it on. And hopefully other people can go even further in their own directions, their own interests, you know, in, like, whatever that is.
[01:08:53] Speaker B: Yeah, Well, I thought the book was incredible.
Anyone that is listening, I think 100, you should go and give it a read. This has been an incredible conversation. I'm going to wrap it up now just because it's getting really late. Thanks so much for sharing your journey and the insights into Cage Kings. Genuinely, I feel like if this was 8:00 in the afternoon, I could just go and go and go. But yeah, just.
[01:09:19] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. A lot of fun. Appreciate it.
[01:09:23] Speaker B: Speak to you soon. Bye. Bye.
[01:09:25] Speaker A: All right, have a good.
