AGV Backmarker: No rules? Cool
May 4, 2006
By Mark Gardiner
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Tyson’s apologists—and surprisingly, there are a few—point out that before the bite, Holyfield had head-butted him. It changes nothing. Evander was not only one of the fittest heavyweights ever, he was a sportsman who never forgot his humble roots. (Before becoming a multimillionaire heavyweight champ, he was a hot-dog vendor at Atlanta Braves games.) He wasn’t a dirty fighter and didn’t need to ‘butt Tyson. He was pounding the crap out of him within the rules. Gardiner archive

When I emailed Steve after Barber, I mentioned that Neil had got into a shoving match with Mat Mladin in pit lane. As most readers know by now, Mat remained (scarily?) calm throughout the brief incident. Nonetheless, I wrote my friend, “Unless Neil’s been taking lessons from the Gracies, he should probably pick fights elsewhere.” My advice, if he has been learning ju jitsu, is to practice his ankle-lock submissions. Mladin literally has an Achilles’ heel. (Note to Hodgson: it’s Mat’s left one.)

When the Barber weekend was over and despite a (relatively) poor result, Mladin actually seemed happier and more human in interviews than I’ve ever seen him. It made me wonder if he was pleased to know he’d “gotten” to one of the riders expected to challenge him over the season. He’s certainly a master of trash talk and pre-event intimidation.

If you’ll excuse a gnarly segue, the best bit of trash ever goes back to the famous Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield “ear biting” incident in their 1997 heavyweight title fight…

Tyson had a huge psy-ops advantage over almost any boxer in the early ‘90s. However, six months earlier, Holyfield had knocked him out. By the time of their rematch, it wasn’t so much that opponents feared Tyson’s overhand right; it was just that they knew he was a complete psychopath.

Still, no one was ready for the stunt Tyson pulled in the third round when he came out without his mouthguard, grabbed Holyfield in a clinch and bit off a substantial chunk of Evander’s ear. (Note to Mike: the mouthguard was to protect your mouth, not protect opponents from your mouth.)

A while later, Royce Gracie held a press conference. Now for those of you who don’t know who Gracie is, he’s the scion of a legendary martial arts family from Brazil. The Gracies basically invented Brazilian ju jitsu by adapting the traditional Japanese fighting style, incorporating the most effective techniques of gritty “vale tudo” fighters from the slums of Rio and stylish capoeira dancer-fighters from the countryside. When the Ultimate Fighting Championships started, Gracie went undefeated for the first several matches, beating a string of much bigger and scarier-looking guys.

‘Ear, ‘ear now, said the Marquis of Queensbury. We’ll ‘ave none of that! Tyson bit Holyfield in a fit of temper that cost Evander a good chunk of his ear and Mike a good chunk of $30 million. Gardiner archive

In fact, the Gracie family chose Royce (pronounced like the word “hoist” without the t) because he was so deceptive—not particularly big or strong. And the people he beat weren’t the only thing capturing people’s imaginations, it was the way he beat them.

There’s a Japanese proverb, “Majesty is slowness in all things, even the slow glance.” Royce embodied that in pre-fight interviews. He always seemed to be moving and talking in slow motion and had a way of looking at reporters—tilting his head down and looking up at them so that the whites of his eyes showed under his irises. Show fear? He stepped into the UFC octagon looking like he was ready for a nap, not a no-holds-barred fight to the finish. And yet, usually in a few seconds, opponents that had towered over him and foamed at the mouth were either screaming like schoolgirls and begging for mercy, or simply unconscious. To the uninitiated, it was often impossible to see what Gracie had even done to them.

Anyway… After Tyson bit Holyfield’s ear, Royce Gracie called a press conference in which he explained that he’d watched the boxing match with interest. “I’m confused,” he said (and I’m paraphrasing here for space). “I thought I was watching a boxing match, not a no-rules fight. Obviously, if you want to be the heavyweight boxing champion, you must fight Evander Holyfield, but if you want to be the no-rules champion you must fight me.” The purpose of the press conference was to call Tyson out. Royce invited him to fight any time, anywhere, anything goes.

“But Royce,” stammered a reporter, “what will you do if Mike Tyson bites your ear?”

Gracie fixed the hapless scribe with that baleful stare and responded (even slower and in more of a monotone than usual, if that’s possible) “I would bring his arm home and hang it above my fireplace.”

Tyson never accepted the invitation.

***************

No-holds-barred fighting legend Royce Gracie then offered Tyson a chance to make a little of that back. Sadly, the fight never came off . Gardiner archive

My friend Gary Inman came to Daytona to cover the 200 for the U.K. magazine Performance Bikes. It fell to me to explain why the AMA Lockhart Phillips Formula Xtreme class was superficially similar to 600cc Supersport. He remained a bit baffled but his interest was piqued when I explained what FX was originally like, with tuned literbikes mixing it up with crazy stuff like Rad Greaves’ short-wheelbase Hayabusa.

I always thought that the first FX concept was the heir to the original Formula USA, which was really no-holds-barred. Rumor has it that the first F-USA rules (written by Willow Springs track owner Bill Huth in the mid-‘80s) read simply, “Two wheels, one motor.”

When I started telling the Brit about that—repeating tales of Rich Oliver beating 1,200cc four-strokes on a punched-out, nitrous-injected TZ250, he couldn’t believe we’d ever abandoned the concept.

Maybe the reason Gary had keyed on the old F-USA “no rules” tales was that PB’s sister mag, Bike, had a big feature in its April issue, in which a bunch of F-1 engineers, MotoGP types, and miscellaneous boffins speculated on what race bikes would look like if there were no technical limitations.

It makes for pretty interesting reading. Lotus proposes a monocoque chassis with change-on-the-fly wheelbase and center of gravity. That might seem a little farfetched, but before writing off the company’s ability to think on two wheels, remember that a few years ago they built a one-off bicycle so dominant in track racing that it was immediately banned.

The most interesting insight in the story, though, came from Tom O’Kane, a Suzuki engineer who cited Kel Carruthers. O’Kane recalled that years ago, someone had asked Carruthers the same sort of question. He’d replied that he’d make a slight improvement to the bikes currently in use, “because that’s the type of bike that’s going to win the world championship this year and the year after.”

The April issue of the U.K. magazine Bike asks experts what motorcycle racing would look like if there were no technical rules. Kawasaki’s concept (illustrated) was perhaps the most radical—appropriately, for a company with a history of going over the top (witness the Mach III back in the ‘60s, or the original Z900). Reproduced with permission

All of which makes me wonder why we don’t have a “no-rules” class, either in the AMA or in MotoGP. Before you think that it would just be a gift to Honda, the heavyweight champion of motorcycle engineering—and R&D spending—hear me out. The mandated switch to 800cc motors in MotoGP is actually going to favor Honda precisely because they can throw enough money at the new-motor challenge to generate results quickly.

Even at the club-racing level, you might instinctively think that more-restrictive rules (i.e., Supersport or even showroom-stock classes) reduce costs, but you’d be wrong. They don’t, because there’s always a marginally improved new model each year. To be competitive in restrictive classes, club racers need to buy a new bike every season. In fact, the most affordable classes are sportsman and formula classes, with much looser rules. In those, a racer can buy one machine and slowly develop it over years.

At every level, rules stability equals long-term affordability. And the ultimate in rules stability is no rules at all—even if it means there’s occasionally a lopsided result. In 1991, Kenny Roberts brought over a pair of year-old Yamaha 500cc GP bikes, and Oliver and Rob Peterson used them to finish first and second in that year’s F-USA championship. Those YZR500s probably did have an “unfair” advantage, but I don’t remember hearing fans complain. (Come to think of it, the 1975 Indy Mile is probably the single most talked-about race in the history of flat track. That was the race Kenny Roberts ran on a TZ750. Although there were of course lots of rules governing Grand National bikes, that was the solution that would have been proposed if the race had been run without any rules at all.)

In 1991, when Rich Oliver and Rob Peterson raced ex-Team Roberts 500cc GP bikes in F-USA, Chuck Graves kept them honest with this Suzuki 7-11—a GSX-R750 chassis with an 1,100cc motor stuffed in it. So what if the 500cc GP bikes went 1-2 on the season, this was bitchin’. (Photo links to Airtech). Photo courtesy of Airtech

Why don’t we create an Ultimate Riding Championship? Maybe Honda would ship over a surplus 990cc RCV, or maybe they wouldn’t—I have no idea what it costs to run one of those things, but I do know that a couple of years ago American Honda balked at paying HRC’s lease fees for even a “lowly” superbike. Nor do I know if it’d be faster than much simpler bikes on most of our tracks. (Every bike would be limited by tires—as all are now—and on a track like Barber, about 90 of the RCV’s horsepower would be essentially useless.) But even if American Honda did bring in Nicky’s current bike (it’ll be obsolete next year) and it was dominant, my response would be, “And the problem is?....”

F-USA’s original hook was precisely that radically different bikes with radically different cornering lines and race strategies fought it out together. Why did we ever abandon that idea? Who wouldn’t want to see an RCV mixing it up with Rob Tuluie’s frameless snowmobile-motored two-stroke or that Czysz thing from Portland?