Inside MMA's dark ages: Monte Cox lays bare the deals, damage and dysfunction of an outlaw era
From no-rules fights and backroom deals to sudden fortunes and illicit nights, the new memoir of Cox — a manager to UFC's early stars — traces the chaotic rise of a sport that survived on the fringes.
In the nearly 33 years since UFC 1, the one constant in mixed martial arts has been that everything is forward moving. Yet there comes a time when looking back is the surest way to fully appreciate the sport. And sometimes the best historians are the ones who created the history to begin with.
Monte Cox was there in those formative years , ahead of the so-called “Dark Ages” when the spectacle was trying, against tremendous political resistance, to become a sport. Like so many who found their way to MMA, Cox arrived as a tumbleweed blowing through. Working as a writer at the Quad-City Times in Iowa, he heard of a “no rules” fighter in the area, a “crazy local” named Pat Miletich in Bettendorf, who “did his best fighting in bars.
” Cox did what a naturally curious reporter does. He called Miletich to do a story. And Miletich, doing what fighters did in those early days did, told him he needed to see it to believe it.
He invited Cox to come watch him train and to learn a few things before doing a “hatchet job” on the sport. Cox obliged and was so intrigued that he wrote a glowing four-pager that hit stands a couple of days later. Next thing Cox knew, he was going to Chicago to watch Miletich compete at the “Battle of the Masters,” an eight-man tournament being held at St.
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