Blast from the past.

Editor of The New York Times,

Given that I was the target of Senator McCain’s 1995 attack on Mixed

Martial Arts, not to mention the matchmaker, co-producer, and commentator for

Extreme Fighting and the matchmaker and color commentator for The Ultimate Fighting Championship, there are factual errors in Amy

Chozick’s article, “The Slugfest in the Executive Suite” that must

be corrected.  The New York State Athletic commission refused to sanction

Extreme Fighting’s 1995 bout at the Brooklyn Armory due to what the

chairman at the time, former boxing great Floyd Paterson, claimed were

concerns about the fighters’ safety. Mixed Martial Arts is NOT the

blending of styles into a whole like Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do or my own

style Tao Jutsu Do.  Rather, it is the mixing and matching of different

disciplines against each other.  MMA was not a “Free form bloodfest”, the

UFC was. Weight classes, gloves, referees stoppage, even the term "mixed martial arts," were my inventions and part of Extreme

Fighting from its first inception in 199?  Historian Peter Maguire

put it best when he wrote, “The UFC’s blatant historical revisionism

would make Stalin proud. John Perretti will soon be air brushed out of

the photographs.”While the Zuffa brothers and their

mouthpiece Dana White deserve great credit for turning MMA into a very

lucrative business venture, sadly, they have followed the example of pro boxing under Don King. When one promoter owns the fighters, he also owns the results.

John Perretti

To the editor of The New York Times...

Editor

Given that I was the target of Senator McCain’s 1995 attack on Mixed

Martial Arts, not to mention the matchmaker, co-producer, and commentator for

Extreme Fighting and the matchmaker and color commentator for The Ultimate Fighting Championship, there are factual errors in Amy

Chozick’s article, “The Slugfest in the Executive Suite” that must

be corrected.  The New York State Athletic commission refused to sanction

Extreme Fighting’s 1995 bout at the Brooklyn Armory due to what the

chairman at the time, former boxing great Floyd Paterson, claimed were

concerns about the fighters’ safety. Mixed Martial Arts is NOT the

blending of styles into a whole like Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do or my own

style Tao Jutsu Do.  Rather, it is the mixing and matching of different

disciplines against each other.  MMA was not a “Free form bloodfest”, the

UFC was. Weight classes, gloves, referees stoppage, even the term "mixed martial arts," were my inventions and part of Extreme

Fighting from its first inception in 199?  Historian Peter Maguire

put it best when he wrote, “The UFC’s blatant historical revisionism

would make Stalin proud. John Perretti will soon be air brushed out of

the photographs.”While the Zuffa brothers and their

mouthpiece Dana White deserve great credit for turning MMA into a very

lucrative business venture, sadly, they have followed the example of pro boxing under Don King. When one promoter owns the fighters, he also owns the results.

John Perretti

On Gangs...

I extend this to all my friends over the years who were or still are on the job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQMK2TCx79U&feature=youtu.be

Mixed Martial Arts in America today

"If (t)he(y) survived (t)he(y) must have belonged to the section of society where money comes easily and goes easily, where ideas are in short supply, and where mystique of the leader(s) is the only form of ideology and excuses crime."

          Marguerite Duras, The War, A Memoir

International Olympic Committee Drops Wrestling

I am deeply distressed that a poorly promoted, majestic sport of intimate (combat) committal by unheralded athletes since the almost dawn of civilization has been removed from the Olympic club and the viewership of the world. Try if you will doing what you do while someone is trying to hurt you, not just gravity and a time clock, a thinking organism as gifted as you, opposite you, training as you have to conquer you. While the "Mixed Martial Arts"I helped birth, soars high, the wings of wax that hoist few to the podium in wrestling have suddenly disintegrated. The short (black) listing of wrestling is to now stand along side Karate and wushu to be continued as items needing further consideration. Tae Kwon Do had the political audacity to jump into the Olympic arena (during the Seoul Olympics) quite a long time after I had enough of horrible refereeing and geographic prejudice. I moved on. I like Igor Zinoviev missed the Olympics in my (Our) initial sport. As I told the U.S.A. wrestling fifteen years ago when co-producing The Contenders, "You guys better get on board, you are dinosaurs...you will lose everything, all your athletes to these new (then) sports." They did not back me, nor believe in my premonition. I feel for the committed athletes, not the organization. You insulated yourself and now have been cast adrift in your own Bermuda Triangle.

My Last Five Months of Reading

• Here
  Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones
  Absolutely the best novel I have read in ten years and the author’s first, translated from French. I read it front to back and again without stopping, like I did at the premier of Apocalypse Now, at the Zeigfield.
  Now for my research:
  Ian Kershaw, The End
  Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese
  H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty
  Meyer, John Stryker, Across The Fence
  Geraghty Tony, Black Ops: The Rise of Special forces in the CIA, the SAS and Mossad
  Ronnau, Christopher, Blood Trails: The Combat Diary of a Foot Soldier in Vietnam
  Hoffman, Jon T., Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC
  Feuer, A. B., Commando!: The M/Z Units Secret War against Japan
  Truong, Hoa Minh, The Dark Journey, Inside the Reeducation Camps of Viet Cong
  Cooper, Belton W., Death Traps
  Blehm, Eric, Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL team SIX
  Lane, Kerry L., Guadalcanal Marine
  Clarke, Johnnie, Guns Up
  Leckie, Robert, Helmet for my Pillow
  Hastings Max, Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945
  Carle, Glenn L., The Interrogator
  Rielly, Robin L., Kamikaze Attacks of WWII
  Smith, Jim; Mcconnell, Malcolm, The Last Mission
  Kershaw, Alex, The Liberator
  Bradley, Rusty; Maurer Kevin, The Lions Of Kandahar
  Peter Maguire, Law and War (A re-read)
  Burford, John, LRRP TEAM LEADER
  Harris, Sam, Lying
  Wiknik Jr., Arthur, Nam Sense
  Clausewitz, Carl von, On War-Volume 1
  Salecker, Gene Eric, Rolling Thunder against the Rising Sun
  Lau, G.J., Sitrep Negative
  Hillenbrand, Laura, Unbroken (Novel)
  Gold, Hal, Unit 731
  Junger, Sabastian, War
  Sever, Al, Xin Loi