Like anything wildly successful, mixed martial arts has an origin story that will always be in some dispute. While the most commonly told history of the modern sport involves Art Davie, Campbell McLaren and the Gracie Train, there are countless mixed style matches such as Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki that pre-date the inaugural UFC event.
Among the most forgotten and the closest in both date and resemblance to UFC 1 is a promotion that was both wildly successful and short-lived.
On March 20, 1980, in blue-collar New Kensington, Pa., karate enthusiasts Bill Viola and Frank Caliguri produced an event that invited martial artists of all styles to compete against each other in a tournament designed to determine the most effective fighting style. That little-explored show is the subject of a Showtime documentary, Tough Guys, which premieres on Friday at 9 pm ET/PT.
Directed by W.B. Zullo and Henry Roosevelt, and executive produced by former Academy Award nominee Morgan Spurlock, the 77-minute film casts a rightful spotlight on an event and participants that deserve a chapter in MMA’s history book.
“I think in watching this, you’re very much in Frank’s and Bill’s corner because what they were creating back then, almost 40 years ago, was remarkable,” Spurlock told MMA Fighting. “I think whenever people watch Tough Guys, they leave going, ‘Man, I had no idea.’ Most people think MMA started with UFC in 1993. But these guys had an idea that preceded it by 12 or 13 years. I think you start to see there was already this idea out in the universe, out in the ether, and they pulled it off more than a decade earlier.”
Spurlock, best known for the documentary Super Size Me and the immersive CNN series Morgan Spurlock Inside Man, has long been a fan of combat sports including mixed martial arts, and recounted a story of attending a Toughman contest in Beckley, W.V., as a 12-year-old, hearing the sharp crack of a punch to the jaw for the first time.
Presented the opportunity to work on this film, he immediately saw a through line from those early days to the multi-billion dollar business the sport has become.
Tough Guys is notable not just for its forgotten slice of history, but for its characters. The promoters Viola and Caliguri naturally complement each other, the former charismatic and verbose; the latter stoic and reserved. The competitors—amateurs with names like Danny “Mad Dog” Moyak, Michael “Mex” Lubiano and “Crazy” Jack Reynolds—have aged, but their fighting spirit lights up as they dust off their memories.
The film features rarely seen footage of some of those early fights, including innovations that pre-dated modern MMA such as open-hand, curved gloves to allow for grappling. Much like UFC 1, the event was advertised as “Anything Goes,” but that was mostly a marketing ploy. In reality, there was protective gear and a host of rules including prohibitions against eye-gouging, biting, fish-hooking, and intentional evasion of contact.
While the explosive rise of the promotion is compellingly told—about 3,500 fans packed a Holiday Inn for the premiere event—perhaps more even more intriguing is its rapid decline. Unbeknown to Viola and Caliguri, a similarly named promotion—Toughman—had begun in Michigan. On the one-year anniversary of Viola and Caliguri’s first event, Toughman’s promoter Art Dore brought his show to nearby Johnstown, Pa. In their mind, Dore’s move was purposely designed to confuse the market and draw in fans who didn’t realize the difference (Dore’s Toughman was essentially amateur boxing). At any rate, during that show, a 23-year-old Marine named Ronald Miller was beaten badly and died shortly after competing.
Tough Guys, which by then had already thwarted one attempt by the Pennsylvania athletic commission to shut them down, was soon in the crosshairs of state legislators. Just over two years later, the state senate passed Bill 632, specifically outlawing “Tough Guy” contests. Despite the fact that the death occurred in Toughman, the legislature didn’t include a single mention of that promotion.
“They tried to work with the commission, but I think that back at that time, all of these athletic commissions were in the pocket of big boxing,” Spurlock said. “Boxing controlled these state athletic commissions, and I think they tried to pull it together. But once that guy got killed, it was the beginning of the end, as they were against the same forces the UFC faced back in the beginning, where they couldn’t find states that would allow them.”
Whether the commission conspired with legislators to bait and switch the promotion’s name is unclear. The documentary includes interviews with at least two politicians who suggested everything was done with integrity and that they were using “Tough Guy” as a general term. Former Senator Bob Mellow, who drafted the bill, said Tough Guys promoters deserve some of the blame for failing to make their own legislative proposal or coming forward when the legislation was going through assembly.
What might have happened if they embraced regulation? To that, one can only wonder. As it stands, the legislation only affected Viola and Caliguri’s promotion while Dore’s Toughman continues to this day.
Viola and Caliguri? As they recount the ordeal, they appear content in what they did, and say there are no regrets, even if sometimes they can’t help but wonder what might have been. They are content with their only little slice of history, and the fact that now the world will know that before the Gracies, before the Fertittas and Dana White, there was Frank and Bill. There was the Tough Guys.
“I’m a real believer that there are no original ideas,” Spurlock said. “When you have an idea, somebody else in the world has had it, or might have it, and there is a race to see who can pull it off first. Who can do it better, faster, quicker. What they did preceded what we call MMA by more than a decade. You have to give them credit for that. They teed up an idea of what it was. Maybe someone saw one of these fights, or maybe someone said ‘I can do this better,’ but you can't negate what these guys did. They created a mixed martial arts competition before anyone else.”