Rorion was teaching classes in his garage in Redondo Beach at the time, but was opening up a gym in Torrance. And just about that time I had gotten a job through my headhunter to go to work for a direct response ad agency in, of all places, Torrance. "My secretary brought it into me one day, and said, you’ve been looking for people who were actually doing this in North America, take a look at this. "Out of all this research I found the article, ‘BAD,’" Davie says. More Coverage: UFC 167 Results | UFC news This was a very old pondering, one that had long lived in the psyche what would happen in a fight between Bruce Lee and Mike Tyson? There were many colorful insights into the idea, and many variations, but never had there been a platform to get at these curiosities. It was that piece that inspired him to begin conceptualizing a tournament in which a sampling of different combative styles would be brought together under a single roof to discover which one was the best. Or did it? Art Davie, the cigar wielding ad-man for Mexican brand beer who four years later co-founded the UFC with Rorion Gracie, read the piece. It wasn’t one of those stories that changed the world." I did it and Playboy liked it and it didn’t get a lot of play. "He had a little tiny stucco house in one of those little burgs off of L.A. "I basically went with a guy that nobody knew about and we were in his garage," Jordan says. Jordan went to visit Rorion in Southern California. He was a chip off the old block, as Helio issued such challenges 30 years earlier in Brazil. He believed it so much that he issued a public challenge: he’d fight anyone in the United States - no rules, no time limits, fight to the finish (even if that meant the grimmest outcome) - for a winner-take-it all prize of $100,000. Like his father and his uncle Carlos, Rorion believed that the Gracie brand of fighting was superior to all others. The focus of the piece was Rorion Gracie, the son of Helio, who was the first in the family to spread the gospel of Brazilian jiu-jitsu in the United States. It was an article with a simple hedder, "BAD," in all caps just like that, written by Pat Jordan. One little all-but-forgotten piece that appeared in Playboy back in 1989. Conservation science plays a critical role in designing effective strategies.This whole thing - from skinny Royce Gracie at UFC 1 and a $50,000 tournament prize to Usher dishing Anderson Silva advice in a two billion dollar industry - began with an article. Despite growing threats, it is not too late for decisive action to protect and save these economically and ecologically high-value ecosystems. Thus, no conflict between development, societal welfare, and coral-reef conservation needs to exist. Coral reefs create an annual income in S-Florida alone of over $4 billion. Local communities often support coral-reef conservation in order to raise income potential associated with tourism and/or improved resource levels. When effectively managed, protected areas have contributed to regeneration of coral reefs and stocks of associated marine resources. Nevertheless, many examples of successful conservation exist from the national level to community-enforced local action. Societal priorites, economic pressures, and legal/administrative systems of many countries are more prone to destroy rather than conserve coral-reef ecosystems. Conservation science of coral reefs is well advanced, but its practical application has often been lagging. Already ∼20% of the world's reefs are lost and ∼26% are under imminent threat. On more local scales, overfishing and destructive fisheries, coastal construction, nutrient enrichment, increased runoff and sedimentation, and the introduction of nonindigenous invasive species have caused phase shifts away from corals. Anthropogenic modification of chemical and physical atmospheric dynamics that cause coral death by bleaching and newly emergent diseases due to increased heat and irradiation, as well as decline in calcification caused by ocean acidification due to increased CO 2, are the most important large-scale threats. Coral reefs are iconic, threatened ecosystems that have been in existence for ∼500 million years, yet their continued ecological persistence seems doubtful at present.
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