History
Judy Quine
American Pro Full Contact is in crisis. For Don Quine, Bill Wallace's manager and head of the Professional Karate Association, full contact is not just a sport, it's pure entertainment, like shooting a movie. "I either make it in two years or I'll quit".
Americans are known for their yearning for change in their lives, their environment, residence and job. Unlike Europe, masses of young people moved from the East to the West after the war, and more recently from the North to the South in search of socio-economic progress. Thus, Americans can be defined as adventurous and romantic dreamers with a strong quality of pragmatism and adaptability.
These characteristics are evident in Donald Quine, who with his wife is the owner of the Professional Karate Association which is attempting to launch professional semi and full contact in the USA.
Coming from an upper-middle class family in the Mid-West, Don Quine was soon attracted by Hollywood where he started his career as an actor, then script-writer, assistant director and producer. Among his most important achievements was marrying Judy, an actress during Grace Kelly's time (she is still a close friend), who became the wife of the president of 20 th Century Fox, then actor Antony Franciosa and finallly Don with whom she had three children who are now fully grown.
From the movies to full contact is not an easy transition, but they eventually made it, always firmly convinced that full contact was just like the movies, an assumption that has created problems for professional full contact in America.
From the glamorous offices of the PKA on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Don Quine and his secretary general, John Corcoran, are trying to "sell" full contact to the world. With most of America's best fighters under contract, Don and John produce "shows", full contact matches which they organize and film to sell to the highest bidder, generally to CBS, one of the large TV networks in America, and to South America and Japan. Europe is not a good customer for lack of money, but Don Quine is hopeful since he strongly believes in the power of the mass media.
WhiIe in California I certainly could not fail to call on the man who holds the destiny of American professional full contact in his hands. I already knew him as he had been my guest when Bill Wallace visited Italy. So, Bruno Munda and myself went to see him at his office where, between puffs on a marijuana joint, he dutifully answered all my questions.
Q. How did you wind up in full contact?
A. It was a coincidence, or maybe destiny. One of my sons took karate lessons and together we went to see some of the more important matches. We happened to see Ed Parkers' Internationals when Howard Jackson and Chuck Norris were still fighting. What a terrific show! I followed the California karate scene through my kids whom I coaxed into the discipline as self-defense. At the time I was working only in the movies with my wife. Then in 1974 Mike Anderson arrived in Los Angeles trying to organize the first international pro full contact karate championship. At the time Anderson was already a big shot. He sold martial arts materials, ran a magazine and had contracts to shoot three short documentaries on full contact for Universal, or at least he said he did. He had incredibly luxurious offices where just the parking cost him a fortune. I was introduced to him because Joe Lewis had found someone at ABC Television who was interested in buying a film of the championship and Mike needed somebody with insider knowledge to make it happen. Little by little I discovered that Mike had no business sense and worked in a vacuum with nobody to take care of the details. His contracts were all verbal, nothing on paper. You can imagine how much work I had to do, from the press, to adverting and the individual contracts with the fighters. Although the championships were very successful with the public, they were a commercial failure. To increase the live gate, Mike had promised appearance money to a number of actresses and overpaid the fighters, so he suffered great losses. He came to me and convinced me to join him in the creation of the Professional Karate Association, which I wish we had never done. We inherited lots of debts and after a while Mike literally disappeared. We were stuck with thousands of dollars in losses so we decided to continue this adventure on our own.
Q. You are accused of pushing pro full contact without backing it up with solid support in the amateur ranks, of being only business oriented and of overprotecting Bill Wallace. What do you answer to this?
A. When you are successful you make a lot of enemies. If Judy and I hadn't run full-contact in this country perhaps it would have disappeared altogether. We were outsiders but we were able to launch full contact on a global scale. So, to my accusers I'd like to ask "where have you been the last four years? How many times have you been on TV? How much money have you invested in the sport?" Sure we consider full contact to be a show just like the theater or the movies, but we sell full contact, we want people to enjoy themselves. What's wrong with that? We are fostering good full contact by paying the best fighters very well. It's quite simple.
Q. Well, one objection is that your world championships are not credible because you don't have your fighters go through any qualification rounds, either national or international. Therefore all your matches, as beautiful as they may seem, are not real, they are choreographed. You pit one fighter against another because he is the local favorite, or is photogenic or the public likes the way he moves, or maybe he's backed by the right sponsor.
A. Right, I cannot deny it, but this sport is conditioned by TV. I think credibility comes from visibility, that is, the more people watch it on TV the more credible the sport will become. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past, showing the wrong fighters who offer a terrible show for TV. We won't let that happen to us, we'd lose all our money. Maybe we protect Bill Wallace, but he's great to watch and can deliver an excellent show. You shouldn't forget that Bob Aram, the head of Top Rank, has become our good friend. Thanks to him the NABF (North American Boxing Federation) has recognized the PKA as the only pro full contact organization. Full contact offers a much better show than boxing and I think we'll be successful.
Q. Hasn't it happened already? I recall Mike Anderson telling me that the Muhammad Alì-Joe Frazier preliminary card had Jeff Smith on defending his "world" title, and that the press didn't even mention it as they knew that behind it there were neither elimination rounds nor rankings recognized internationally.
A. It's true, nobody talked about it, but reporters at the time knew nothing about full contact. It was a great blow for us but it wasn't my fault. When I organize something I know how to get the right people moving and who to contact.
Q. I've seen some of your rankings, which didn't exist before. Why did you start compiling them and on what criteria?
A. As you can see we are becoming more serious. Our rankings are compiled according to the results of our fighters. Starting next year we plan to organize selection trials on the national level with Joe Corley, our excellent promoter from Alabama, and John Corcoran here doing the work for the PKA.
Q. What outlets do you foresee for your professional activity?
A. The USA most of all and then South America, Mexico and Japan. We are on good terms with Japanese Kickboxing. They only fight if you wave a lot of money under their noses. They speak our language and we have already sent some fighters to Japan and vice versa. Europe is more hostile because Bruckner stubbornly insists on amateurism, but if losing money pleases him, what can I say?
Q. Wouldn't a solution be to have WAKO handle the amateur ranks and PKA take care of the pros?
A: Yes, it could be, but I don't see how you can organize it..
Q. Don't you think you're a bit out of touch with the reality? How can you demand $25,000 for a match with Bill Wallace when in Europe not even a European boxing champion can ask for so much? How can you find a sponsor willing to risk losing such an amount?
A. I did it in Monte Carlo where a rich man decided to finance a card just for fun. There was no advertising but he liked it anyway and paid for it. If he's happy, so am I.
At this point I didn't want to insist anymore. Why disappoint a man who is risking the loss of over $100,000? I couldn't get myself to tell him the truth, that PKA-style professionalism was sheer madness because when your fighters have a match just once a year waiting for the right sponsor to come along, they can't be considered professionals. For example, Tony Lopez, one of the few American pros who fights once a month, earning around $1,500 per match, has been waiting to meet Gordon Franks, the world super lightweight champion, for three years. As I write this I have just discovered that the match finally took place last November 30 th with Franks gaining a narrow victory. Howard Jackson, one of the finest athletes I've ever seen in action, hasn't fought for over a year. To keep in shape he has taken on 8 boxing matches, winning all of them by KO. We will lose another great full contact pro to boxing due to a lack of money: This is the truth and it hurts. I guess WAKO is on the right track, sticking with amateurs and creating a good pool of fighters, while letting the sport develop its heroes and public following.
But Don Quine, with his Hawaiian shirt and his bespectacled beady eyes, remains optimistic. "In two years I'll have all my money back because I put my talent and energy into full contact. The main goal of the PKA is to sell full contact on TV all over the world. I'm giving it two year's time for business to get rolling. If it doesn't, I'll fold".