TapouT

TapouT. To those who know mixed-martial arts (MMA), this word signifies the action of one fighter making the other submit. But it’s actually one thing Charles “Mask” Lewis Jr. and his long-time friends and business partners, Dan “Punkass” Caldwell and Timothy “Skyskrape” Katz, have never done.

At a time when they were selling shirts out of the back of a car, when they had to drive all night long just to promote the company at the next event, when MMA was on the verge of dying out altogether, the founders of TapouT never submitted, gave up or quitted. And, although, Mask recently passed away in a tragic auto accident, his determination and his tenacity have been forever imbued in his MMA clothing company founded more than a decade ago. In his final interview, he shared his dreams, his passion for his sport and his love for the company he built with his closest friends.

The company is so inextricably linked to the history of MMA, that to discover its roots you must go to the very origins of the sport in North America itself. It all started in 1993, when the man, later-to-be-known-as “Mask”, saw a pay-per-view event on TV that changed his life forever. It was a no-holds-barred fighting tournament where a skinny, Hispanic-looking guy wearing, what appeared to be, plain white pajamas proceeded to dismantle opponent after opponent—all of whom were far bigger and stronger than he was. That man was Royce Gracie. His martial art was named Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and the event was UFC 1. “Did you watch this thing on pay-per-view? You gotta check this out!” Mask exclaimed to his close friend, Punkass. At the time, both were already training; Punkass studying boxing, while Mask practiced kickboxing. However, once they discovered that Royce and his brother, Rorion Gracie, had a Torrance, California academy about an hour away from their San Bernardino hometown, they had to check it out for themselves.

“After he beat us both up, we signed up that same day. We fell in love with the sport right away,” Punkass recalled. The Gracies, who helped start the UFC to prove the superiority of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), were huge influences on Mask and Punkass in more ways than just fighting. “When I met Royce and Rorion, I’d never met nicer guys in my life,” Mask stated. “And, if you look at us three to this day, whenever we meet and greet fighters, that’s where the handshake and the hug comes from.” The inspiration to make MMA-related clothing also came from the Gracies. “I remember buying every Gracie shirt there was because, man, I just wanted to be affiliated with it,” Mask declared. “Inevitably, that just transferred into wanting to do a shirt for just me and my boys [while] training in the garage [because we] wanted to identify with the sport.”

In 1997, they had become friends with Skyskrape and started making and selling T-shirts at MMA events. The guys had then adopted their larger-than-life personas—“Mask,” “Punkass,” and “Skyskrape”—in order to have an iconic look that would not be easily forgotten by fans. However, by that time, the landscape of MMA had changed. Fighting styles, such as Muay Thai kickboxing, wrestling and boxing were being more closely incorporated with Jiu-Jitsu to make MMA an entirely unique sport. However, even as the sport was evolving, it teetered on the brink of extinction. Lawmakers, such as John McCain, had declared that it was too barbaric to continue. UFC events were being taken off of pay-per-view. The sport was still not legally sanctioned by many state athletic commissions all over the country.

It was a treacherous climate in which to start a business. But, the brazen attitude that has always defined TapouT could not be denied. The three friends fondly look back at those formative years, and not only marveled at how they got by with so little, but treated those days as scars of battle that helped forge them into who they became. “I remember going to Compton, and it was in this big warehouse. It was a U-Haul rental place. You’d go up there like you were renting a U-Haul and give them some password. They’d let you in, you’d go in the back and there was a cage setup. That’s how underground MMA in Southern California started,” Punkass recalled. “And cops would come in and bust us, and we’d all pretend like it was a wrestling exhibition or, like, a kickboxing match,” added Skyskrape.

Punkass recalled a seminal moment when he got arrested, as the police raided an underground fight in their hometown where they were selling their clothes. “We had so much gear on the table. (I thought) I’ll stay here and try to walk out with it, like, I’m not leaving all this sh*t here. We couldn’t afford to at the time. We had no money. This was our savings here. It was all we had. I started trying to get it out of the place, and they caught me.” Skyskrape recalled the event and remembers Punkass’ arrest. “He actually has the ticket from being arrested framed,” he said jokingly. Punkass then continued to describe what that arrest symbolized. “It was that time in our lives, you know—that was how small it was. It was us, two bins and some clothing showing up on a table. Life was simple, but it was complicated because we had no money, and you would just put one foot in front of the other and just keep going no matter what happened.”

But they soldiered on, not allowing most fans or even fighters to see their struggles through all their challenges. Long after the Gracies had left the UFC, TapouT kept close ties to the organization. By UFC 18 in 1999, they were sponsoring fighters, such as former UFC champion, Pat “The Croation Sensation” Miletich. Punkass remembered how the early fighters reacted to their sponsorship offers. “They were like, ‘Oh, sh*t! I get free clothes and free shorts?’ So, we’d give them free clothes and like $300, and they’d wear our sh*t in the UFC. And people would be like, ‘Aw, man. I’ve seen your clothes on the UFC.’ They didn’t know he [pointing at Mask] was sleeping in his car.” Slowly, but surely, their little company started to prosper. In 2001, casino owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta bought the UFC and put their close associate, Dana White, in charge, who worked tirelessly to get MMA sanctioned and on TV. The TapouT crew continued to work closely with the new owners, just as they had the previous ones.