Written by Nick Halili | DUB Magazine | May / June 2009
TAPOUT. To those who know mixed-martial arts (MMA), this word signifies when one fighter makes the other submit. But that is the one thing that Charles "Mask" Lewis and his long-time friends and business partners Dan "Punkass" Caldwell and Tim "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 promote the company at the next event, when MMA was on the verge of dying out altogether, the founders of TapouT never submitted. Never gave up. Never quit. 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 over 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 he was. That man was Royce Gracie. His martial art was named Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. 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 training in the garage that 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 looked 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 and 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 shit 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 interjected, "He actually has the ticket from being arrested framed." Punkass continued, "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 bravado. 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 Pat Miletich. Punkass remembered how the early fighters reacted to their sponsorship offers. "They were like, "Oh, shit, I get free clothes and free shorts?" So we'd give them free clothes and like $300, and they'd wear our shit 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.
Then, in 2005, the pivotal moment that shot the MMA world and TapouT into the stratosphere occurred on the very same night. The live season 1 finale of UFC's reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, aired on Spike TV. "That finale hit, and had Rich Franklin wearing a camouflage (Tapout) t-shirt with a white logo. And Diego (Sanchez) fighting, and his pop was wearing the same shirt in the crowd," SkySkrape explained.
Punkass continued, "It was crazy. At one point, we were getting like 3,000 orders an hour. And it literally just collapsed our website. We were on the phone until like 4 in the morning trying to get the site back up and capture those credit cards." Mask smiled broadly, "Now, we weren't doing 500 a day before that." "500 a day?" Punkass laughed, "We were doing maybe 40 a day. It just went out to space that same night, and we would never be the same after that. Obviously, we had been working hard and growth was there. Our company's always had 3 to 500% growth every year since it's inception. So we've always been growing. But at that point, when that show aired, it put us on another playing field. America finally knew what MMA was about."
Four years later, Punkass, co-founder of the now $100 million dollar company explained what his current whips have to do with his past struggles. He recalled his youth as he showed his black 2008 Mercedes S63 AMG with 21" (not sure of brand) rims, saying that his family would have names such as Blue Bomber or Yellow Lemon for the old beaters they'd owned through the years. "When you finally get some good money, you end up buying cars 'cause that was the shitty shit about your life, pulling up to school making your parents drop you off a block away so your friends didn't have to see what kind of car you were driving up in," something that is no longer a concern when pulling up in his black (not sure of model year) Lamborghini Gallardo, with its custom carbon-fiber (he didn't know the brand) exhaust. His black (not sure of model year) Hummer is influenced by the military-like mentality he and the guys had when fighting to keep their company and their dream alive. Now, when displaying his custom, CFL-framed flat-black West Coast Customs motorcycle, he made the point of saying not only how sick it looked, but that he got it for a great deal. As much as Mask was the dreamer, the visionary that got TapouT off the ground, Punkass was the sharp business-mind, the realist that kept it going through lean times. When asked about his tendency to keep his mods subtle, he answered with another question: "Why mess with perfection?" His signature mod since high school was always making sure all his rides were "murdered out" in all-black, to match his own clothing and menacing persona. "Shows like Knight Rider, ninjas are black, black belt, everything about black is hard."
SkySkrape also recounted how his own childhood in laid-back Southern California is reflected in his taste in cars, remarking that he was never as into the big rims and exotics as his two close friends. "My Dad was the one that got that old school car thing instilled in me," he stated as he showed me his dark blue 1963 Chevy Bel Air, which features a custom painting on plexiglass inside his trunk. He recounted how his dad and his uncle would get some of the old Dodge Chargers used in the filming of The Dukes of Hazzard from a buddy who owned a nearby junkyard. The undisputed gearhead of the trio explained how he does almost all the wrenching in his own cars whenever he has the time. Similar to Punkass, he keeps exterior mods to his cars to a minimum, down to the OG 15" rally wheels he sports on his favorite ride, a red 1966 Chevy Nova wagon. Although as a future project, Skrape does plan on dropping an LS1 Corvette engine in it. Now, that doesn't mean that Skrape is completely averse to modern cars. He did roll up in a black (not sure of model year) Mercedes (not sure of model name) that he considers his business suit (since he never wears a suit to work himself). The one theme that ties all his cars together is the TapouT logo either stitched to the headrests of his seats or even replacing the Mercedes' stock hood emblem.
Although Mask didn't link his childhood experiences to his preference in rides as he showed me his red (not sure of model year) Porsche 911 Turbo S ragtop, he did tell a heartfelt story behind his black 2004 Bentley Continental GT. "I gotta put Chuck "Iceman" Liddell on blast," he began. Mask explained how he was looking for his first car in 9 years. Chuck, who was a good friend for many years, offered to help him find a car. Mask had singled out a base model Mercedes that he had his eye on, but his credit was no good, and his business had not yet completely taken off. However, The Iceman called him up one week and told him that his credit was good now and to come down to a nearby San Luis Obispo dealership. Chuck had put down $55,000 on the Bentley for him, adding that with the 55 K down, Mask would now be able to make his payment. He admitted to beginning to cry at this gesture, saying, "I try to pay him back all the time, but he says give me what you want, I'm going to take the check and rip it." As he proudly showed off his 22" mat black HRE rims with black polished lips and the custom stitched black and brown interior, he made one final comment about his favorite car, which he swore that he would never sell. "Whether he's with me or not, I feel like I've got The Iceman rolling with me whenever I'm in the Batmobile."
That type of pride and affection Mask felt for those close to him was abundantly clear throughout the conversation that day. "Nobody can replace these two guys in the world for me. They couldn't!!!" he proudly exclaimed in that booming voice of his. "Punkass, 19 years. Skrape, 12 years. This kid (Punkass) brings out shit in me, always believes in me when everybody else doesn't! He (SkySkrape) makes me comfortable doing all the far-fetched crazy shit that I do!" Earlier, he had recounted what made him start dressing and acting in that far-fetched and crazy way mentioned. He told me of a show he went to, of when he passed out his stickers, of seeing those stickers thrown nonchalantly on the ground, of hearing people ask, "What's TapouT?" And it made him want to cry. That day, he swore he'd never go anywhere again and have somebody say, "What's Tapout?" But the funny thing is, it is not merely his outlandish clothes, or his face paint, or even his loud, attention-getting laugh that make certain anyone who knows MMA and its roots will remember him. It was his devotion to the sport he dearly loved and to the friends he had made throughout his days that will ensure that Charles "Mask" Lewis will never be forgotten, while TapouT continues the legacy that the Mask help start.