And then there was a rocky period.

-It was a roller coaster.

-And I think that's how we created our complicated love story.

-My brother, Barry Meyer, started Tuff-N-Uff.

It was not my idea.

I was invited to hold the ropes open for the ring card girls and go get water.

Hey, we need hotdogs and Italian beef sandwiches or something like that.

I was just around.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ (Katerina Bazarova) I am Kat and Wayne, and we are hand-to-hand act.

(Wayne Skivington) We're just about to warm up.

We have a show in about 10 minutes.

Come down and check us out.

-So hand-to-hand is a discipline in the circus world.

We call it sports-acrobatic gymnastics.

It's a combination of dance.

It's a combination of tumbling.

It's a combination of balance and tempo in which you work in a partnership or a trio or a four, and you will throw each other around.

It's a beautiful art form because it's never the same.

You never get the same trick.

It's the way you put it together.

You've seen Dirty Dancing.

It's a little like Dirty Dancing on steroids, our act especially because it's very sensual, erotic kind of act.

The story is me coming home, getting undressed to my wife who's been waiting for me.

And then, you know, your imagination can go from there.

I throw her around, I catch her, obviously, and she balances.

It's a very unique skill set because you have to have dance, presence, balance, agility, and you have to have strength.

It's a combination of all.

It's a very unique act.

To do this, you need to have 100% trust.

So before every show, we do a warmup.

I like to feel my body.

I like to understand my body.

Like a pilot gets into the cockpit and you test all the gauges, that's what I do when I warm up.

I do the same movement.

I feel myself.

If I don't feel right, then I can look into it a little more, like, kind of cross-examining my body before I do this.

Because when I'm out there, there's no stopping.

There's no going back and, Oh, I can't do that.

I have to know exactly what I'm dealing with in myself before I go out there and put trust in myself and for Kat to trust me.

The key to this is consistency.

We're out here on the Las Vegas Strip.

People are coming from all areas of the world.

So before working Absinthe, we absolutely loved Absinthe, me and Kat both.

We would come here.

I think we saw the show 10 times before we worked here.

We love the show and the fact our act is very intimate, because this show is intimate.

You can touch the audience.

If you wanted to, you could reach out and touch them, and that's what I love about this.

Our act is great here because people can see it right up close.

And we are in the audience.

We're on stage, you know, and I think that is the beauty of Absinthe.

♪♪♪ -My name is Wayne, and I'm a Las Vegas Acrobat.

-My name is Katerina, and I'm a Las Vegas performer.

♪♪♪ -I was born in Germany, and I lived there until I was about seven years old.

My dad was in the military, so we moved a lot.

And then when I was about seven, we moved to England.

-I was born in Moscow, Russia.

My family travel.

They were performers in circus, traditional Russian circus, so they travel all the time.

-I lived in the countryside.

I lived in Sir Francis Drake's meadow.

We used to go out and play in the fields, build bases, kids stuff.

-I really enjoy my childhood.

I thought I was on top of the world.

Now looking back, I'm actually shocked how I was raised.

-I was living in Germany, and would go to like a basic gymnastics class.

When we moved to England, I missed it.

I wanted to learn to do it, and I got kind of obsessed.

-I've been trained by my amazing mother.

She is a ex pro gymnast.

She taught me everything.

-That local gym club did acrobatic gymnastics.

Acrobatic gymnastics is basically working in partnership, and you throw the other person around, you catch them, they do balance.

I just enjoyed it, and I just started training, committing myself.

-I felt pressure, timelines, this trick needs to be prepared.

-I don't know what it was, but I couldn't quit.

-I never thought that I want to do something else.

-I loved what I was doing.

-It was not a game anymore.

It was, This training needs to get done.

-Even though I was bullied at school, and made fun of for doing gymnastics, I dedicated all my free time to doing it.

-In my childhood, nobody ever told me that dreams actually come true.

-And I just trained.

It gave me flexibility, strength, speed, power.

We were in the gym 4 hours a day, 5 days a week.

And that was my childhood.

-Acrobatics did not come easy to me.

I was terrified of flying.

-I came to Las Vegas, I think it was 2007.

I did a competition, and I saw my first ever Cirque show.

-When I get to Vegas, it's not what I expected.

Everything was shiny and bright.

-After that I went home, and my goal was to come to Las Vegas and perform.

-It's just smaller than I thought.

Like I have naturally very big expectations.

-When I arrived in Las Vegas, I was 20 years old.

It was wild, like nothing I've ever seen.

-And I'm very social person, so I quickly find friends and clubs.

-First time I met Katerina, it was in a nightclub.

-I met him on the club first time.

-I heard about this young Russian girl working in Zumanity.

-I saw him sitting on a couch, arms crossed with his grumpy face.

-I didn't say more than two words to her.

-He just nod, nod.

He sat, I was like, Gosh, what his problem?

-I was intimidated.

-I just walk away because I thought he's very-- I have no word for that.

-She was very outgoing compared to me, and she was loving life.

I was just taking it all in.

-Me and Wayne first started working together, it was a one-job show.

-And I was approached by Katerina's partner who asked me if I would step in.

-And he kind of start to look who is capable.

-I said yes.

I saw an opportunity.

-It was kind of like a secret behind it at that time.

-No, I didn't think anything else was going to happen from it.

-It was like tryout because my partner was about to leave.

-As soon as we had finished performing, I was contacted to go work with Katerina.

-And then become friends.

-I think maybe after a year, we started dating.

-Mix of trust and connection that we share on stage.

It start to create some feelings.

-And then there was a rocky period.

-It was a roller coaster.

-And I think that's how we created our complicated love story.

-It was beautiful and absolutely disaster.

-We had a lot of love and respect for each other.

We just couldn't find out how to be together.

-But we still managed to work together and doing a very good job.

-Until COVID happened.

-COVID happen.

-It shut down Zumanity.

-Work stop.

-We were out of work.

-I think we find this time to stop and rebuild our relationship.

-I guess in that time, we learned to love each other properly.

-And it was beautiful.

Come to engagement, baby.

-You know, we decided to get married and have a child.

-But then they find out bad news that our show is closing.

-Soon as the show closed, the same day we were hired for Absinthe.

-And this is like my favorite choice too.

Like no joke, I've been watching the show since its open.

-This show we had seen 10 times.

We love the show.

It's one of our favorites.

And we didn't know this at the time, Kat was pregnant.

-I was in tears.

I was like, I finally get my favorite job in the world, and I cannot do it.

And he can.

-Literally, we got in the show.

We managed to do the act.

-After that was the recovery, getting back into shape.

We were on stage again, and it was like a first time.

♪♪♪ -When Kat finally came back after the baby, it was, it was great to finally have her do her character, be that position.

-Oh, my God.

It is such a great feeling, and coming back after having our daughter, Sasha.

I feel like she make me patient person, which patience is not my strong suit at all.

She was like missing ingredient, like salt, you know, in that perfect salad that we have.

And, yes, she make us better.

-Gave me appreciation for my partner.

Kat was out for a long time, and I was excited to get her back.

She carries a lot of the act for me.

Somebody's got to be the star.

-Aw.

You --he really say that?

-I was talking about myself.

-To have you carry my ass.

Did I say that?

You always say that.

-Somebody's gotta lift it up.

We do the same act, but it's never the same.

-It feels different.

-It's difficult, it's dangerous, and I think maybe Kat is in the moment.

That's her character.

And my character is to make sure she doesn't get hurt.

There is a lot required.

You can't coast it.

You, you have to live it every show.

It's maybe a four-and-a-half minute, five-minute number, but it takes a lot of preparation, a lot of warmup, a lot of mental preparation to do it even after 10 years.

Kat is more characteristic, I would say, in the act.

And she feels and she goes with the vibe, whereas I'm more of the warrior.

-Somebody has to warrior, right?

-Every time I lift her up, there's no doubt that that person has to trust me.

They have to trust me for me to do my job, and I trust myself to know that I can do it.

-And we don't even think about that because it has to be there.

-So having a good work-life balance is important.

We work in the evening, so in the morning, we kind of get up, we prepare our bodies, we work out, we have to maintain.

We normally do a cold plunge in the morning, and then I'll go to the gym.

Katerina, she looks after Sasha.

And then we kind of switch.

So my 11-year-old boy, Rowan, he's actually in The Beatles Love show.

So now I have to get him to work-- pick him up from school, take him to work.

Vegas is unique in that sense.

-And that's how it runs.

Vegas, baby.

-Oh, yeah, it's time to go pick up Rowan now.

I'll see you later?

-Yeah.

-So now I'm gonna go pick up my son from a previous marriage.

He's a little performer.

He's been doing that for three years.

We'll go home, he'll do his homework, we'll do a little bit of soccer practice, and then I'll take him to work.

And he goes to work from 6:00 till 11:00 and some days even earlier.

That's a long day for an 11-year-old.

But he does a really good job.

He's a good kid.

He tries hard at school.

He works hard.

Yeah, very proud of him.

But he kind of takes it all in his stride.

I don't think anywhere in the world you could have that.

That's definitely just, that's Vegas.

Okay, don't worry, I've been here for 15 years now.

I know how to drive on the right side of the road.

-Hi.

-This is Rowan.

-Hi, I'm Rowan.

Nice to meet you.

(Camera Man) Nice to meet you as well.

-Seat belt on?

Let's do this.

Want me to take this from you?

-Yeah.

-Like a workout, that is.

-We're very fortunate to be in Vegas.

It's the entertainment capital of the world.

We have a unique set of talents, that this is probably the only place that we can shine.

We live here, and this is home for us, you know?

And as performers, we love it here.

We're building families.

We're having a good time.

Do you like living in Las Vegas, Rowan?

-I like living in Las Vegas.

It's just, the only thing is it's dry.

-We really like it here.

Vegas is the place for us to be.

We're really enjoying it.

It's definitely unique lifestyle.

It's beautiful to raise a family here.

-My favorite part of performing in Love is I like in the beginning.

The bombs are happening.

It's fun to like act that because every time the bomb goes off, you have to go [indistinct].

So it's pretty fun.

When I first started, I was really nervous.

But now I'm pretty confident to go on stage every day.

-All right guys.

It's time to get ready for the show.

Kat is gonna do her makeup.

I gotta go jump in the pool.

Rowan, what are you gonna do?

Homework?

-Homework and then play some soccer.

-We're gonna take Rowan to work first.

He has to get dropped off in kind of like a back passage where the parents can just drop the kids off so it's safe, instead of walking through the casino.

-Goodbye, Dad.

-I'm going out.

-Okay.

♪♪♪ -While we're performing on stage, I'm gone.

I'm fully out there.

-You know every time I lift her up, it's just like second nature.

-Nothing can stop me.

I don't think about any danger.

I don't have a doubt.

-They have to trust me to do my job.

I trust myself to know that I can do it.

♪♪♪ -My name is Jeff Meyer, and I'm the CEO and owner of Tuff-N-Uff.

My brother, Barry Meyer, started Tuff-N-Uff.

It was not my idea.

I was invited to hold the ropes open for the ring card girls and go get water.

Hey, we need hotdogs and Italian beef sandwiches or something like that.

I was just around.

Well, we grew up in Arlington Heights, which is a suburb northwest of Chicago, you know, blue collar kind of neighborhood.

And my brother found karate at a very young age.

He got his black belt at 12 years old in Taekwondo.

I was like six and a half, seven years old.

I didn't know what I was doing going to these tournaments, you know, just following him around.

And my brother had a little bit of a learning disability.

And back when we were growing up, they didn't know about ADHD stuff and, you know, they just labeled him LD, learning disabled.

He was picked on and wanted to, you know, be able to defend himself.

But the martial arts provides such discipline and integrity and honor and all this, you know, stuff that's important.

And my brother was literally one of the toughest dudes that I ever knew.

Well, I was a freshman in college in Arizona at the University of Arizona.

My brother called me one day and he's like, Jeff, there's an ad for this thing called the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Back then, it was all WWE.

So we're like, is it going to be a fake thing?

The very first fight, Teila Tuli versus Gerard Gordeau.

Dutch kickboxing champ kicks Teila Tuli in the face and knocks his tooth out the first seconds of the thing.

Oh, my God!

It's real.

Oh, my God, his tooth went flying.

Instantly, we knew this was real.

And it's like a light bulb went off.

My brother said it was love at first fight.

MMA wasn't legal.

Where we were living, it was only kickboxing and boxing, right?

So in 1994, on June, the very first Tuff-N-Uff event ever happened in our high school gym.

Believe it or not, we had women and men competing.

Because my brother always was like giving everybody the chance, no matter who they are.

And for many years, I was just like running around doing whatever he needed, cleaning up the blood, trying to hit on chicks, because there's always beautiful women at our fight.

I'm running around, kind of like helping him but also a little distracted because, I'm a single guy and everything.

My experience right out of college was like I went into the world of whatever finance where my family was, right?

And so I was working at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

"Buy" yells.

Buy and sell yelling and screaming all day long.

Like, I was trading live cattle.

I literally, I think I was like the worst trader in the world.

I mean, there's thousands of guys in there in front of my face make a half million dollars in a second, literally.

I mean, but thank God I didn't bankrupt generations of my family.

I could have.

Oh, my God!

One day I lost $44,000 in one day.

Oh, my God, I'm done.

I can't do this anymore.

I'm not cut out for it.

And I left with my tail between my legs.

I moved out to San Diego to go work for my brother.

You know, we were helping like huge investors diversify their portfolios.

We didn't love it.

While it provided a wonderful income and stuff like that for my brother, he really had this passion for MMA, right?

So he says, Let's try Tuff-N-Uff in Vegas.

The fight capital the world is Las Vegas.

I remember in the truck, the U-Haul, we're driving out there with my ma, and I'm like, Are we nuts?

We're leaving the ocean, like the most beautiful place on the earth and stuff.

And here we are on the way to the desert.

We never had an office in the early days.

We were just like, sat on our laptops.

Well, my brother kept rumbling to me like, We got to do something in the amateur space.

I'm like, What are you talking about?

And I couldn't understand, but he kept pushing this amateur thing.

Tuff-N-Uff needs to bring amateurs to Vegas because they deserved the opportunity.

So he's like, Let's do it.

I disagreed so much.

We fought like cats and dogs, whatever.

He went to the Commission and got amateur MMA approved with the sanctioned body, and they brought some lawyers and stuff like that or whatever.

And so Tuff-N-Uff got an amateur MMA license, the first one ever in Nevada, in '08.

We had no idea if people are going to show up, if the fighters are all going to compete.

And you know those early shows, God, they were really well attended.

Ryan Couture, who's Randy Couture's son.

Went into the Orleans ballroom, packed wall-to-wall.

These kids are getting attention.

We were filming the stuff.

I didn't know nothing about editing or anything.

I still don't, but I know how to cut.

So I cut the flights out, and then I uploaded them to YouTube.

And that's when our YouTube channel was born.

50 million views or something like that.

And then Ronda Rousey happened, okay, the biggest female fighter, arguably, of all time.

She was having a hard time finding fights.

No one wants to fight her because she's got this Olympic background, right?

The executives of the UFC were saying like, There will never be a female fighter, over our dead bodies, in the UFC, or something like that.

So the next event we had, we got her a fight.

She won in under a minute by arm bar.

It was awesome.

And now Tuff-N-Uff has gotten its footing, and we're doing okay.

And we have like awesome sold-out events, and we have this big awesome broadcast deal with UFC Fight Pass.

We're off to the races ever since then.

He was totally right.

I was wrong, but I was happy for, you know, so proud of him and happy that he found this thing that provides an opportunity for kids or athletes of any age.

A lot of our fighters fought all their amateur fights with Tuff-N-Uff before they went on to become professionals.

I totally disagreed with him, and thank God he pushed and pushed because look at where we are today.

[phone rings] -On October 15 of 2013, missed a call from my brother.

I woke up, and he called at 3:13 in the morning.

I knew something wasn't right.

I was talking to my mom while I was driving there.

I said, "Ma, his car is here, his shoes are here, his wallet is here, and I don't see him."

And I find a note.

And I said, Ma!

I don't know what I said.

And then I found him hanging.

And I was trying to give him CPR, and I'm calling 911.

But he's not coming back.

And I started to do mouth-to-mouth.

Gosh, I'm sorry, Barry.

I wish I was there for you more.

But as you can imagine, that was like the most devastating thing I could imagine happening.

Everybody in the whole world of MMA was calling.

My brother touched a lot of lives because of this MMA thing called Tuff-N-Uff, right?

Suicide and depression, in general, I think are very prevalent in the combat sports for a variety of reasons.

The main one I can think of is just like my brother, they said he had a learning disability.

So like the kids would pick on him.

Why are we all here?

I don't know.

We're here because there's something we're good at.

And as I was saying, I think he was incredibly brilliant and smart, just in different ways maybe or something like that.

We keep Tuff-N-Uff going in my brother's name to keep his legacy alive and to honor his memory.

Tuff-N-Uff to me means like overcoming adversity.

I hear it often.

Kids that might have been going down the wrong path in life found fighting as a way to steer clear of the temptations that are out there today.

I think Tuff-N-Uff saves lives.

This many years later, Tuff-N-Uff celebrates its 30-year anniversary in June of 2024.

I can't believe we're still here, but we're still going and we're still growing.

♪♪♪ The best tip I can give anyone that's looking to start out in the combat sports world is you have to start at the amateur level at Tuff-N-Uff.

I would be honored to invite you to come and help out.

You could be a cut man.

You could be a judge, referee, ringside physician.

All the ancillary people besides the fighters have to start somewhere, and I can't tell you how many people say, Hey, I called the Athletic Commission because I want to be a judge or a referee, and they told me to call you.

Anyone that's looking to start off in this industry or be involved in mixed martial arts in any way, I'd love to put you to work.

-That's the show.

Watch more Vegas All In stories and moments whenever you want to.

Go online and search @vegasallinpbs, and we'll see you there.

♪♪♪ -I'm all in.

-You know, we're talking about Las Vegas, so yeah.

Yeah, I'm all in.

♪♪♪