Issue 137

January 2016

Why April’s planned NYC fight card should go ahead – with or without congress’ support

Gareth A Davies

TV analyst and MMA reporter for the Telegraph, UK, picks a fight with the NY State Assembly

New York. In MMA terms, the 50th state. In UFC terms, the place that currently denies completion of the mixed martial arts union. The lack of an event in New York now resides like a grubby blot on the landscape. Particularly at Madison Square Garden. 

For those of us of a certain age, or with deference to fighting history, the absence of the Octagon in the hallowed hall in the heart of Midtown Manhattan is both spiritually and emotionally ridiculous. We are being denied. And we should stand for it no longer. Boxing’s Fight of the Century took place there between era-defining rivals: Ali–Frazier. Two men died of heart attacks inside the venue that night in 1971. The level of excitement was off the scale. 

This column has charted the fits and starts of the sport’s attempts to get over the finish line in New York for nigh on eight years. Put your index finger and thumb together and find a crack of light between them. That’s how close it has felt at times. Yet for an eighth year running, legislation to legalize MMA passed handily through the New York State Senate, yet was once again not even brought to a vote in the Assembly – the crucial part of the process. 

It has felt so near, so many times. One day it’s coming. Yet the gulf between MMA and New York is as wide as the Hudson. It’s time that tome of correspondence between the office of UFC Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, Marc Ratner, and legislators was ripped up and the organization refuses to be denied. Let’s make it confetti.

We are moving on. I grinned when the UFC booked MSG for April 23rd. It has filed a lawsuit too. It went to the US Court of Appeals in August, and asked a federal judge to grant the UFC the right to circumvent state laws on the grounds that the New York ‘Combative Sport Law’ should be ruled unconstitutional because it’s “so badly written that neither ordinary persons nor state officials are able to say with any certainty what it permits and what it prohibits.”

But why not simply go ahead anyway and host the event regardless? Poppycock to bureaucracy and politicking and just forge ahead with the event. We’ve reached the point where everybody in the sport can see what’s going on in New York. It has nothing to do with safety, or the sport, or the UFC. It has more to do with the Culinary Union’s long-standing battle with Station Casinos. We know that; they know that.  

The UFC, for example, is more than capable of regulating itself. An ad-hoc commission, which it uses outside the US, overseen by Ratner, and based on the same principles of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, took the decision to pull Joe Duffy out of his fight against Dustin Poirier on 72 hours notice in Dublin in October. Duffy’s health meant more than the main event itself. 

It risked ridicule and a fan backlash. But safety of the fighter was paramount. It is clearly capable of ‘governing’ an event. Just going ahead with the show would force everything into the open. Affirmative action could strike a healthy blow.  

But UFC president Dana White told me point blank: “We would never go around the government. Can we regulate and do it ourselves? Of course we could. I don’t think anybody would blame us if we did that in New York. But we just wouldn’t do it.” While Ratner added: “We won’t self-regulate in NYC and we’re awaiting the results from the judge, hopefully in early January.”

Let’s hope so. And if not, what? Keep the date, keep the venue, and let’s march on the hallowed ‘World’s Most Famous Arena,’ flood out of Penn Station, and fill every seat to see the modern equivalent of Ali and Frazier – Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier – bring the place to life. 

With or without the sanctioning of New York State’s Athletic Commission. You know what Henry Ford said, and he’s right. Let’s have a revolution in Manhattan, MMA-style.  

76 votes

Back in June, the bill to legalize MMA in New York passed in the Senate for a sixth straight year, but it wasn’t brought to the assembly floor for a vote. Just 76 votes (50% + 1) are needed to pass the bill.