Issue 018

October 2006

By Grant Waterman

You may or may not know that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in the UK has no governing body and at this point is not even recognised as an official sport by the relevant government offices. Let’s not forget that MMA is still quite young in the UK and although it now has a very large following (which is growing all the time) there are still a few issues that need sorting out.

There are many different promotions across the country and every one that I have worked for genuinely have the fighters interests at heart and really want to promote the sport in the best way they can. However, not every show has the same view of the rules, which can be confusing to for spectators, fighters and anyone else for that matter. Some shows use UFC rules, Cage Rage use modified PRIDE rules. Some allow elbow strikes, some don’t. Some have two rounds not three, and so on.

The majority of people who go to watch an MMA show probably don’t care what slight changes there are in the rules as long as they see a good tear up, but this sport is still walking a fine line of acceptance from certain parties, and it’s about time that we all got together with a set of criteria that was conformed to across the whole country (if not the world) so that MMA could be recognised as a legitimate sport. This way all the fighters, trainers, promoters, spectators and ‘do-gooders’ would know exactly what was going on. I still get fighters and trainers approaching me after a rules meeting saying that they thought this and that technique was allowed, and when I say it’s not they reply, “well it was on this show we went to last week”.

There are some pretty strong personalities within the promoters in the UK, and some rather large egos as well. To try and start telling these people what to do with their shows is going to be difficult. It does, however, make complete sense to try to obtain some kind of conformity within the sport. If a group of professionals set up a legitimate ‘governing body’ (I don’t like the term governing body by the way, it sounds too much like a dictatorship) which set out to ensure that a general set of rules were used, the highest safety measures were in place, qualified judges and referees were used, weigh-ins were fair and correct, fighters were licensed, etc. Wouldn’t this benefit the sport no end? Of course it would.

There is one major limiting factor that would hinder any of this ever happening, and that’s MONEY. I know you can’t put a price on safety but everything I have mentioned above would cost money to put in place, and believe it or not, there just isn’t the kind of profit from putting an MMA show on that can warrant paying out several thousand pounds for all this each time. So what’s the answer? Well how about some lottery funding, Sport England investment, backing from major sponsors? It is all a bit chicken and egg though. We need to be recognised as a true sport before we get any funding, but we need some funding before we can put in place the necessary measures needed to be recognised as a true sport. Anyone know next week’s lottery numbers please?

Of course I could be speaking out of turn here, and you could be thinking that MMA is ticking along just nicely thanks, with great shows happening all over the country, truly world class fights on the bigger events and not one major injury to date (touch wood). MMA is now so big and is viewed by so many people through all kinds of media, TV, DVD, internet, and magazines sources that if one unregulated event did something stupid it would have an effect on all the others. Long gone are the days of ‘no rules’ fighting with no rounds, no weight classes and no time limits. Today’s MMA fighters are highly skilled elite athletes with incredible fitness and dedication. Just about everyone I’ve spoken to who is involved in the sport has shown enthusiasm about the points I’ve made here and would welcome some kind of UK MMA commission. I don’t think it will be too long before this is put in place, and as long as the right people are behind it, the sport of MMA will take yet another step towards mainstream acceptance and recognition. Oh, and if you happen to know of someone with a few hundred grand spare who is interested in donating it to the good of UK MMA, let me know.

We are lucky in the UK that there are promoters with genuine integrity who put fighters safety above everything else, and still manage to put on some of the most exciting Cage Fights in the world. We should be grateful to them. Long live MMA.