With Gay Marriage A Go, MMA Advocates Will Wait Another Session

While New York's same-sex couples prepare for their big day, the MMA community will have to wait for the next legislative session for any hope that their sport of kings will be legalized. Earlier this month Speaker Sheldon Silver doused any hopes for legalization, despite the bill passing the Senate and speeding through the Assembly's various committees. "It's a promotion of violence at a time when we're trying to eliminate violence," Assemblyman Rob Reilly tells the Times, making us wonder if he's suggesting for supporters to wait until violence is back in season. How much longer must New Yorkers wait to feel the joy that only comes with watching a grown man do a cartwheel into another man's face?

With 45 states, including New Jersey, having no problem with MMA, it's becoming increasingly difficult for New York to justify the ban. An MMA instructor from Queens complains, "New Jersey is making all the money off this, and we've got nothing. I've got to travel to take my fighters to shows. We should have them in the best city in the world." A UFC commissioned study showed that an event at MSG and another in Buffalo would generate a total of $15 million for the state, which sounds kind of puny considering UFC can make as much as $42 million in a single fight. "People would make money," Reilly says, "people in Las Vegas and the UFC."

Local advocates are unmoved. One expert in jiujitsu says, "Everything is violence. They don't understand it's just another sport." Citing recent rule changes to UFC events (no eye-gouging, no elbow strikes), another instructor compares the sport to the Sweet Science: "People think it's this barbaric thing. This stuff is harder than calculus." Maybe they should rename moves like the "guillotine choke" to the "firm physical disagreement?"

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By Christopher Robbins in News on June 27, 2011 5:30 PM

Comments [rss]

edgie168

Boxing lol

Guest

Boxing is better than MMA.

Guest

Horseshit. You know the boxing commission is paying off important people. MMA will destroy boxing in NY if it's legalized here.

breakthings

Oh no...not boxing...

FU Boy

Honestly now, if the majority of people who watched this connected these sweaty, muscular men in tight shorts (and jock straps, probably), who usually end up wrestling in writhing knots on the ground with something gay, it'd kill the sport.

pillow_case

Leave MMA for the rednecks, we don't need it here.

Guest

What does it matter to you, garbage can? You don't like it, so you don't go and see it? America sucks because of people like you. Die.

pillow_case

Why so offended?

Can't people think of more productive, inspiring, forward moving things to do than sit around watching people destroy each other?

Explain to me, and everyone else here, what good UFC and MMA does for society?

Guest

Why should everything being done in all of the world have to be "good for society?" I'm not even a fan of MMA, but they have a right to put on shows. Everything you do all day is good for society? My, what a fucking hero.

winning1234

If you narrow sports down to its actions, then baseball, football, basketball all sound pretty ridiculous. Let me try:

Baseball:
Can't people think of more productive, inspiring, forward moving things to do than sit around and watch people hit a rock hard ball thrown dangerously close to their face?

Football:
Can't people think of more productive, inspiring, forward moving things to do than sit around and watch people hit a guy so hard that they cause concussions so hard that the brain is severely damaged?

Basketball:
Can't people think of more productive, inspiring, forward moving things to do than sit around and watch people throw a ball into a hoop?

pillow_case

I whole heartedly agree with you on these points.

winning1234

So let's get rid of all sports. Nay, all recreational activities.

ganghiscon

Citing recent rule changes to UFC events (no eye-gouging, no elbow strikes)

If you consider "recent" twelve years ago.

And elbows are legal. Just not in a 12-to-6 direction (which makes no sense, but that's the rule).