By MICHAEL CAVANAUGH
ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
As of now, New York is the only state that disallows professional mixed martial arts bouts within state borders. While one might initially assume that this is due to the inherently violent nature of the sport, which was the main impetus behind the 1997 legislation that instituted the ban, the most prominent cause for New York maintaining the ban is a union dispute that is taking place more than 2000 miles away in Las Vegas.
Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, brothers who run the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the international mixed martial arts empire, own Stations Casinos, which operate in Las Vegas. The brothers are involved in a dispute with The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 of Las Vegas. The Union has sought to bring the employees of Stations Casinos into their ranks.
How does this fit into the current status of mixed martial arts in New York state? Union supporter and speaker of the New York Assembly since 1994, Sheldon Silver, has consistently prevented any bill in support of the combat sport’s legalization from reaching a floor vote solely to oppose the Fertitta brothers. Current chief operating officer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Ike Lawrence Epstein, estimates that the vote would receive upward of 75 percent of the votes within the state assembly, more than enough to allow a bill to pass. It is, to put it bluntly, simply outrageous that a dispute unrelated to the sport of mixed martial arts is currently stymieing its expansion into New York state.
For the sake of thoroughness, let’s pretend that Silver was not abusing his authority and that the assembly was permitted to vote solely based on its perception of the sport. Back in 1997, professional mixed martial arts was made illegal in New York because it was decried as violent and barbaric. I do not recall Apollo Creed being killed in a mixed martial arts fight, but let’s take a moment to consider this outdated and defunct argument.
New York has been the host of some of the greatest sporting events in the world. In fact, we just hosted what is arguably the most-watched sporting event of the year: the Super Bowl. Are we really going to claim mixed martial arts is too violent when hockey and football sent an estimated 55,000 American athletes to the emergency room for head trauma alone in 2009? You only need to look at the footage of former Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrande’s helmet-to-helmet contact that left him paralyzed from the waist down to understand how dangerous a sport American football truly is. Concussions and other serious injuries are, unfortunately, incredibly common.
Due in part to the strict safety policies of the UFC, which is now in its second decade, the most serious injuries that fighters incurred thus far are broken bones, and even these instances are rare. Anyone who watched the recent rematch between former longtime middleweight champion Anderson Silva and New York native Chris Weidman probably witnessed the sport’s most gruesome injury. An unfortunately-placed leg kick left Silva with a severely broken femur. However, these injuries are uncommon.
Perhaps it is unfair to compare football and mixed martial arts. A more apt comparison would be with one of America’s more celebrated past times: boxing. While Las Vegas has arguably hosted boxing’s greatest bouts, finding a better rival for this title than New York would be difficult. The state’s premiere venue, Madison Square Garden, has housed such boxing greats as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. In fact, the Garden hosted the “Fight of the Century” in 1970, which featured two of the greatest boxers in history, the then-undefeated heavyweights Ali and Frazier. The fight would go to decision after 15 brutal rounds and resulted in a unanimous decision victory for Frazier.
Despite that loss, history still depicts Muhammad Ali as one of the greatest boxers of all-time, but look at him now. In 1984, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, an illness that all-too-commonly afflicts boxers. He now has difficulty speaking and required significant assistance when he was one of the Olympic Flag bearers in the 2012 London Olympic Games. And; while Parkinson’s can be found in people who do not participate in boxing, there is no questioning whether the head trauma from Ali’s 61 professional fights brought about his current condition.
How safe is mixed martial arts in comparison? The instinctive reaction is to claim that the much-thinner gloves of mixed martial arts render blows to the head that much more dangerous. In fact, the reverse is true: because the gloves used in boxing are thicker and more padded, athletes are able to incur more blows to the head than is typical in mixed martial arts, in which a single well-placed punch with the lightly-padded gloves is far more likely to induce a knockout than in boxing. Additionally, the length of fights in both sports determines how much potentially-damaging head trauma can be dealt.
In the UFC, each round of a fight lasts five minutes. In title fights, there are five rounds, while non-title fights have three rounds. Compare this to professional boxing fights, wherein there are 10-12 rounds, each of which are three minutes long. According to statistics that the UFC released, 60 percent of fights that do not reach decision (which account for more than half of the total fights) are finished in the first round. In other words, most UFC matches end in under five minutes. And, if you have ever watched a mixed martial arts fight, you know that strategic grappling on the ground occupies the majority of the time in many fights, an activity that, ground-and-pound excluded, does not involve trauma to the head.
Adding to the regulated safety of mixed martial arts is the lack of a standing count. Whereas boxing allows athletes who are knocked to the ground eight or 10 seconds to stand up and continue the fight, there is no such count in the UFC. When an athlete is rendered unconscious or has no ability to intelligently defend him or herself, the referee stops the fight. This helps to prevent the prolonged head trauma we see in boxing which leads to the disturbing statistic that 90 percent of boxers will suffer from some sort of brain injury. In addition, the UFC instituted a policy that puts athletes who have been knocked out in a fight on a 60- to 90-day probation until one of the organization’s doctors medically clears them.
Legalize professional mixed martial arts, New York. It is not only incredibly entertaining, but it will bring in nearly $40 million annually, according to UFC estimates. It’s not like we can’t use the money.
