It’s a frigid February evening in New York City, and yet scores of fans have braved the cold weather to gather at the midtown Manhattan Hooters bar in order to watch the latest Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) pay-per-view event entitled “UFC 109: Relentless.” Indeed, it’s so cold that most of the waitresses wear long-sleeved shirts instead of their usual tank-tops.
The restaurant is nearly filled to capacity, but according to Nick Bujduveanu, a 36-year-old hotel concierge in Manhattan who has been watching mixed martial arts (MMA) for about three years, the crowd is smaller than usual. “It’s a big fight, but not as big as some others,” Bujduveanu said. “Plus it’s cold out.” The main event on the card pits Randy Couture against Mark Coleman, both former UFC heavyweight champions and both in their mid-40s, leading some fans to label the fight “UFC 109: Retirement” or “Age in the Cage.”
Still, the fans expect a good show, and when Long Island native Matt “The Terror” Serra enters the eight-sided ring known as “the Octagon,” the fans give the former UFC welterweight champion a loud ovation. In 2006, Serra appeared on The Ultimate Fighter, a reality show on Spike TV sponsored by the UFC, and won a guaranteed title shot at Georges St. Pierre, the reigning UFC welterweight champion and one of the top pound-for-pound MMA fighters in the world. An 11-1 underdog, Serra’s pre-match vow to take the title back to his hometown of East Meadow became a reality after he caught St. Pierre with a powerful right hand to the head, and knocked him out in the first round. Today, Serra still considers his Rocky Balboa moment as one of his greatest memories. He owns and operates the Serra Jitsu Academy, a mixed martial arts school with locations in East Meadow and Huntington in Long Island, and trains approximately 500 students of all ages and experience levels in numerous combat disciplines. As a result of Serra’s UFC exposure, his academy has done so well in recent years that he’s moving the Huntington school it to a larger facility a couple of blocks away, and plans on opening it in the spring. But first, he has a fight to win, and veteran Frank Trigg is in his way.
The place erupts less than three minutes after the fight starts as Serra knocks Trigg out with the same right hand that felled St. Pierre. Serra is clearly thrilled about his victory and looks forward to celebrating with his family. “My daughter’s birthday is next week, and I’m like I hope I don’t show up looking like a Cyclops!” said an unscathed Serra after the match.
Despite all of his success, Serra has one dream that has yet to be fulfilled: his desire to fight at Madison Square Garden. Unfortunately for him and other New York fighters, like Matt “The Hammer” Hamill of upstate Utica, mixed martial arts events have been banned in New York since 1997. At age 35, Serra doesn’t see himself fighting much longer, and he knows his chances of fighting at the Garden are running out. However, if recent events unfold the way he and many others at the UFC hope they do, then his dream could soon become a reality.
Mixed martial arts is one of the fastest growing sports in America. In the last few months, MMA-related events have earned record television ratings and pay-per-view buy-rates. The latest season of The Ultimate Fighter broke Spike TV’s all-time ratings record on two separate occasions. In December, the live season finale on Spike drew more than five million viewers, and last July, the UFC set a new pay-per-view buy-rate record, garnering over 1.6 million “buys” for its “UFC 100” event. In August, Strikeforce, the number two MMA organization in the United States, drew nearly 5.5 million viewers for its much ballyhooed network television debut on CBS. That show featured Russian heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko, who many consider the best MMA fighter in the world. Strikeforce also garnered publicity when it signed former Heisman trophy winner and National Football League (NFL) running back Herschel Walker to a contract. On Jan. 30, the 47-year-old Walker won his debut match in the cage, winning a unanimous decision at the “Strikeforce: Miami” event.
In January, New York governor David Paterson announced his budget proposal for 2010-2011, which included legalization of MMA events in New York state as a means of raising badly-needed revenue. Paterson believes that MMA events, which were once legal in the state, would bring in millions of dollars in revenue, as well as create hundreds of jobs. The UFC, which has been at the forefront of the legalization movement, feels momentum is on its side and is extremely confident that MMA events will be legalized in New York by April 1, which is the deadline for the state legislature to pass the budget.
However, despite its recent success and the sport’s growing appeal, MMA still faces an uphill battle for mainstream acceptability. The sport is undeniably violent, and blood-letting during matches is common. Fighters are encouraged to knock out or force their opponents to submit or give up, and are often paid hefty bonuses to do so. Critics of MMA believe that it encourages and glorifies violence, and some see it as nothing more than a fad with no more legitimacy than professional wrestling. As a result, not everyone in New York is ready to roll out the red carpet for MMA.
In many ways, the biggest knockout punch in MMA history didn’t come from Randy Couture, Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell, or any other of the sport’s biggest names, but from a United States senator. In 1996, Senator John McCain condemned the sport as “human cock-fighting” and sent letters to all 50 governors, urging them to ban MMA events in their states. McCain’s plea worked to a considerable degree as 36 states enacted bans, and the UFC nearly went out of business. However, in a 2007 interview with National Public Radio, McCain changed his tune, offering reserved praise for MMA. “They have cleaned up the sport to the point, at least in my view, where it is not human cockfighting any more. I think they’ve made significant progress. They haven’t made me a fan, but they have made progress,” said McCain.
McCain isn’t the only former opponent of MMA who has changed his tune. Two men who helped enact the ban in New York have recently switched sides. Former New York state athletic commissioner Randy Gordon wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News last November advocating the legalization of the sport he once referred to as a “street fight minus the beer bottle.” One week before the unveiling of Paterson’s latest budget, former New York governor George Pataki announced his support for lifting the ban which he had signed into law in 1997. Pataki, who had once decried the sport as “barbaric,” pointed to the increased regulation and oversight of MMA, as well as improvements in training and treatment of fighters, as the reasons for his change of heart.
In order to move towards the mainstream, the UFC had to break with its past. Originally, there were no judges, no time limits, and anything short of a shot to the groin was allowed. In fact, “There are no rules!” was the tagline for the very first UFC pay-per-view event in 1993. That changed in 2000 when the New Jersey State Athletic Commission drafted the “Mixed Martial Arts Unified Rules,” which established uniform standards regarding match-length, judging, acceptable fight gear, and, most importantly, fouls. Some of the rules are similar to boxing, such as judging and scoring, however the weight classes differ (the welterweight limit in boxing is 147 pounds, but in MMA it’s 170 pounds). The changes were made, in part, to give the sport some respectability but also to make the matches more entertaining. During the UFC’s infancy, it wasn’t uncommon for fighters to lie on top of one another for nearly half-an-hour, or avoid contact completely as was the case in the infamous Dan Severn vs. Ken Shamrock fight in 1996 when both men circled each other for almost 30 minutes while audience members fought the urge to either go to sleep or leave.
New Jersey had never banned MMA, but had been unwilling to sanction MMA events until the United Rules were drafted. In November 2000, the state athletic commission sanctioned a UFC event for the first time, and the Unified Rules were soon adopted by Nevada. As a result of the Unified Rules, many states lifted their bans on MMA. The UFC, which has long dreamed of holding events in Madison Square Garden, has undertaken a massive lobbying effort to try and lift the ban in New York. Surprisingly, another former opponent of MMA is leading the charge.
Marc Ratner spent 21 years with the Nevada State Athletic Commission, including 14 as its executive director. In the mid-1990s, when MMA was in its infancy, Ratner spoke out against it, saying that it would never be allowed in Las Vegas. In 2006, however, Ratner accepted a job with the UFC as its vice president of regulatory affairs. “I had the best regulatory job in the world,” said Ratner. “But what intrigued me about the UFC was that it was a brand new sport. I wanted to be on the ground floor, to be a pioneer and try to get it legalized. You can’t do that in basketball or boxing, since those sports have been around so long.”
Ratner has seen the sport make leaps and bounds since its early outlaw days when the UFC was struggling to fill small auditoriums and fighters had to be careful not to strike with closed fists for fear of being arrested for assault. “It’s not 1995 anymore. It’s no longer ‘no-holds-barred,’” Ratner said, pointing to the changes and reforms in the sport over the last decade. “It’s a very regulated sport, and that’s how it should be.”
When Ratner first joined the UFC, MMA was sanctioned in 22 states. The UFC had made Massachusetts and New York a priority when it started its lobbying push, and Ratner has been at the forefront of the effort, while giving the organization a veneer of respectability and legitimacy. In stark contrast to Dana White, the flamboyant and outspoken president of the UFC, Ratner tends to be more soft-spoken and measured with his words. Ratner hopes to get MMA events legalized in all 48 states that have athletic commissions (Alaska and Wyoming are the lone exceptions). His task inched closer to reality last November when Massachusetts became the 42nd state to regulate MMA. A month later, the UFC announced an August 2010 card at the TD Banknorth Center in Boston. Then in February, Wisconsin became the 43rd state to regulate MMA, followed by Alabama in March. For Ratner, that leaves New York as his biggest remaining target. According to Ratner, New York represents the “cherry on top of the dessert,” and he is determined to succeed in the state. By his count, he’s been to Albany “seven or eight times” over the last two years, meeting with state legislators in an effort to get the state’s ban overturned.
Ratner’s argument is threefold. “It’s about education, health, and safety,” he said. To emphasize his point, he frequently refers to a 2006 study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, which found that injury rates in MMA matches were consistent with other sports where striking was allowed. The study also found that MMA actually had lower knockout rates than boxing, meaning that its fighters may be less susceptible to brain injury.
“As opposed to professional boxing, MMA competitions have a mechanism that enables the participant to stop the competition at any time,” the report said. “The ‘tap out’ is the second most common means of ending a MMA competition.” The report explained that a tap out is achieved when a fighter repeatedly taps his hand, giving up. Furthermore, the report found that unlike boxers, who primarily concentrate on the head, MMA fighters target many different body parts and grapple for submission holds and takedowns. The report also said that MMA fighters get knocked out nearly half as often as boxers.
The Johns Hopkins report is consistent with Ratner’s experience with the Nevada State Athletic Commission. From 2001, when MMA was first sanctioned in Nevada, until 2006, Ratner estimates he oversaw over 900 UFC fights, and the most serious injury he ever saw was when Tim Sylvia broke his arm in a 2004 fight against Frank Mir. “Meanwhile, during my time at the commission, there were seven deaths in boxing in 14 years,” said Ratner.
Ratner concedes that MMA fights are violent and that participants do get injured. However, he also points out that there are procedures in place to protect fighters, as well as strict medical regulations that a promotion must follow in order to put on a fight card, such as having doctors at ringside and ambulances and EMT personnel at the facility. “That’s why we want to go through athletic commissions. We want the rules. We welcome them,” said Ratner.
Ratner’s other major point in favor of legalizing MMA – indeed, the one that seems to have the most traction with New York politicians – is the positive economic impact MMA events would have on the state. He cites an economic impact report by HR&A Advisors to bolster his case for legalizing MMA in New York. The study, which was commissioned by the UFC’s parent company, Zuffa LLC, projected that the UFC would bring in over $5 million in revenue for an event in Buffalo and over $11 million for an event in New York City, as well as approximately $1.3 million in city and state taxes. “The UFC is holding an event in Newark, New Jersey on March 27,” said Ratner several months in advance of the promotion’s “UFC 111” event. “It’s still a couple of months to go, and we’ve already sold about three million dollars worth of tickets. I’ll bet that about half the crowd consists of people from New York. Now, why would the state of New York want that income to go to Jersey?”
Raihan Aretin, a 26 year-old restaurant manager in Manhattan said he plans on going to the Newark event for which he paid $150 for his ticket. “New York is the center for all sports,” said Aretin. “We have the Yankees, the Jets and the Giants. I can’t believe we can’t have MMA.”
Nick Bujduveanu agrees. “It’s like having oil on your property and being told you can’t drill it,” he said. “Madison Square Garden would sell out every time.”
These fans won’t have to wait long if Ratner has his way. Ratner believes that the UFC was on the cusp of victory last year after the MMA bill passed the state assembly’s committee on Tourism, Arts and Sports Development on June 3. However, a leadership coup in the New York State Senate ensured that the bill would languish in legislative limbo, at least until the start of the 2010 legislative session. Ratner is still confident that MMA events will soon be legal in New York. “It’s not a question of if it will pass but when,” he said. Not even a Marist College poll in January showing that more than two-thirds of registered voters in New York believed that MMA should remain illegal can dampen his spirits.
“The best poll is the number of pay-per-view buys, the number of bars in showing our events, and our TV ratings in New York,” said Ratner. “If people in New York don’t want it, then they don’t have to watch it. Why hold the people of New York hostage?”
The idea that New Yorkers should be able to watch what many other states allow resonates with Katherine Fiore. She was one of the few female customers at Hooters watching the “UFC 109” pay-per-view, and is not a fan. “I’m here because of my boyfriend,” said Fiore, a 26 year-old accountant in Mahattan who estimates that she’s seen approximately 10 MMA events on pay-per-view. “It should be legal. If you like it, then it should be up to you to watch it.”
In Ratner’s eyes, the man holding the people of New York hostage is State Assemblyman Bob Reilly, a Democrat from Colonie. Reilly has been a steadfast opponent of legalizing MMA in New York and believes it is his responsibility to make sure MMA remains an illegal, outlaw sport. “First and foremost, it is a violent sport,” said Reilly. “It’s like pornography. Like the Supreme Court says, you know it when you see it. For example, I watched an event recently because I felt obligated to. One fellow was sitting on another’s chest and hit him in the head at least 14 times.”
Reilly is also concerned about the effect of MMA on impressionable minds. “Violence begets violence. When you show young children violence and tell them its okay, it’s the wrong message,” said Reilly. “It’s harmful to our entire society.”
But mostly Reilly is upset about what he believes is the UFC’s distortion of the facts, especially regarding the economic benefits to the state. To support his position, Reilly prepared a report last year entitled “The Case Against Ultimate Fighting In New York State.” In the report, he argues that the economic benefit of legalizing MMA would be almost negligible. “[A]n event at a site such as Albany would have a gate of approximately $4 million with $500,000 being added to the local economy; however, $3.5 million would be taken out of the local economy and sent to Las Vegas where Zuffa, LLC [the parent company of the UFC] is located,” Reilly wrote. Reilly says fighter safety is at the heart of his opposition to MMA. He takes issue with the UFC’s use of the Johns Hopkins study, arguing that the study actually bolsters his case that MMA is a dangerous and violent sport. “Of the 171 ultimate fighting matches examined, 40.3 percent ended with at least one injured fighter not including knockout victims,” Reilly wrote in his report.
Reilly also cited a 2009 study by National Geographic, which studied the science behind MMA fighting. The study found that, due to gravity and recoil, a fighter’s punches to a downed opponent were more than four-times as powerful as punches to a standing opponent. “The claim that the standing boxer receives less powerful and severe blows than the downed ultimate fighter is clearly incorrect,” wrote Reilly.
There have been two confirmed deaths in MMA matches: Sam Vasquez died as a result of brain damage sustained in a 2007 fight in Texas, and Douglas Dredge was killed in a 1998 fight in Ukraine. Reilly claims that there have been as many as 13 additional deaths but concedes that the records are inconclusive. Reilly also cites a March 2009 fight in World Extreme Cagefighting, a sister organization of the UFC, in which one fighter, Marcos Galvao, suffered a seizure after being knocked out. His opponent, Damacio Page, took home a $7,500 “Knockout of the Night” bonus.
Public opinion may be on his side. Regarding the negative Marist College poll on the proposed legalization of MMA, Reilly said: “I ran my own poll in my home district and it was pooh-poohed by the MMA people. I found 67 percent of my constituents didn’t want it. In the Marist poll, it was 68 percent. That’s virtually identical.”
One person who sees eye-to-eye with Reilly on almost every point is former New York state athletic commissioner Ron Scott Stevens. “In general, it’s not the kind of activity that adds to the culture where we’re looking to have an improved society, not one that is returning to a more barbaric time,” said Stevens.
Stevens also points out the differences between boxing and MMA and does not see how the two are comparable. “In MMA, you can hit and kick an opponent on the ground. You can choke them,” said Stevens, who was a boxing promoter in New York before becoming a regulator, and is currently a playwright. “When boxing was first legalized in New York in 1920, all these things that MMA allows, boxing said no to. I don’t see boxing as dangerous. I don’t see boxing as being deleterious to society.”
Reilly believes that Stevens was removed by Governor Paterson in 2009 because of Stevens’ opposition to legalizing MMA. Stevens, however, maintains that he does not know why he was replaced by current commissioner Melvina Lathan, an outspoken supporter of MMA legalization, other than being told that the state wanted to go in another direction. “I never expressed my concerns about MMA on the record while I was commissioner,” said Stevens a registered Democrat who had been appointed commissioner by Republican governor Pataki in 2003. “If I was still athletic commissioner today and MMA became legal, then I would regulate it. My emphasis would be on health and safety. However, as a regulator, I did not believe I needed to have a position. That’s not what a regulator does.”
Stevens also calls upon his experience as a regulator by emphasizing all the manpower and resources that go into sanctioning an event in the state. “One of the things you need to consider is what will it take to get licensed in New York?” said Stevens. “Will they require bonds? Medical insurance? What medical exams will they require? Also, how financially sound will these promoters be? Can they cover the expenses in case a fighter gets seriously injured? Also, you have to look at the state. Assuming there will be a lot more events, are they going to hire the personnel to regulate these events? Right now, they’re talking about cutbacks and trying to streamline the state’s workforce.”
However, not everyone in the State Assembly shares their views. Jonathan Bing, a Democrat who represents the Upper East Side of Manhattan, has been a long-time advocate of legalizing MMA in New York and was a co-sponsor of the 2009 bill. Bing says he is not a fan of MMA and admits that he probably would not order an event on pay-per-view. Bing, however, sees MMA as a moneymaker for a state that operated with a $2.1 billion budget deficit last year, and is looking at a deficit in excess of $7 billion in 2010-2011.
Bing disagrees with many of Reilly’s points, especially regarding economic benefits. The way Bing sees it, Reilly’s claim that most of the revenue from an MMA fight in New York would go to Las Vegas isn’t entirely accurate. “The hundreds of employees that will be hired in order to hold these bouts aren’t going to be from Vegas,” Bing said. “It’s about net economic activity in addition to ticket sales. You need hundreds of workers to take tickets, to usher the fans to their seats, and be involved in putting together these competitions. In addition, fans would come from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and even Canada to attend an MMA competition. They’ll stay in a hotel, eat in a restaurant, go see another cultural or sports event, and this money won’t go to Las Vegas but will stay in the state of New York.”
To Bing, it’s a simple argument: why should New York State ignore the possibility of making millions of dollars that could be spent on important programs and services, when many other states don’t seem to have the same qualms? “It makes no sense that we’re not licensing this sport when most other states do so. It’s ridiculous that we can put billboards up in Times Square advertising MMA bouts but not be able to hold them in Madison Square Garden a few blocks away,” said Bing. “I don’t necessarily believe that just because 42 states are doing it, New York should, too. But here’s a case where we’re giving away revenue, and the amount of money we’re losing out on by not having MMA in our state more than dwarfs the amount of money we’d be sending to Vegas.”
Bing dismisses the idea that MMA is too violent and is unduly dangerous to the health and welfare of the fighters. “Should we outlaw skiing because people have been killed doing that? What about bicycling? Or snowboarding? Compared to what New York already allows, including boxing, MMA is more highly regulated than anything New Yorkers do on a daily basis,” said Bing. “Five of the sports that make up MMA are Olympic events [boxing, freestyle wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, judo and taekwondo]. MMA is different from the way it was 10 or 15 years ago. It’s extremely regulated, the participants are drug-tested regularly, if they have a concussion or a knockout, they can’t participate in another match for a certain period of time and there’s a doctor at the ring.”
Perhaps concerned that the pro-legalization forces were gaining momentum, Reilly recently floated a compromise proposal, whereby he might be willing to allow MMA events in New York if fighters were banned from hitting opponents who were down on the floor. Reilly didn’t see it as a surrender, saying that eliminating ground strikes has always been his goal. Ratner was critical of the idea and pointed out it was important to have uniformity in the sport. “Ground strikes are part of the sport,” said Ratner. “It’s sanctioned in the Unified Rules. You can’t have one set of rules for New York and a different set for the rest of the country. That’d be like saying you can tackle quarterbacks, but not if they play for the Giants or Jets.”
Bert Sugar is one of the world’s foremost authorities on boxing. A member of the Boxing Hall of Fame, Sugar has written over 60 books, including some on boxing; has edited The Ring, Boxing Illustrated and Fight Game magazines, and was named “The Greatest Boxing Writer of the 20th Century” by the International Veterans Boxing Association. The quick-witted and sharp-tongued Sugar, known as much for his one-liners as for his trademark fedora and cigar, has some strong opinions about MMA, but still thinks it should be legalized.
“It’s a fad,” said Sugar. “Kind of like midget auto-racing in the 30s. It’ll be gone before we finish this conversation. The people who watch it are former pro wrestling fans who traded in comedic fighting for real violence. Eventually, they’ll grow up and stop watching it.”
Sugar co-authored a book on professional wrestling with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) legend, the late Lou Albano. Sugar is critical of everything associated with MMA, from the organizational structure, to the individuals involved. He assails White and accuses Ratner of selling out, while admitting he likes and respects the former regulator.
He is especially disdainful of the fighters. “They can’t fight unless it’s a bar fight we’re talking about,” Sugar said. “Or they’ll just lie on top of each other. What’s so great about that?”
What really upsets Sugar, however, is when people compare MMA to boxing. To him, it’s no contest. “Boxing is still one of the most popular sports in the world. It’s still popular in the United States, it’s a huge draw in Europe, and it even outdraws soccer in Mexico,” said Sugar. “In September, the Floyd Mayweather/Juan Manuel Marquez fight drew one million pay-per-view buys. That same night, the UFC ran an event [UFC 103], and I think it got about 100,000 buys.”
According to MMAScene.com, the actual figure was 375,000, making it the second-lowest buy-rate of the year for the UFC and representing a steep decline from the record 1.6 million pay-per-view buys for the UFC’s landmark “UFC 100” last July.
For Matt Serra, the former UFC Welterweight Champion, the worst part about training for a fight is having to give up pasta so that he can make the 170-pound welterweight limit. However, he loves to fight and can’t imagine himself doing anything else. “I’ve been studying jiu-jitsu since I was 19-years old, and I’m 35 now. I practice everything, but there’s something about jiu-jitsu that I love. It’s based on leverage and technique, and the fluidity of the moves from one transition to the other. I have a real love of the art of jiu jitsu, and I took to it like a fish to water,” said Serra, who won a gold medal at the 1999 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Pan American championships.
Serra believes that learning martial arts can be beneficial to children and that it teaches them respect, discipline and self-defense. And he says it doesn’t even have to be violent. “In jiu jitsu, there’s no striking. I have guys who have no interest in getting hit, and they just want to learn jiu-jitsu in order to learn self-defense or to lose weight,” Serra said.
Like Serra, Matt Hamill has been extremely active traveling to Albany to lobby legislators on behalf of their sport. Hamill, a deaf fighter who was a three-time NCAA wrestling champion, disagrees with people like Reilly who believe that MMA is too violent and encourages a culture of violence. “To those people I would say they should go to a MMA clinic and see the dedication and devotion that these athletes contribute to the sport,” Hamill said in an email interview. “MMA takes a large amount of time, discipline and skill. MMA is not two random guys fighting or street brawling. There is a wide range of fight skills and styles that go into MMA. MMA competitors are not violent guys outside of the ring or when walking around with the general public.” Ultimately, MMA fighters have personal reasons for taking part in the lobbying effort. “There’s something to be said about fighting in your home town, especially New York,” said Serra, who lost his welterweight championship in a rematch with Georges St. Pierre in Montreal, St. Pierre’s hometown. “I mean there’s such a rich fight history at Madison Square Garden. Or the Nassau Coliseum, which is down the block from where I went to high school. Even when I’m done fighting, it would be nice to jump on the Long Island Rail Road and go to the Garden to watch the fights.”
Hamill is also loyal to his hometown. “I reside in Utica, and I have a lot of close fans that have supported me from day one,” said Hamill. “It would be my dream to be able to bring an MMA card to Utica, and the attention and revenue it would bring to the community.”
Hamill and Serra will soon learn whether their dream is about to become reality. The UFC is confident they will triumph, but their opponents have vowed to fight until the very end. Either way, it looks like the biggest MMA fight in New York state this year will occur on the floor of the state legislature, not inside a cage inside Madison Square Garden.
