But the killer, the one to show these laws had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with making sure the event never happened, is that an Octagon would have to be a minimum 40 feet in diameter.
The irony of mandating boxing gloves and banning chokes, taking the grappling out of the sport, would only make it more dangerous. They talked about banning the events because of chair shots and putting the participants through tables, not knowing that the Extreme Fighting Championship and UFC were different from the staged Extreme Championship Wrestling, a wild Philadelphia-based wrestling product that had cult appeal at the time.
Two days before the event, SEG filed suit against the commission for attempting to change the rules so close to the date, noting they would be forcing the fighters to compete under rules very different from what they had trained for. SEG thought there was no way it could lose its case. Constitution prohibits states from passing laws that interfere with existing contracts.
On February 6, , the afternoon prior to the planned Niagara Falls show, U. SEG chartered a jet from Niagara Falls to Montgomery, filled with fighters, entourages, officials, reporters and some fans. The flight was delayed because of weight issues.
Luggage had to be thrown off the plane and left in Niagara Falls. They landed in Alabama at 2 a. Several buses were then rented to take the crew to Dothan, where they dropped people off at a number of different hotels. After working around the clock, they were still painting the canvas on the Octagon in front of the fans even after the first match was scheduled to go into the cage, causing the prelims to start 15 minutes late, but they made it on time for the pay-per-view.
Media coverage was huge nationally. The New York Times wrote about how blood was spilled in seven matches, even though there was only blood in three and in those fights, the blood was minimal. A Newsday column written after the show compared UFC promoter Meyrowitz to Satan, said that the fights had no judges they did , no weight classes they did and that UFC was a bore, and the only thing that saves it "is the blood," which draws "low-watt cretins" to the matches.
The column claimed fans were chanting that they wanted blood during the Coleman vs. Severn fight, which Coleman won quickly by submission. That chant never happened, but there was a chant of "New York sucks," which the story chalked up to the IQ citizens from Alabama. The New York state assembly then passed, by a margin, a bill that would ban no holds barred events from the state. Bruno said it might as well be banned, since the new rulebook the commission implemented had in effect banned it already.
But he said that the truth was that the UFC, even at its most maligned, was less violent than boxing. We had moved much more to a sports direction.
We were trying to get people to take it seriously. We knew we had a base of fans already. We needed the PR of sports page coverage and at that time, that could have put us over the top.
Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. But critics usually take the former numbers as proof that MMA is far more dangerous than other martial arts.
As for the fatality rates, MMA has a surprisingly low fatality rate compared to the number of potentially fatal moves allowed in the sport and the injury rate in MMA see above. We are, of course, talking about officially sanctioned MMA events, not underground matches, but from , when the first MMA-related death was recorded, until today — there have been only seven recorded cases of death in MMA.
The first one was that of Sam Vasquez, who collapsed and died on November 30, , after being knocked out by his opponent, Vince Libardi. The most recent case was that of Mateus Fernandes, who died several hours after a sanctioned amateur match in Brazil, on March 30, If you compare these numbers with boxing, which has had cases of fatal injuries in a year period , you will see that MMA would have an incredibly small number of deaths for the same period of time.
In this case, we calculated the average death rate of MMA for a year period , which was 0. For comparison, boxing has a ratio of 7. Even if we just took the known boxing deaths in the same year period , there have been 21 deaths in total, which is three times more than in MMA for the same period of time.
So, to answer your question — is MMA so dangerous it should be illegal? Today, MMA is legal in most countries that have developed a market for martial arts and combat sports. MMA is legal in most English-speaking countries today. Australia has completely legalised the sport in all of its states and territories, although there have been debates about the use of the cage in the states of Victoria and Western Australia.
Both have, at one point, banned its use but have relegalized it after some time. Plaintiffs point to the following as evidence of the irrational, unconstitutional nature of the Ban:. Today, MMA is a highly-regulated, broadly popular sport, which experts and supporting safety data verify is as safe as or safer than many sports and activities that are legal in New York, including boxing, football and rodeo. MMA is now as safe as or even safer than many other sports and activities sanctioned in New York like boxing, for example, because it allows fighters to honorably tap out and involves far fewer hits.
All the disciplines that go into mixed martial arts are performed live in New York; it is only their combination that is illegal. Denying fighters the chance to exhibit their training and skills before a live audience and denying thousands of New Yorkers the ability to watch their favorite fighters perform live is not only an injustice to them, but to the local markets that would reap tremendous economic benefits from hosting competitions.
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