The Residue of McCain, His Pound of Flesh
Published by on December 14th, 2007 in History

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It is difficult to measure with any real degree of exactitude how much influence John McCain’s crusade against the sport of mixed martial arts had. It was obviously his desire that governors across the U.S. would unite to ban the competition from taking place, but that’s not how it unfolded.

Some of the states came out against the events; in others, it took a little “tweaking” to get them cleared. Certain rules changes, for example, had to be instituted to make it acceptable in places like New York, which had put it under the jurisdiction of its athletic commission. Then, however, politicians made further changes to the state athletic commission rules for mixed martial arts, and specifically for a UFC event that was lated for an upstate venue, unbeknownst to the organizers of the UFC itself, namely Bob Meyrowitz of SEG.

The rules changes the commission arbitrarily made included mandatory headgear and no kicking to the head. Also, for some reason, they mandated that the octagon be increased to 40 feet in diameter. This represented an increase of 25% over its customary size. Well, and octagon is an octagon, and in the UFC’s case, it was indemic to its existence; a symbol of what they were about. Sure, boxing rings could be 16 feet, up to 22 feet around, but that was usually determined by either necessity (what was available) or by mutual agreement of two main event competitors. Kicks to the head were not exactly unique to the UFC or to MMA in general; they were standard fare in the kick boxing world for years. What the NYSAC was talking about here was a bit excessive, and truth be known, intentionally prohibitive.

Despite vehement protests from UFC officials, none of these rules “adjustments” were about to be changed. By this time it had become customary – and frankly very wise – for promoters to have an alternate location at their disposal, just in case some court or commission was going to pull a fast one and screw them out of the original location. In this case (UFC XII), it was the gulf shores city of Dothan, Alabama, where no athletic commission could get in their way. And the UFC was very fortunate, in shifting the event literally overnight, that they were able to pull off one of its most entertaining shows ever.

This was really no way to run an operation, though it must said that this was still during the period the UFC and other mixed martial arts organizations were “playing it by ear.”

In many of the country’s jurisdictions, political pressure that was created by John McCain’s anti-MMA movement had its residual effects; yet, there was always a place where the MMA promoter could do a show, whether it was in a non-commission state or outside the country, like the Kahnawake Indian reservation in Canada. But in those days before everyone was reachable over the internet, there was a different, and as it turned out, more effective way to stop the sport from progressing.
It was here that McCain, the political opportunist extraordinaire, made his end run.

McCAIN GETS HIS POUND OF FLESH
The Ultimate Fighting Championship, and the entire sport of mixed martial arts, got thwarted by the bureaucracy after all, in a series of developments that illustrates how power and corruption in Washington sometimes work.

John McCain became chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in 1997; almost immediately he began a campaign to circumvent states rights on MMA, or at least minimalize them. The position on the committee gave him legislative oversight over a number of industries (some of which he was taking money from in the form of campaign contributions). One of these industries was cable television, which was in a tenuous position, with chronic allegations of overcharging customers with their exclusive municipal contracts and the insurgence of satellite delivery services.

Even though it was possibly illegal to do so, McCain let it be known to the cable companies, in particular the MSO’s (major systems operators) that if they were to continue to carry mixed martial arts events through pay-per-view channels, they would pay for it down the road in Washington (unless, we assume, they were to make massive donations to his political career, which might not have made economic sense to them).

One by one, the cable companies fell into line, doing exactly what McCain wanted them to do. They came up with frivolous reasons to justify not carrying MMA events – TCI, Cablevision, Time Warner, Viewer’s Choice and the others. This, in effect, cut off the primary revenue source for mixed martial arts promotions.

The companies did not want to admit they were being strong-armed by McCain, so they cited the violence of MMA, this despite fact that they all carried gratuitous extreme violence in their movie offerings, and had carried pay-per-view boxing events where fighters had been killed, not to mention X-rated movies.

Budweiser, a major advertising “partner” with boxing, was also one of the major contributors putting money into McCain’s campaign coffers, enabling him to travel to book tours, and those boxing events where he received free tickets, at someone else’s expense. The Anheuser-Busch company, in fact, was the fifth biggest contributor to McCain’s 1998 Senate campaign, forking over $51,563.

This wasn’t anything unusual. There was an atmosphere where a lot of interested parties shelled out what they could for some favors from McCain. For that ’98 campaign, there were a host of companies among his top fifty donors – including Viacom (which owned Showtime), AT&T (which controlled extensive cable interests) and Time Warner. These companies were also among the top eight contributors to McCain’s “Straight Talk America” political action committee from 1997-2002. Anyone who would lay out that kind of money for access didn’t want the guy upset at them.

There were also other companies with heavy investments in boxing, through their cable interests, who were big donors to either McCain or his fellow committee members, including Disney (which owned ESPN), Fox/News Corp., and Univision.
The die had been cast. Promotions were shut down. They just weren’t worthwhile for their financial backers anymore. Everyone suffered, including the originators of the UFC.

It was going to take a major change to make the business model lucrative again.