Take your rules and shove them
Published by Charles Jay on August 10th, 2008 in Current Events, Operation Cleanup

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Commentary on MMA history….as it’s happening

REASONABLE PEOPLE TO ABC: TAKE YOUR RULES AND SHOVE THEM

Congratulations to Dana White for giving a simple and solid “No” to the idea of adopting the evil, execrable, atrocious, awful, odious, obnoxious, insolent, imperious, iniquitous, insidious, contemptible, detestable, deplorable, dictatorial, doctrinaire, diabolical, offensive, overbearing, putrid, perverse, nefarious, abhorrent, miscreant, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, rotten, wretched, loathsome, haughty, heinous, hideous, horrid, horrific, horrible, flagitious, foul, vile, stupid, silly, supercilious and and downright authoritarian rules that the Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC) tried to shove down the throats of mixed martial arts promoters, and mixed martial fans, in a July meeting where the members quite obviously had nothing better to do with their time.

OK – we shouldn’t get too carried away. First of all, let’s explain, for the sake of clarity, that the ABC is not a government agency, nor does it carry any of the powers that such an “authority” might be expected to have. It is a trade organization, although it is worth noting that there are a couple of things in particular that are dangerous about this crew – that it consists of a bunch of state regulators, political appointees in most cases, who listen to a few misguided people and take all those ideas back home with them, and that legislators in Washington, who just can’t keep their noses out of the affairs of a private industry, are listening to them.

And on the table was a proposal to change the weight divisions that currently exist in mixed martial arts, to include a number of “junior” and “super” weight classes, just like boxing. A total of fourteen in all.

This statement came from Nick Lembo, who was instrumental, along with Larry Hazzard, in adopting what are known as the “unified rules” of MMA that the sport is conducted under: “Major MMA jurisdictions like Nevada, California, Ohio, Florida, Quebec and New Jersey need to have an involved role when contemplating serious MMA rule changes. Unless everyone is on board, the ridiculous result would be having different weight classes in different jurisdictions for the same fighters in the same sport.”

The ABC clearly was doing some busy work here. I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish, other than engage in an attempt to tell the UFC who’s boss. It’s interesting that the states like Nevada, Florida and California, who have hosted a lot of UFC events and will continue to do so in the future, were not represented at the meeting which produced such foolishness. Can anybody say “ex parte”?

I don’t want to portray the UFC as an innocent victim here; indeed, they will play the political card when they have to. But we will call them on it when that happens.

Hey, fair is fair, on both sides of the coin.

The UFC may have taken on some of the characteristics of a monopoly, but it’s a LEGAL monopoly. It has not gotten where it is by breaking legitimate laws and engaging in acting that violate the spirit of, say, the Sherman Act. It may bend the rules, but it doesn’t necessarily break them. They run their own ship, they run it well, and they don’t necessarily need anyone’s help to make it better. Sure, it would be great if their position of having more than 80% of the marketplace (and probably even more than that, with the demise of Elite XC and the IFL), but it has to be done by someone who has earned their way into that place, not one who artificially gets there. No one needs to be “ruled” into existence or “ruled” out.

The UFC, whether you like it or not, has demonstrated itself to be a shining example of self-governance, something that boxing has failed to do. It is private regulation of a sort, for sure. And let’s not make any bones about it – what you have here, as long as they insist on calling their championships “world titles,” is a company that is, at once, both sanctioning body and promoter. If you don’t want to fight for what they’re offering, you can get stripped of your title and it’s pretty much as simple as that.

But you know what? There is recourse for fighters, if they feel they’ve been wronged that way. All they have to do is take the UFC to a civil court, and beat them. That remedy doesn’t have to be legislated into existence. They’d have to win in court anyway, and there usually isn’t a goddamn thing most athletic commissions are going to do to help a fighter in a case like that. So what does it matter?

I was once heavily involved in all the goings-on surrounding the proposed federal boxing legislation (or at least in opposing it), that in which John McCain, who happily took money from people he had regulatory domain over through his Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, sought to exercise some moral, and legislative, authority over a sport (boxing) where such an activity, even by those loose standards, would have been scandalous. What I found was that the ideas McCain was getting, and which he sought to muscle through with the aid of a series of fixed and phony hearings, came from people who had an agenda. In other words, they had a bone to pick with somebody, they thought they had been screwed somewhere and were going to get revenge, or they simply wanted power within their own circle, or a larger circle, and were going to use McCain’s proposed bill to get it.

No difference here. The rules changes and weight divisions are largely the product of the well-known referee John McCarthy, who apparently has an ax to grind now with the UFC. And what better way to upset that applecart than to make the UFC go and restructure their titles and weight divisions. In other words, to roll over and say “Yes master.”

Except that it doesn’t work that way.

The UFC’s liaison with athletic commissions in none other than Marc Ratner, who as a former president of the ABC knows full well what I’m about to tell you: that the ABC has no official standing with anybody, nor do they have the juice to snap their fingers and create weight divisions that everyone – indeed, ANYONE – has to follow. It is a trade organization, with voluntary membership, that operates as a non-profit and offers “guidelines” for rules and regulations, many of which can either be followed or ignored.

In Dana’s case, he chooses to ignore them.

“It should be that [the state athletic commissions] all follow one set of rules,” McCarthy was quoted in one internet story. “Wherever you go, it’s the same. That’s what you need to have — consistency for not only the fighters, (but also) the officials and the fans of the sport.”

The problem is that the state commissions don’t really matter in this regard. What matters is what the UFC, and the other promoters, choose to do. It is not any state’s place to mandate that a fight which takes place for a light heavyweight title should now be called a middleweight fight, as would be the case if they had their wish. The scope of their “authority” goes about as far as determining whether there is to much of a weight difference between two competitors so as to make a bout unfair (and I would even challenge that). The private company, promoting the fight, can call it anything it wants, and unless it is violating advertising laws by committing fraud, there is nothing anyone should have to say about it.

There is a post-script to this story. Lembo, who has maybe more experience in this than any regulator in the country, has now been named the head of the ABC committee that will deal with MMA. The other members of that committee are Jim Erickson of North Dakota Armando Garcia of California; Keith Kizer of Nevada; Dale Kliparchuk of The River Cree Combative Sports Commission in Canada, Joe Mason of Colorado; and Mike Mazzulli of the Mohegan Athletic United (Connecticut). I know several of these guys, and I’m sure they’ll do a good job.

As long as they know that when it comes down to it, the only effective regulation is ultimately self-regulation, and that the people who put their money up are the ones with the most at stake.