Fans of watching two guys in their underwear elbow each other in the face while Joe Rogan screams at them will still have to go to New Jersey to see it live: a bill legalizing Mixed Martial Arts won't make it to this year's legislative session. A spokesman for Democrat and State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver tells the Times that "there is no clear sense of confidence," so there won't be a vote. “All I want is a vote on the Assembly floor,” Marc Rater, the senior VP of government and regulatory affairs of U.F.C. says. "If it doesn’t pass, it doesn’t pass. Not to get a vote by the full Assembly, to me, is un-American.” Beating the sh*t out of someone atop a Bud Light logo? American.
Connecticut and New York are the only states that have not legalized MMA. Last year the Senate passed a legalization bill, only to see it killed in the Assembly—besides, there were more important issues to attend to. Rater maintains that it's the powerful hotel workers union that has blocked the bill, because the owners of U.F.C. have opened up non-unionized hotels in Nevada.
But Assemblyman Bob Reilly likes to think it's a win for family values. "It is, for me, a victory of principle over money.” A victory that will last a few months.
