While New York's same-sex couples prepare for their big day, the MMA community will have to wait for the next legislative session for any hope that their sport of kings will be legalized. Earlier this month Speaker Sheldon Silver doused any hopes for legalization, despite the bill passing the Senate and speeding through the Assembly's various committees. "It's a promotion of violence at a time when we're trying to eliminate violence," Assemblyman Rob Reilly tells the Times, making us wonder if he's suggesting for supporters to wait until violence is back in season. How much longer must New Yorkers wait to feel the joy that only comes with watching a grown man do a cartwheel into another man's face?
With 45 states, including New Jersey, having no problem with MMA, it's becoming increasingly difficult for New York to justify the ban. An MMA instructor from Queens complains, "New Jersey is making all the money off this, and we've got nothing. I've got to travel to take my fighters to shows. We should have them in the best city in the world." A UFC commissioned study showed that an event at MSG and another in Buffalo would generate a total of $15 million for the state, which sounds kind of puny considering UFC can make as much as $42 million in a single fight. "People would make money," Reilly says, "people in Las Vegas and the UFC."
Local advocates are unmoved. One expert in jiujitsu says, "Everything is violence. They don't understand it's just another sport." Citing recent rule changes to UFC events (no eye-gouging, no elbow strikes), another instructor compares the sport to the Sweet Science: "People think it's this barbaric thing. This stuff is harder than calculus." Maybe they should rename moves like the "guillotine choke" to the "firm physical disagreement?"
