This time it was a boxing gym in the heart of Brooklyn, nestled deep within one of the city’s worst neighborhoods but packed with cheering fans, all of them gathered together for a Saturday afternoon of unsanctioned exhibition MMA bouts in a state seemingly forever on the cusp of legalizing the sport. In the ring for this event dubbed “Martial Arts Madness”, a 250-pound Muay Thai practitioner named Dale squares off against a 240-pound wrestler nicknamed “The Savage”. They wear shin pads and headgear, a nod to the exhibition-nature of the fights, but none of that matters in the roughly six seconds Dale needs to plant his shin against the Savage’s head and send him tumbling to the canvas. The wrestler lies there facedown for a while before the ringside medical attendant (really, one of the judges who’s a black belt in kung fu) can help him to his feet. The audience applauds, appreciative of what the promoter (who shall remain nameless) has orchestrated for their viewing pleasure. Then two more fighters enter the ring.
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in Albany, the State Senate has convened at the behest of Governor David Paterson. A senatorial coup weeks before has divided the legislative body along party lines, sending all pending bills into a frustrating kind of suspended animation where laws on taxes and gay marriage are frozen in time. A kind of suspended animation where the bill that would’ve allowed professional MMA back into New York State and brought the UFC to Madison Square Garden in early 2010 is now a bad case of “Crap, we were so damn close”.
And it was close. Just a month ago the MMA bill passed by a vote of 14-6 through the Assembly’s Tourism, Arts and Sports Development committee, where it had stalled last year. That hurdle was supposed to be the most daunting one, and once overcome, it should’ve been only a matter of getting a few more procedural thumbs-up in the Assembly and the Senate before the governor affixed his stamp of approval. Now, politics have turned the process on its head, with the stalemate in the Senate paralyzing everything. Time has run out on the legislative session.
“I’m hearing all kinds of things but the thoughts are that it’s unlikely to happen at this time and will have to wait until either September or, sadly, 2010,” said New York State Athletic Commission Chairwoman Melvina Lathan. “I’m not giving up,” she added – sentiments shared by some familiar with the machinations of Albany and confident that emergency sessions will have the errant legislators reconvening to actually get work done.
Ashley Pillsbury, the legislative director for the Office of Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi, a supporter of the Assembly’s version of the bill, was less optimistic. “The bill is currently pending in the Assembly Ways and Means committee, as well as in the Cultural Affairs, Tourism, Parks and Recreation committee in the Senate,” she said. “Because we have adjourned our legislative session for this year, this bill will not be taken up until January of next year. I am hopeful that this bill can be passed at that time.”
Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, a fighter with the moniker “Blackie Chan” earns a decision over a jiu-jitsu representative called “Chaos”. Plates of arroz con pollo are doled out during an intermission, and when the action resumes, a 145-pound warrior employs a pinpoint-accurate head-kick to send his now-unconscious opponent sailing through the ropes. The crowd cheers, and cheers some more when the fallen fighter returns to consciousness with a smile.
“We are the next generation of fighters, the next generation of promoters,” the man behind Martial Arts Madness says when he addresses the audience, and if the Senatorial mess in the State’s Capitol is of any indication, he’s correct. Within the next 30 days, two more unsanctioned events are scheduled to play out on Long Island, both unconnected to this one and with varying degrees of talent and success. But Albany is to thank for that. For New Yorkers hungry for homegrown MMA, the menu will consist of underground shows for quite some time.
