While Ontario is one of the few places in North America where the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) still remains illegal, it is also quite possibly home to one of the biggest MMA fanbase per capita on the continent.
It is for this reason that the president of the world’s largest MMA organization, the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC), Dana White has been extremely active in his attempts to lobby the Ontario government to legalize the sport in the province in order to hold an event in Toronto.
The UFC’s arguments are pretty simple. The amount of revenue the UFC would generate would provide a boom to the local economy.
The company has held three hugely successful events in Montreal, where MMA is legal. Earlier this month, UFC 113 attracted 17,647 fans to the Bell Centre, generating $3.27 Million in revenue, while the previous two events held there attracted more than 20,000 fans and generated $4.9 Million and $5.1 Million respectively.
Tickets for the UFC’s first ever event in Vancouver, to be held next month, sold out in a record 30 minutes. However, despite all this, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has refused to budge, saying “It’s just not a priority for our families.”
The Toronto Star even opposed the legalization of MMA in Ontario in a May 28 editorial, saying:
The sport does have a growing fan base among young males and stricter rules. (Kicks to the groin are now prohibited.) But it is still a sport where two men enter an eight-sided cage to punch, kick, choke and wrestle each other into submission or unconsciousness by using any and every combat technique at hand.
The Ontario government need not feel pressured into lifting the ban on mixed martial arts based on questionable assertions of broad economic benefits and comparisons to cheerleading.
Without even going into the fact that boxing, which has been legal in Ontario for generations, is actually a more dangerous sport than MMA, I will address these arguments on a simpler basis.
If you want to see an argument for why MMA is actually safer than boxing, then you can watch this video:
But let’s put this argument aside for a second here, let’s just say hypothetically that I believe as the Toronto Star ascertains (which I don’t), that MMA should not be legalized in Ontario because it is a brutal “sport where two men enter an eight-sided cage to punch, kick, choke and wrestle each other into submission or unconsciousness by using any and every combat technique at hand.”
Even if this were to be the case, the fact of the matter is quite simple, MMA and specifically the UFC is a global multimillion dollar brand that is here to stay. If Ontario decides that MMA should not be legalized, the UFC will simply take their business somewhere else, including other places in Canada such as Montreal and Vancouver, pumping millions of dollars into their local economies in a time of economic downturn.
Whether the powers that be in the Ontario government like the idea of MMA or not, these fights are going to go ahead, regardless of whether they happen here or not. If this is the case, surely Ontario should reap the economic benefits as well.
Agreed. I’m writing a story about muay thai for the Star soon; was thinking of taking that as the angle, but the media has already devoured it to death.
(Also: it’s not like we can’t watch it on television…)
It’s true that this angle has been covered quite a bit, but seeing as the main opposition is leveled by people who have no idea about the sport and just take it at face value, I feel it is an important argument.
Another angle that isn’t often talked about is the idea of MMA vs professional wrestling. Yes professional wrestling is “fake” but some of the stuff they do in the ring takes a horrible toll on their bodies. In fact, the long term injuries suffered by professional wrestlers are far worse than those generally suffered by MMA fighters.
There is also a culture of steroids and severe drug addiction in professional wrestling circles. Just look at the number of washed up professional wrestlers who die every year largely from problems caused by their professional wrestling careers. Usually from health problems that arise from drug addictions due to the many injuries that they have suffered in the ring.
All MMA fighters are subject to drug testing before they can step into the ring, but since professional wrestling is basically a highly physical choreographed dance, pro wrestlers do not have to pee in the bucket. In fact, only recently have organizations like the WWE implemented a drug testing program, and they have only done that after facing immense pressure because of the sheer number of wrestlers who have been killed or whose lives have been destroyed because of professional wrestling.
Even then, the drug testing is internal and its results are not publicized so there’s no way to tell whether or not certain wrestlers’ failed drug tests are overlooked.
Anyway the fact of the matter is that pro-wrestling has been allowed in Ontario forever and it is my opinion that it is far more devastating to its participants than MMA.