When New York Almost Killed The UFC

Every single year, the UFC go to Madison Square Garden and try to put on a massive show. It's a historic venue, especially in boxing, where some of the greatest fights ever have taken place, going back to the 1940s. It remained a massive part of combat sports for many years, but for the longest time, never for the UFC. MMA was banned in New York, while the sport grew around it, and the UFC's political fight to return involved casino owners, a labor union, and one of the most powerful men in the state government. And even when that man was arrested, they still couldn't get in. Nothing in this bill will stop kids from getting into fight clubs. You realize there are more serious injuries in competitive cheerleading each year than there are in mixed martial arts. It's time to legalize professional mixed martial arts in the state of New York. So how did the UFC finally get through the doors of MSG to produce what was the The biggest event of all time. To understand that, we need to go back to when New York was trying to show them the exit and the day the UFC nearly died. Make sure to check out the official UFC gear through our link in the description below. Using code .10 for 10% off all products in the EU store and rep your favorite fighters with the UFC store. To actually understand why New York became such a thorn in the UFC side, we really do need to go back to the very start, when the UFC was created over 30 years ago now, which did see a ton of initial success and then quickly turned into a Gears of War bleeding out. Let's pick things up at UFC 27, Ultimate Bad Boys. Yeah, even the names were getting ---- at that point. And this was back in the year 2000, where the UFC was basically struggling like Bambi to stand on its own two legs. UFC 27 went down in New Orleans, in a 9,000-seater arena that definitely wasn't full by this point in time. Fans had started to drop off and so had almost all the original UFC promoters and owners, including the Gracies and everyone else who had been involved in getting it off the ground in the first place. The one guy left was Bob Meyrowitz from SEG, who had agreed to get the UFC on pay-per-view back in the day working with the Gracies. He was a guy who was basically in the music industry and thought he'd give this free fighting thing a chance to try and make some money. No interest in martial arts and now 27 events later, he was the only guy left at the table still believing in the thing that somewhere along the way he'd fallen in love with. By UFC 27 though, SEG were flat broke and that was it. The UFC was basically just Now, I had gotten to this stage for a combination of factors, but most hardcore fans know that the way the UFC had been marketed, classically after Bloodsport and Thunderdome, two men enter, one man leaves, that had been cool and gripping initially. But already by 1994, a guy called Senator John McCain basically made it his mission to bring the whole thing down, and that was just after UFC 2, when he was at Senate hearings laying into the idea of cage fighting. He got the UFC banned in a few minor states, but really, New York was the Titanic iceberg in this scenario. And you know what? It wasn't even the UFC's fault, really. UFC 7 had gone down several years earlier in Buffalo, New York, and it had inspired other MMA promotions to get started and do the same, including one called Battlecade Extreme Fighting. They did a show in Brooklyn, and famously, it ended in a political firestorm. Straight up demonize mixed martial arts, so they did. Because MMA was getting banned elsewhere, the political elite in New York drafted up a legislation to ban the sport outright, to stop the event from happening, and kicked Battlecade out of the venue. Just so happened that SEG was a New York-based company, and they knew that ---- was already hitting the metaphorical fan with a decision like this. Still though, they ended up paying a lobbyist, and the bill got vetoed. Nice one. Huge win for MMA in New York. The UFC were like, okay, great, let's come to New York then. We can do a show in Buffalo, smaller towns, and then try for New York City. The big dream for any combat sports promoter, the pinnacle at MSG, wouldn't that be something? But of course, the UFC weren't the only promotion around, and with the ban being lifted, Battlecade also came back, and well, they didn't work with the politicians like the UFC did, which made them kick off all over again, and instead the sport was firmly banned. This created a pretty weird scenario. The UFC event planned was coming up, and because the bill didn't get passed in time, you might have heard what happened. They basically made it impossible. MMA fights had to take place in boxing gloves, had to use a 10 point system, no ground fighting at all was allowed, even the cage had to be 40 feet in diameter, Just all things the UFC were not going to be able to sort and change on basically a week's notice. The first event I did was supposed to be in New York. It was supposed to be, I think it was supposed to be in Albany. Was it Buffalo? Maybe Albany. But it was upstate New York somewhere. And then it got moved last minute to Dothan, Alabama. And that's where I met you. And everybody was going, what the **** is going on? Like they were told. Before the event, they can't punch with closed fists. There were so many crazy rules like that. The ban, though, was going through no matter what, regardless if the UFC would even have been able to submit to all of their rules, which, let's face it, it would have meant it wasn't even MMA at that point, just some weird hybrid boxing in a cage. What the state actually did was create a category called a combative sport, defined broadly as a professional match in which contestants strike each other, then carved out the disciplines the state was comfortable with. Boxing, wrestling, and then a list of named single-disciplined martial arts sanctioned by approved organizations were exempt. MMA fell outside of every exemption, so it was illegal by omission rather than by name. This stopped all professional MMA from happening, and while the amateur scene continued, it was going to do so completely unregulated and essentially underground, which was even more dangerous, to be honest. Unpaid shows ran across the state under the banner of sanctioning bodies that appeared on the exempt list. Sometimes with no medical testing and no commission oversight of any kind. Legislators on both sides of the argument actually later used this as a massive reason to try and pass a proper law. And Dothan, Alabama, where the UFC was forced to head and book on just one day's notice, was a far... Far cry from holding an event in New York City. And like most UFC event titles as well, it was pretty ironic. Well, maybe not ultimate bad boys, but UFC Judgment Day went down in Alabama, definitely not as iconic as New York, but it still meant that basically either way, like Tony Stark going evil, well, the UFC seemed doomed. The card went ahead and it was the first UFC event to use weight classes, split in the field into heavyweight and lightweight tournaments, and it crowned Mark Coleman as the first UFC heavyweight champion by beating Dan Seven. It also gave Vitor Belfort his UFC debut and put a young Joe Rogan on a UFC broadcast for the first time. I landed in Dothan and that was like the place where they were allowed to do the show there. And it was this little auditorium. It wasn't very big at all. The first show I ever worked at. Yeah. I got to be the post-fight interview guy. But for 19 long years afterwards, the only UFC event ever staged in New York State remained UFC 7 in Buffalo, September 1995. The New York Times covered the story and the fallout from the banning, and it only led to further bans of MMA across the country. Can someone play Mortal Kombat for me? So, by UFC 27, where our story first started with SEG and the UFC on its very last legs, 37 states had bans on MMA, multiple cable companies and pay-per-view companies simply just refused to broadcast it, and it is, for our story, truly ironic that somewhere the UFC would then be trying to get back to for many, many years to put on an event was almost the downfall of the entire promotion in the first place. This all led to a massive change in the UFC. Bob was like, okay, If we can get this thing commissioned somewhere, then just maybe, maybe people will get back on board and we won't all go down with this sinking ship. Multiple rule changes had already happened. They eliminated headbutts that Mark Coleman had found so useful. Other strikes like to the groin were now illegal and there were no more one night tournaments. But the campaign against them had been so strong that it led to Goldberg literally opening UFC 17. Pleading with fans to help stopping them getting banned everywhere. This may be the last chance for you to watch the UFC. Pick up the phone, call your local cable operator. I want to have my choice to order the UFC in my home. Jeff Blatnick, a early UFC commentator and massive proponent of the sport, had several hours before the event been introduced as the promotions commissioner in a meeting with the fighters to discuss the rules. And he also asked them to refer to the sport as mixed martial arts. He'd even go on to create an official rulebook for the UFC back in 1999, coming up with the 10-point scoring system and the rounds, and all these things would turn out to be massively important. With enough of this stuff in place, the UFC were able to get a hearing in Nevada with the Athletic Commission as they went begging for someone to legalize and regulate, but it never even took place. It was only after Dana White and the Fertitas came along and bought up the rights to the UFC for just $2 million that things started to turn around. Lorenzo Fatita had been on the Nevada Commission and so he started turning up to events to better understand the sport. Meanwhile though, over in New Jersey, a guy called Larry Hazard, a boxer, referee, and BJJ practitioner was on the commission board and he was able to convince them to let the IFL have a license to put on an MMA show in September 2000 in Atlantic City. New Jersey would then in turn be the first state across America to institute and establish the unified rules of MMA, which are used worldwide today. And although the UFC would struggle to put on events because, well, they had no money, eventually the Fatidas came along and bought it. But they also continued to have to fight for regulation for a long time. And with them obviously wanting UFC to be as big as possible, they needed to get to the most iconic venue of them all, Madison Square Garden. And what stood in the way next was something most fans didn't expect. Sheldon Silver and the Culinary Union? Now what exactly does a culinary union have to do with stopping MMA from happening in New York? Well, in Vegas, the union 226 represented gaming, hotel and food service workers. That of course included casinos. And yeah, guess who were casino owners? The Fatidas. And it turns out they had major beef with them, so much so that it affected MMA and the UFC for many years. The Fatidas had 20 casinos in Vegas, but they only hired non-union workers and basically said that they don't want to organize into one, which is something, of course, the established union had a big issue with. The culinary union wasn't exactly omnipotent, but literally just because they knew the UFC wanted to get into New York, they were going to do everything they could to to stop them, and that turned out to be Well, quite a lot, actually. Not only did they start bad-mouthing the UFC, their owners, and the sport, but any mistakes they could find they would make public. And of course, they also had powerful friends in politics, the biggest one being a guy called Sheldon Silver. And this guy was also the Speaker of the New York State Assembly for over 20 years. As with a lot of politics, though, New York was dealing with corruption, particularly in 2013, and it led to the Governor, Andrew Cuomo, doing something drastic. He wanted things to end and for the state to appear tough on corruption, so he created this thing called the Moorland Commission. And we want the people of this state to know you have a mechanism in place that is going to assure that this government is a government of integrity and a government that you can trust. Now he made a big show of this saying it was going to weed out all the state corruption and go after the dodgy politicians who'd taken up seats there and he was going to investigate the rot. In the heart of the city, like a real-life Batman saving Gotham. But the whole thing barely lasted a year before it got shut down, and it kind of made it seem like either he wasn't being true to his word, or maybe even he was involved. I don't know about a single issue that people are more critical of you. You understand that. I believe that there was a commission was created to look into corruption, and you abolished the commission. That's sort of the way people see it in the public. Just because it was closed down though doesn't mean people didn't actually start to investigate the so-called corruption and a US attorney called Preet Bharara took on the job himself and he discovered that this Sheldon Silver hero to the culinary union and the big sword they kept on their waist to hold back the UFC from New York was actually pretty damn corrupt. He was arrested and all of a sudden the culinary union lost almost all their influence. They'd been unarmed. At this point, it seemed like the way was finally open for the UFC to step in and start to work towards making a show in New York happen. But this takes us back to the start, because although slowly MMA had been getting regulated after New Jersey and Nevada, it was now growing into a massively popular sport. That whole time though, New York had stuck to its guns and kept the sport banned, and although opinions on what cage fighting and mixed martial arts actually was, would have represented, and what kind of athletes competed in it, had all massively changed, It was like New York had been kept in a time capsule where all of that stuff had to be taught to them like they were seeing this concept for the very first time, like when it had been originally banned way back in the 90s. And things weren't just going to change overnight. The UFC were going to have to go out of their way to try and change the image of MMA that many in New York had in their minds. This is also where a UFC champion became very important. The issue of bringing MMA bouts here to New York State... ...has been quite an issue over the last few years because I believe that this would be a tremendous economic benefit to our state. It's estimated about $130-some-million benefit. Chris Weidman was born in New York, and in 2013 he KO'd Anderson Silva to become the middleweight champion. He'd then go on to defend this belt three times across the next two years and at the height of his career, turned out to be pretty integral to campaigning for legislation in New York. New York is the only state where MMA bouts are not allowed currently. We need to change that. Chris Weidman, who is a champion MMA fighter. And he's a native New Yorker. It would be a dream come true. It's just crazy not to be able to compete in New York after all this time. By June 2015, after defending the belt against Vitor Belfort, he wrote a testimony to the New York State Assembly, explaining that he was born and raised in New York, pointing out it was the only state in 50 that MMA was still illegal, and that as a UFC champion, not being able to fight in his home state was truly devastating. And the whole state was missing out on a massive opportunity to celebrate what its people could achieve. One of the other major things to point out here is that amateur MMA was still taking place in New York without state regulation. People were still training and fighting and the argument was that legislation would bring more oversight to these events already happening as well as permit professional events as well. Doing the legislation, this would have some real rules that would govern. Not only MMA bouts for professionals, but for amateurs as well here in the state of New York. I'm hoping as we continue work on the new state budget, we can bring MMA bouts to New York. You've all probably seen the movie Fight Club. Well, you know, sometimes things like this are happening because it's forced underground. There are no regulations. Even after Silva had left, though, and the UFC's senior vice president of government and regulatory affairs, Mark Ratner, had been so sure they were about to get the bill over the line, It still didn't pass. How? Mark would go on to blame all of this on the unions again, stating directly that there were contemporaries who still looked at it as not a sport, and so they had been forced to literally travel there to educate and show film. At the end of Ratner's career, he called this whole thing the most difficult hurdle he had ever dealt with in legitimizing MMA. After all this campaigning and the removal of Silver, the UFC then went ahead and scheduled an event for New York at MSG for April 2016. But even then, it was pending a federal injunction. The UFC called the ban unconstitutional, and that events featuring every combat sport except MMA seemed to be allowed in New York, Though this is not explicitly stated in the law, the statute and the state's pattern of enforcing it violates the Constitution's prohibition on unconstitutionally vague laws. It's a bit of a mouthful. They also said that the appeals that had been turned down before violated their First Amendment rights of athletes and fans throughout the state. In January of 2016, though, their request was again denied. They had the venue booked, fighters and champions ready, but still couldn't get through the door. And honestly, it seemed like it might finally be shut forever. But UFC executive Lawrence Epstein wasn't going to give up just yet. The UFC responded publicly, saying, you know what? We will continue pursuing all legal options. The very next day, an upstate tour in support of legalizing MMA was organized, where Lawrence Epstein and Weidman rallied for support for their now eight-year fight for New York City. Soon I found out, you know, They'd end up visiting multiple cities across New York in a statewide pitch. The governor had already backed it as part of his budget and the Senate even passed it again. But it still all depended on whether the state assembly would finally let the bill actually reach a vote. And on March 15th, it finally did. All the work to persuade key members of the board had started to pay off, and this time the leadership was prepared to bring it to a vote. And it's about time we got it to the floor so we can actually vote on this bill. The vote took place on March 22nd, and after years of campaigning, it came down to MMA fans listening to what politicians thought about cage-fighting. First, let me, I have to say this. I've been watching mixed martial arts for a long time. I've yet to see anyone thrown into a cage. Adults enter the cage. To participate in something they've trained for years and years. It does teach self-defense. It teaches discipline. It is time to take the vote. It's time to pass this. It's time to legalize professional mixed martial arts in the state of New York. But there were plenty of people arguing against legislation and using things like the new studies in head trauma and CTE, especially in the NFL, as ammunition. There is a direct link between head injuries. And cognitive disabilities. The answer was yes. Encourage young people to view this as a career path to go forward and take the chance on long-term disability. You realize there are more serious injuries in competitive cheerleading each year than there are in mixed martial arts. But just because the sport had been accepted everywhere else, it didn't mean it was just going to pass. New York had been left in the dark ages, and so the opinion of many of the politicians, as uneducated as they were, still resonated with much of the assembly. Nothing in this bill will stop kids from getting into fight clubs. What's to say that some kid isn't going to say, you know what, I'm going to start practicing in the schoolyard. We should We should be making certain that kids do not get the misimpression That New York State thinks this is a good idea. It came down to the final vote, with 26 of the members voting against legislation and 114 voting to approve. After all those years of trying to get the vote to actually happen, the answer had been overwhelming. Mark Ratner had said it literally brought a tear to his eye. I think hearing the vote, which I think was 114 to 26, was that was the culmination of seven or eight years, 29 or 30 trips to Albany. The following month, the UFC went to Madison Square Garden to make it official. And congratulations on passing the bill. It was a long time coming, and this was worth the wait. So let's give a round of applause to all the legislators who were here. To Ronda and Lorenzo and Chris, we thank you for your patience. They worked very, very hard to get this bill passed. The bill was signed that day on the stage with the UFC and its stars around the governor, and MMA was now officially legal in New York. And the UFC did not waste another moment, immediately announcing an event, UFC 205, taking place at MSG on November 12th with the biggest fight possible. Conor McGregor challenging for a second title at lightweight against Eddie Alvarez. Before we get started here, I want to thank the MSG, the New York State Athletic Commission, for helping us make UFC in NYC at the MSG possible. This is the biggest card we've ever done. I mean, if you look at the main card, three title fights are the best prelims we've ever done, the best all-around fight card ever in UFC history. After years and And years literally spent trying to get into the building, the UFC and the fans couldn't have been more excited for them to break into arguably the most historic venue in combat sports history. The event at Madison Square Garden had been 19 years in the making. It had taken numerous efforts to get the New York Assembly to vote in the first place. With the UFC trying to take over the world of combat sports, they absolutely wanted to get into the most historic venue, MSG, where truly legendary events had taken place, and that's exactly what they wanted to do at 205. Create something legendary, stacking the card from top to bottom with talent and big fights, ready to celebrate their first show there in over 200 events. By the end of the night, Conor McGregor had become the first fighter to hold two UFC titles simultaneously. In an equally iconic moment, posing with a belt over each shoulder, the promotion reported a $17.7 million gate, which ended up being both a record for the UFC and for Madison Square Garden. Proving that the UFC had indeed become the biggest combat sport to hold an event at the iconic venue. New York had spent nearly two decades keeping professional MMA out and its return was one of the biggest nights the sport and the venue itself had ever produced. But behind that image of McGregor with the two belts was a much longer story. Fighters traveling to Albany, regulators explaining the sport, legislators building support and years of disappointment every time the bill went nowhere. The corrupt Silver's departure helped open the door, but it still took people pushing to get through it. And honestly, someone like Chris Weidman deserves a lot of credit, along with Mark Ratner and everyone else involved. Back in 1997, the UFC had scrambled out of New York to save an event in Alabama. 19 years later, the Octagon stood inside Madison Square Garden. The sport had changed enormously in between, and so had its perceptions as a blood sport and human human cockfighting, Into one of the most globally loved and accepted sports in the world. And finally, New York had changed with it. Now every year, the UFC returns in an effort to always deliver the biggest card possible. And now on its 10th year anniversary, it feels like MSG and the end of year show is always something to look forward to. But the history of how much effort it took to get there should never be forgotten. Alright, I hope you enjoyed this one guys. Shout out to our social guy, Ovin, for getting this idea off the ground in the first place. Also, big shout out to Luke Taylor for the edit. You can catch him, me and Tom on the Members Only podcast every single week. All we need to do now is sit back and enjoy the show at MSG.