Thanks to the sort of bureaucratic nightmare which is the speciality of those who run the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the UFC went through tense moments putting together its much-hyped UFC on FS 1 debut card.
But UFC president Dana White recently told the Boston Herald that the problems have been smoothed out and the Aug. 17 card at Boston’s TD Garden is a go.
We ended up getting everything straightened out, White told the Herald. “The fights will happen. The card will be great. It’s going to be good.”
At issue was a regulation which requires all participants on combat sports events to have a social security number, whether United States citizens or foreign fighters. Massachusetts is the only of the 50 states to have such a rule.
With a card laden with foreigner fighters, not the least of which was headliner Mauricio “Shogun” Rua of Brazil, the rule turned into a headache, as the company had to scramble to obtain temporary S.S. numbers.
“You know, when it gets down to the fact, do you want to change the card?” White asked the Herald. “You know, do you want to move fights around and switch fights?,” White said. “When that starts happening, it’s like ‘Yeah, maybe we can’t do the fight here.’ But, you know, we figured it out.”
At the end of the day, White just chalked it up to another of the hurdles which face fight promoters everywhere.
“There’s always something,” he said. “It literally never ends. There’s always something, something that pops up or whatever. We’re pretty used to dealing with this stuff.”