Marc Ratner was cautiously optimistic about MMA getting legalized in New York up until a few weeks ago. Early last month, the mixed martial arts bill was amended to encompass boxing and other combat sports and increase insurance and fighter safety.
At that point, Ratner thought there was a good chance of a UFC show finally coming to Madison Square Garden later this year. But it didn’t happen. The MMA bill essentially ran out of time last week. For the eighth straight year, the legislation passed through the New York State Senate by a landslide, but was never even brought to a vote in the Assembly.
Ratner, the UFC’s vice president of regulatory affairs, used the old “Peanuts” analogy to describe what it felt like in an interview with Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour.
“We’ll make Lucy the New York Assembly and Charlie Brown MMA,” he said. “Every time that Charlie Brown went to kick the ball, Lucy pulled it away. That’s exactly what happened with us. We thought we were right there and somehow it got pulled away. That’s my best analogy.”
Many people thought with the arrest of former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver on fraud charges in January that the MMA bill had its best chance yet to pass. Silver was the man most thought was responsible for keeping the bill away from a vote. Ratner even believed this year that MMA had enough votes in the Democratic caucus to finally get it to the next level. But new speaker Carl Heastie did the exact same thing Silver did seven years straight, not bringing the legislation to a vote.
Ratner said that next year the UFC will try to get the bill into the Assembly first since the Senate is a slam dunk and has been now for almost a decade. Because the Assembly was in overtime last week, many potential yes voters had already gone home for the summer. There were also other bills — like involving rent control — that took precedence over MMA.
“MMA is not one of the biggest things to them where it is to us and my company here,” Ratner said. “I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. It didn’t happen. Very disappointed, because I could taste it this time. But never to the point where I was 100 percent sure.”
One of the things that disappoints Ratner the most is the continued legalization of amateur MMA in New York without any kind of sanctioning or regulations. The bill would have cleaned up all those dangerous, underground shows.
“It’s ludicrous, nonsensical that they would allow amateur fights to go on and not professional ones,” Ratner said.
The only thing the UFC can do is continue to lobby again next year when the legislative calendar begins again in January. Ratner is hoping for an Assembly vote in the first quarter of the year rather than waiting until the 11th hour. The UFC has sent millions in Albany with no signs of slowing down.
“To the best of my abilities, I’m quietly confident again,” Ratner said. “We’re just going to keep knocking on the door until we knock it down. Like I said, this is a fighting group and we’re not going to give up the fight.”