MMA Still Banned in New York: Bill Once Again Fails to Reach Vote in Assembly

Update 7:52 PM EST
The dream is officially dead. The repeal failed to reach the Assembly floor before the final session. Hope will begin anew when the New York state Congress reconvenes in 2016.

It’s official: No MMA in New York this year. h/t @Gorml…

Update 7:52 PM EST

The dream is officially dead. The repeal failed to reach the Assembly floor before the final session. Hope will begin anew when the New York state Congress reconvenes in 2016.

Update 8:16 PM EST

Politics on the Hudson (h/t MMAJunkie.com) shed some light on what happened, and what needs to change for the bill to pass:

The Assembly has 150 seats, so if Morelle would get support from Republicans, the bill would easily pass. It’s a move that MMA supporters in recent days have encouraged the Assembly to take.

But Morelle said that’s not the way the Assembly Democrats work: They need to be able to get 76 votes in their own conference for a bill to come to the floor.

“I’m not going to have a different standard for bills sponsored by Joe Morelle than I would have for any other member – which is I don’t rely on minority votes to pass bills,” he said. “I’ll work as long as I have to work to get them, but that’s the rule.”

–End of Update–

The UFC finds itself flustered as a bill to legalize professional mixed martial arts in New York is once again poised to fizzle in the state’s Assembly. While the motion passed in the state’s Senate weeks ago, it has not yet been presented for a vote in the Assembly with just minutes left in its final legislative session of 2015:

While the UFC and its political opposition have battled back and forth in court for years, there has been a huge uptick in legal wrangling in recent months due to a District Court ruling on a 2011 lawsuit filed by the UFC and other industry veterans. 

Senators in Albany have voted in favor of lifting the ban on MMA on seven occasions over the last six years, but the motions have consistently been unable to reach the Assembly floor for a vote. Some speculated that the recent arrest of now-former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver would remove the final obstacle to lifting the ban, but the latest iteration of the bill still couldn’t do the trick for MMA promoters and fans.

For those not familiar with the history, MMA was banned in the Empire State ahead of UFC 12 following a wave of backlash from local media. The card would eventually be moved to Dothan, Ala., but the damage was done. The New York ban started a chain reaction by which the sport would be almost completely removed from television (only certain satellite providers would carry it), and would be banned in numerous states. 

As time went on, the UFC would make itself more palatable for athletic commissions and cable providers by adopting the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts. While MMA would return to television and shows would eventually be held across the country, New York stood by its decades-old decision:

The UFC began actively campaigning to have the ban lifted in 2011, but was foiled at every opportunity.

This was allegedly due, in part, to an ongoing dispute between the UFC and Culinary Local 226, a union of restaurant and hotel workers. The labor organization has long fought with UFC owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta over their nonunion Station Casinos, and have allegedly pressured New York lawmakers to oppose legalizing MMA as a means of pressuring the Fertitta brothers.

This is most certainly a tough blow for the UFC, which was confident enough that the ban would be lifted that it booked a date with Madison Square Garden. Now, the promotion finds itself in an all-too-familiar holding pattern, and must create a new plan of attack for entering the state. 

Though bills to legalize MMA in New York have been a regular occurrence, the Assembly’s unwillingness to accept the sport, even without Silver, makes it unclear when or if major promotions will ever have the opportunity to break into the state.

With the Assembly scheduled to adjourn through the end of 2015, MMA will remain in a legal limbo until 2016.

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