With his swollen eye and bleeding face, Georges St-Pierre, the longest-reigning Ultimate Fighting Champion in history, looked defeated after five grueling rounds of combat.
But to the shock of spectators and opponent Johny Hendricks, the judges granted St-Pierre the victory.
Adding to the confusion, St-Pierre muttered some vague comments about hanging up his gloves. The crowd went wilder, booing and cheering and rattling in their seats in an uneasy catharsis.
It was a crazy, thrilling fight night in Las Vegas — and it should have taken place 2,500 miles away in New York City.
The UFC originally planned to hold Saturday’s 20th-anniversary event at Madison Square Garden.
But because of a Nevada union’s proxy war with two UFC owners, New York remains the only state where professional mixed martial arts is illegal.
Station Casinos, which caters to Nevada’s local gamblers, belongs to Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, who also own the UFC.
The Las Vegas Culinary Union wants to organize Station Casinos’ workers but almost certainly lacks enough of their support to win a secret-ballot vote. So instead, the union is seeking a card-check vote, in which each worker’s yay or nay would be public — leaving those who’d prefer to remain non-union vulnerable to intimidation. (Those concerns are plausible, especially given the Culinary Union’s vicious harassment of tourists at the Cosmopolitan Hotel during a demonstration last month.)
The Fertittas consequently oppose card check at Station Casinos, though they welcome an open-ballot vote. Enraged, the union has retaliated against the Fertittas by targeting the UFC in New York. Sheldon Silver, speaker of the New York Assembly since 1994, is a union-allied Democrat. He ensures any bill to legalize the sport never makes it to a vote, regardless of strong bipartisan support. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, the UFC “has more or less been told the price of getting into New York is to bow to the culinary union” in Nevada.
For the UFC’s fighters from New York, the union’s proxy war is especially bitter. Chris Weidman, the middleweight champion, is from Baldwin, and his coaching team is entirely New York-based.
“I have a lot of pride that I’m from New York, and it’s really frustrating that because of some dirty politics, [pro-MMA] is not allowed here,” Weidman says. “It’s criminal. They’re holding me back from providing for my family in my home state. They’re holding a lot of people back from a lot of different jobs in New York.”
Until New York legalizes professional MMA, local fans miss out, and so does the state economy. Already, about 700,000 Big Apple residents watch fights on pay-per-view, and when UFC holds an event in Newark, more than half the attendees are New Yorkers.
Statewide, legalization could generate at least $40 million a year in economic activity, says Lawrence Epstein, the UFC’s executive vice president. New York’s organized workers would also benefit, because the UFC uses union labor for all of its fights in the US and Canada.
The Culinary Union is reluctant to admit that its crusade against the UFC is rooted in its agenda at Station Casinos. Instead, it has claimed that it’s because some fighters have made offensive comments. Suspiciously, though, the Culinary Union doesn’t make a similar stink about the misconduct of athletes in other sports.
Another oft-leveled complaint: The UFC is too violent. But boxing and football, at least as dangerous, are already legal in New York.
Earlier this month, a grisly 10-round fight at Madison Square Garden left Russian heavyweight boxer Magomed Abdusalamov in a life-threatening coma. In contrast, throughout the UFC’s two decades, the most serious injury on record is a broken arm.
By legalizing MMA, New York could actually increase safety. Amateur MMA fights, which are allowed in New York, don’t abide by the safety precautions the UFC requires before, during and after matches. Amateur MMA doesn’t even ask fighters be tested for HIV or Hepatitis, exposing competitors to risks if someone bleeds on the mat.
There’s strong demand for UFC in New York. But it remains unmet because a Nevada union is circumventing the democratic process to serve its own political ends. The sport deserves a vote, and fans should demand a fair fight in the New York statehouse.
Jillian Kay Melchior writes for National Review as a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center. Adapted with permission. For the full version, go to National Review Online.