Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Check Out This FIGHTLAND Piece on Fighting in New York

NEW YORK


Sometimes I wrote for other outlets. Here's something about the recent Victory 5 show in Manhattan on VICE's Fightland site.

Aggressive Combat Championship 7 Poster

NEW YORK


Analyzing New York's 2014 MMA Bills

NEW YORK


The New York State Senate voted to approve a bill that would allow sanctioned pro MMA into the state yesterday. Meanwhile, the Assembly may or may not do anything with their versions of the bill. But just what exactly is getting approved (or not, as the case may be)? To answer that question, here's a breakdown of the most salient points of what the Senate approved and what's likely be voted on or outright ignored by the Assembly.

The Senate voted 44-16 that Bill S06501 should pass, and the piece of legislation is virtually a mirror image of A08775, which is the bill that has the greatest shot at success in the Assembly. Given that there are a total of six MMA bills being kicked around in the Assembly, you might be wondering what makes A08775 the most promising of the bunch. Well, the answer to that lies with who is sponsoring it: Assemblyman Joseph Morelle, who is the Majority Leader - a title that lends a lot of juice to his legislative efforts. In addition, there are 56 other Assemblymen who've signed their name to the bill, so if anything makes it to a vote in the Assembly, chances are it will be this one.

UFC 173 Primer: Renan Barao in Action

UFC


There's no UFC scheduled for this weekend, only a Bellator pay-per-view (!), but UFC 173 is set for the following Saturday, and at the top of the card, bantamweight champ Renan Barao gets a chance to further make his case that he's one of the pound-for-pound best in the world.

And he just might be. After all, do you remember what he did to challenger Eddie Wineland?