UFC promises New York two events within a year if it lifts MMA ban

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Ultimate Fighting Championship Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta and President Dana White vowed to place two events in New York within a year of the state’s possible lifting of a ban against mixed martial arts in the state.

Fertitta said he’d put one of the UFC events at Madison Square Garden and another at an upstate locale such as Buffalo, Rochester or Syracuse.

The UFC released a new study reporting that allowing MMA in New York will result in a $23-million annual boost to the state’s economy, factoring in revenue generated by out-of-state visitors and by other MMA promotions.

‘There are arenas dying in those cities, just sitting empty,’ Fertitta said. ‘We can offer them events.’

New York imposed a ban on MMA in the 1990s, and it would take state legislation to overturn the law. Fertitta and other UFC officers have made trips to the state capitol in Albany to visit legislators ‘up and down the halls’ in an effort to help educate some lawmakers Fertitta said still assume MMA is a ‘no-rules, anything-goes’ organization.

The New York state legislation session begins in February, and Fertitta said Thursday’s announcement was an effort to ‘get out ahead’ of the lawmakers’ arrival, hopeful one will draft a bill and that the state government inserts the return of MMA as part of its budget.

-- Lance Pugmire