Ken Pishna writing for Yahoo! Sports reports that the sanctioning of mixed martial arts in Alabama is close to becoming a reality as a bill sponsoring the sport was recently voted through the Alabama Travel and Tourism Committee.
Just one week after Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle signed mixed martial arts regulation into law, the vice chair of the Alabama Boxing Commission, Casey Sears, told MMAWeekly.com that the Cotton State is ready to usher in its own sanctioning.
Alabama House Bill HB457 was recently voted out of the Travel and Tourism Committee. The bill, if signed into law, would give the Alabama commission, under a new name, authority over mixed martial arts in the state.
The bill, according to Sears, would make the following changes:
–Change the name from “Alabama Boxing Commission” to “Alabama Athletic Commission”
–Provide the state the authority to sanction and approve professional mixed martial arts in the state in the same fashion as professional boxing.
–Provide authority to the commission to approve any amateur sanctioning organization for mixed martial arts operating in the state.
–The bill will provide standards for promoters and safeguards for fighters.
Payout Perspective:
The importance of establishing an MMA sanctioning body in the state of Alabama cannot be understated. The lack of an MMA commission in the past led to freak show events like quadruple amputee Kyle Maynard fighting in a barn and Tim Sylvia getting knocked out in a boxing-but-not-called-boxing MMA match by former boxing champion Ray Mercer. These events could have seriously damaged MMA and its quest to be universally regulated across the United States and abroad. To this day, the Maynard fight is still something that critics point to when they argue against the sport’s legitimacy.
The sooner Alabama is sanctioned, the better.
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