Apparently the New Jersey State Athletic Commission has taken issue with Dana White’s statements during the latest 60 Minute piece concerning his role in the development of a rule-set in MMA competitions that have allowed this sport to gain recognition and legitimacy in the various state athletic commissions who now sanction the sport.
Also, apparently Dana White used to teach aerobics, is a failed boxing promoter, and an unknown amature boxer.
This is pulled from the ADCC website for your reading pleasure (http://news.adcombat.com/article.html?id=12289)
[U]Nick Lembo Responds to 60 Minutes Mixed Martial Arts Segment[/U]
Submitted by: E.Goldman / Sr. Editor
Posted On 12/12/2006
To: 60 Minutes
CBS News
My name is Nick Lembo, I am the Counsel to the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board.
I found your program interesting and appreciated your coverage of a great sport, known as mixed martial arts. Your segments including legends such as Renzo Gracie, Pat Miletich and Matt Hughes were fantastic.
However, I would like to address some issues surrounding Mr. Dana White and his limited role in creating rules currently in use in the sport.
While Mr. White was in fact an aerobics instructor, and possibly an obscure amateur boxer, Mr. White did not set up the current rules in place for use in the sport.
Mr. White did not set up rules and regulations for today’s sport known as mixed martial arts. Simply put, the State of New Jersey did. All Mr. White did was follow rules that were already set in place.
Mr. Larry Hazzard was the first major state athletic Commissioner to sanction modern day mixed martial arts. He should be given due credit.
It should be noted that even before New Jersey sanctioned the sport, the California State Athletic Commission had prepared detailed rules to regulate mixed martial arts but they were not implemented solely due to governmental issues surrounding the budgeting process. These rules were based on rules developed in Quebec, Canada.
That being said, I think the current UFC has done great things for the mixed martial arts fan and the sport of mixed martial arts in the United States.
Please be advised that the previous owner of the UFC , Bob Meyrowitz, held UFC 28 in Atlantic City, NJ on November 17, 2000. This event was fully sanctioned by New Jersey while the UFC was an entity and a name owned by SEG. This event was held under strict oversight and was not ‘no holds barred’.
The UFC, under Mr. Meyrowitz, had already accepted, by virtue of staging that event in Atlantic City in November 2000, every below listed rule before Zuffa bought it. Accordingly, knees to the head of a downed opponent , certain elbow strikes, head butts, groin strikes and 20 other actions were already denoted as fouls that could result in disqualification. Additionally, weight classes, stringent medical requirements and strict regulatory oversight were in place at that time.
In fact, an entity unrelated to the UFC, SEG or Zuffa held a sanctioned event, under similar rules, in Atlantic City, prior to UFC 28, on September 30, 2000. This organization was known as the the IFC.
Many other rules and regulations were in place in the UFC itself even before New Jersey or California’s involvement, including weight classes (added in 1997), multiple judges scoring a fight if it goes the distance (1995), doctors at ringside (1993), medical exams of fighters (1993), time limits (1995), gloves (1995), multiple timed rounds (1999), the banning of groin strikes (1994), and the ability of the referee to stop the fight (1994).
The notion that the previous owners of the UFC ran from regulation is factually incorrect. In fact, the previous owners tried to get sanctioned in as many states as possible, and they did so in New Jersey, Louisiana, Iowa, and Mississippi. Also, the previous owners of the UFC formally sought sanctioning in the state of Nevada not long before selling the company, and they were unsuccessful in their efforts to get sanctioned in Nevada.
Mr. Ivan Trembow recently published the following, {According to the Wrestling Observer and with edits made in brackets to fill in context or correct grammar, and with a timeline clarification courtesy of Whaledog.com: ‘Meyrowitz [former UFC president Bob Meyrowitz] would go to InDemand [the PPV company] and ask what he needed to do to get back on InDemand, and they said the UFC needed to get sanctioned [by a major sanctioning body]. He got sanctioned in New Jersey, and was basically told that he needed to get it sanctioned in Nevada, as that was the most influential athletic commission in the country. [Meyrowitz] set up a meeting in Las Vegas, and at the time, sanctioning was going to happen based on what inside sources were telling both Meyrowitz and InDemand. Suddenly, the night before the approval that was going to be the step to put the UFC back on the map, Meyrowitz was told that he was going to be voted down [the next day, when his request was scheduled to be voted on by the members of the Nevada State Athletic Commission]. He didn’t have the votes. He was also told that if he followed through the next day, and was voted down, he would never have an opportunity to be sanctioned. So, he pulled out, they created some cover reason as to why he was pulling his attempt at sanctioning, and basically he was screwed. Lorenzo Fertitta [the current co-owner of the UFC] was an influential member of the Nevada commission at the time. [Approximately one year later], Fertitta purchased the UFC [for $2 million], then got sanctioning in Nevada, and then got on PPV.’}
To say that the previous owners of the UFC ran from regulation is no less of a falsehood than saying that the sport was no-holds-barred before Mr. White gave up aerobics and became involved with the UFC.
Mixed martial arts websites and publications such as like Full Contact Fighter, ADCC News, Eddie Goldman’s NHB News, Whaledog.com, MMAWeekly.com, WrestlingObserver.com, Ivansblog.com, and FightOpinion.com have done extensive articles covering Mr. White’s factually incorrect statements which have come to be kown as the ‘Zuffa Myth’.
In Clyde Gentry’s 2001 book on MMA, Mr. Fertitta, the owner of the UFC was quoted as stating that ‘Without Larry Hazzard and the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board, this sport would still be dying a slow death.’
Please find the following language in our administrative proposal, written in 2001, regarding martial arts. 'In past years, the State Athletic Control Board (SACB) had been hesitant to sanction mixed martial arts events due to the lack of formal rules in the sport which created health and safety concerns. For example, the sport generally did not divide contestants into weight classes, had contestants participate in several matches on the same evening and did not provide time limits on either round or bout length. However, in the last year or so, promoters of mixed martial arts events began to develop formal rules and regulations which included procedures to minimize the risk of injury to the contestant. After becoming aware that detailed regulations were now in place for most mixed martial arts events, the SACB then began a course of communications with the California State Athletic Commission with regard to the subject of regulating mixed martial arts events. California has established rules and regulations for the conduct of the sport in their state. As of September 2000, the SACB began to allow mixed martial arts promoters to conduct events in New Jersey upon submission and review of their established rules and regulations. In addition, the promoters had to agree to incorporate the SACB’s medical testing and safety requirements. The intent was to allow the SACB to observe actual events and gather information needed to determine what would be necessary to establish a comprehensive set of rules to effectively regulate the sport. On April 3, 2001, the SACB held a meeting in Trenton to discuss the regulation of mixed martial arts events. This meeting was set up by SACB Commissioner Larry Hazzard, Sr. in an attempt to unify the myriad of rules and regulations which have been utilized by the different mixed martial arts organizations. At this meeting, the proposed uniform rules were agreed upon by the SACB, several other regulatory bodies, numerous promoters of mixed martial arts events and other interested parties in attendance. The meeting was quite comprehensive and lasted over three hours. At the conclusion of the meeting, all parties in attendance were able to agree upon a uniform set of rules to govern the sport of mixed martial arts. In recent months, other states, including Nevada, have begun to sanction mixed martial arts events based upon the SACB’s regulatory framework which arose at the conclusion of the April meeting. The SACB anticipates that this proposal will result in uniform rules for mixed martial arts events held throughout the United States. In a similar sense, in March of 1998, the SACB proposed uniform rules for the conduct of championship professional boxing matches. Since the proposal, these rules for championship rules have become the norm throughout the country.