Advocates hope to persuade body to continue to permit blood sport
Suzanne Fournier, The Province
Friday, September 14, 2007
Young fighter Shawn Albrecht says its high time Vancouver city council sanctioned ultimate fighting, the no-holds-barred fights dubbed human cockfighting.
“I definitely think Vancouver should allow ultimate fighting to keep it safe and to satisfy all our fans,” said Albrecht, 22.
He said his parents attend his fights but his mom Michelle “covers her eyes quite a lot.”
“I’ve been punched in the head, I’ve had concussions and a broken nose and hand. The odd person gets his jaw broken but it’s less violent than hockey.”
City council’s services and budget committee on Thursday will consider whether to ban or boost the wildly popular sport.
Fight promoter Gerry Gionco, owner of D and G Boxing, Fitness and Mixed Martial Arts, said he plans to attend the meeting to persuade the city to continue permitting ultimate fighting.
“If Vancouver wants to be a world-class city it has to allow ultimate fighting,” he said. “People are either going to watch it [on TV] in bars or they are going to watch it in a venue regulated by the city.”
Although there have already been about eight ultimate fighting bouts in Vancouver, city risk-management director Patricia Doge said council should consider the risks and costs associated with regulating the sport and allowing it to continue.
If council does sanction ultimate fighting, staff recommend that promoters kick in an extra 50 cents per seat to cover the city’s growing cost of regulating “violent combat sports of growing popularity.”
The staff report looks at several options, including one to “cease sanctioning” ultimate fighting and to ask the B.C. government to regulate and supervise “professional boxing, kick-boxing, wrestling, ultimate fighting and mixed martial arts.” (there’s a difference? LOLWTF)
If the fights are sanctioned, the report recommends two doctors and an ambulance on-site, a neurologist on call at the nearest hospital and medical tests and licences for fighters.
“It’s all about risk management and trying to anticipate what could happen – any time you have people hitting each other someone is going to get hurt, and the lawyers are going to get involved,” said Ray Nosella, a former school principal who has served for 30 years on the Vancouver Athletic Commission, which regulates ultimate fighting in Vancouver for the city. “I couldn’t say it’s worse than boxing in terms of danger – even in hockey a guy will get his head smashed in.”
Nosella said the commission is not taking a position on whether ultimate fighting should be allowed in Vancouver, but said, “the people we’ve worked with have been very professional and we’ve had no problems with them.”
Don Whitefield, coach and owner of the West Coast Brazilian Jujitsu and Submission Fighting team, said ultimate fighting has become “a real sport, very organized and with strict rules. They call it the fastest-growing sport in North America. Every bar that’s showing ultimate fighting packs them in. In the beginning, it was a blood sport and a macho-fest, but now it’s more skill-based and is a very safe sport.”
Athletes are allowed to use any form of wrestling, martial arts or choke holds to subdue a foe, but Whitefield said “it’s not like boxing, where a man can be knocked out and get back up again and again.”
Whitefield noted that fully a quarter of the fans are women: “My girlfriend loves this stuff.”
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=21f7e518-a9ab-4a3b-9885-79bd885e060c&k=50962
Saw this on the front page of todays paper.
WHOA ultimate fighting SOUNDS AWESOME