MMA gets a mamby-pamby NIMBY attitude from Vancouver

As I noted a couple days ago, the UFC expects to hold its first-ever fight card in Vancouver in June of next year with Montreal’s Georges St. Pierre, the current welterweight champion, as the headliner. MMA is not currently sanctioned in Vancouver, or B.C. for that matter, but UFC president Dana White is confident it will happen in the next four months.

The promoter already has the support of Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson and the Aquilini family, which owns the 19,000-seat GM Place and the NHL franchise Canucks. And while White was in Portland, Oregon, prepping for the Couture vs. Nogueira card, UFC executive vp Lawrence Epstein, UFC regulation czar Marc Ratner, the former Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director, and a crew of lawyers were in Vancouver to meet with BC Attorney General Michael de Jong, the Vancouver Athletics Commission and other city officials to help smooth the way. UFC officials will also be taking their case before federal politicians in Ottawa.

Their case is pretty simple. The sport’s gone mainstream and it’s a license to print money for anyone involved. Roughly 15-20 percent of the company’s business comes from Canada, making the Great White North the biggest per capita consumer of MMA.

The UFC’s two Montreal events, UFC 83 and UFC 97, were both record-setting in terms of attendance, gate and economic spinoffs (estimated at close to $50 million for a single UFC weekend), and it’s easy to imagine a similar reception from Canada’s third-largest city. Add to that the possibility of the UFC holding a fan expo to coincide with the card. The UFC’s inaugural expo – held over the UFC 100 weekend in Las Vegas – drew 40,000 fans and required 150,000 square feet of convention space.

So, what city wouldn’t want to reap those kinds of benefits? We already know about the stonewalling in Ontario, despite the Rogers Communications giant being on board and the fact that underground fights are already being held on Indian reserves.

And Vancouver is similarly aligned. How else to explain a ridiculously one-sided story in Monday’s The Province newspaper with the inflammatory headline No to MMA: ‘It was the most uncivilized thing I have ever seen’.

Here the first gems from the story:

“From politicians to seniors to teachers, those opposed to the combat sport say it’s barbaric and ultra-violent, sending children the wrong message and glorifying violence at a time when Vancouver is trying to stop the growth of gangs.”

I won’t even go into the lame-brained implication the story makes by connecting MMA to gangs. I will say that the very next paragraph of the piece is a quote from one of those very critics, a random 80-year-old North Vancouver resident, who supplies the latter half of the story’s headline. I’m not sure the senior set is exactly the UFC’s demographic unless there’s a cage match involving Matlock and the old doll from Murder She Wrote.

Then, the writer looked around for someone in the martial arts community to comment and decides an aikido instructor would provide the right context and tone (namely to slam MMA). Aikido is one of the gentlest of all martial arts, with very little in terms of offensive techniques or competitive applications. It’s an art, in the truest sense. And the aikido instructor, Joel Posluns, says MMA has none of the honour emphasized in traditional martial arts and “reinforces the absolute worst part of our nature.”

I’m quite familiar with aikido and certainly it’s vastly different from any of the martial arts incorporated into MMA. But he’s a bit delusional, shortsighted, forgetful or ill-informed if he thinks that aikido or any other martial art wasn’t borne out of a need to beat up another person, whether in self defence or not. It’s quite easy to throw around glowing terms like honour when discussing the measured and rigid traditions of an art that is studied strictly within the confines of the modern dojo. Honour is not about the art but the artist, and the meeting of two warriors, whether on a 17th century Japanese battlefield or a 21st century octagon, is little different. A code exists and is adhered to and is respected.

And besides, has Posluns never watched a Steven Seagal movie? He’s responsible for popularizing aikido by using the “gentle” techniques in the most violent, limb-bending manner possible. People who train in glass dojos shouldn’t throw stones, especially if they’re stones they don’t really possess. Just a though.