Way to go Tennessee! Last week, the TN state legislature passed laws that call for the official sanctioning of mixed martial arts events in the state of Tennessee, opening the door for the Ultimate Fighting Championship and other major organizations to host events in Memphis, Nashville and other cities. There’s no question this campaign to saction MMA – which was of course heavily supported/led by the UFC – is ultimately about profit for their organization, but I still have to give them props for lobbying lawmakers and making the general public aware of the benefits and positive aspects of MMA despite some recent heavily biased stories by high-profile national mainstream media. (For the record, I rarely disagree with Bill O’Reilly, but he’s way off base on this one.)
UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, who until this past Saturday was the UFC’s light-heavyweight champion, and Marc Ratner, the UFC’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, were especially prominent in the process. Both met with lawmakers to describe the benefits of MMA, and Ratner even wrote guest columns for local media.
“Stateside, Tennessee is a hotbed for MMA,” Ratner recently wrote in The Tennessean. “‘Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson, our light-heavyweight champion and one of the sport’s true superstars, is a proud native of Memphis, and once the new Tennessee Athletic Commission is formed and has all the rules in place, we will be looking at Tennessee as a state to host a fight. We believe that with their beautiful arenas and diehard fan base, Memphis or Nashville would be great hosts for a UFC event.”
The next thing that is supposed to happen in the process is that Tennessee will create a state athletic commission to regulate the sport, after which I’m sure events will begin to pop up in our area, much to my delight. The campaign to sanction MMA in Tennessee began this past October. State Rep. Curry Todd (R-Collierville/Germantown) was the key legislator in the process, and he received help from Sen. Doug Jackson (D-Dickson). Events will most likely be held in Memphis venues The FedEx Forum and the Pyramid Arena, and in Nashville at the Sommet Center and possibly Memorial Gymnasium.
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