Association of Boxing Commissioners to start MMA committee
The Association of Boxing Commissioners has elected to create a committee to oversee the sport of Mixed Martial Arts.
Nick Lembo, the legal counsel for the New Jersey Athletic Control Board, has been chosen to chair the committee.
Other member on the committee will include Jim Erickson (North Dakota SAC), Armando Garcia (CSAC), Keith Kizer (NSAC), Dale Kliparchuk (River Cree AC), Josef Mason (Colorado AC), and Michael Mazzulli (Mohegan Athletic Unit).
The committee will be reviewing rules and regulations regarding professional and amateur MMA. The ABC’s next meeting will be in July 2009 in New Orleans.
It’s interesting that so far John McCarthy’s name hasn’t been attached to the committee. McCarthy was the one who proposed some of the new changes that were implement during the ABC’s meeting in July.
This committee has been a long time coming. Imagine that… a group of MMA people making decisions about the direction of the sport as opposed to a bunch of boxing people making decisions on MMA’s behalf. How novel.
Sam Caplan is the President of Combat Sports Media, LLC, the parent company of FiveOuncesOfPain.com. CSM is a B-2-B outsource solution in the MMA industry and provides PR, web management, and other consulting services to MMA companies. Clients of CSM include the Combat Sports Championships and Showtime.
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edub
crane_style
justjohn
mu_shin
Any word on how this group will affect sanctioning in the States (or provinces)?
Regardless of any group that comes together and declares anything about the future of MMA ,if they don’t have the power to influence sanctioning or de-sanctioning , do they really matter?
By the way,
After Big Tim beats Fedor,will they give Big Nog the WAMMA belt?
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Garcia and Kizer have done some questionable things – hopefully Lembo will keep them on a leash.
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Wasn’t Armando Garcia advocating for changing the weight classes awhile back? I vaguely remember him saying something about having California having different weight classes closer to what boxing had…
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How is this possible? How can a boxing association over see MMA when they are 2 different sports?
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I certainly think this is a step in the right direction. Sam, do you think the forming of this board is in response to their previous rulings, which these commissioners basically turned down?
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This is the first step toward MMA’s own governing body.
If anything boxing should fall UNDER MMA… since boxing is a 1 dimensional sport
I hope they dont make 100 weight classes. I think there should be 1 class every 15 pounds… which is just about how it is now in the UFC
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Lembo should oversee Kizer? Really? New Jersey is the state that always produces behind-the-scenes bedlam, not Nevada.
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