MMA has been prohibited in New York for quite a while. Anyway, the UFC's light heavyweight champion, Jon Jones is from New York, and needless to say, the UFC would like to have one of his championship matches in NYC at madison square garden. The UFC has, of course, been wanting to have matches there before as well. New Yorkers would love that as well. Anyway, it turns out, the culinary unions have been preventing mma in New York. Its very confusing as to why the culinary union would be preventing mma, even to mma fans. It has to do with a co-owner of the UFC, a Fertitta, who owns alot of resturants in other places and doesn't use a union for his workers. Here is Dana White talking about the Culinary Unions keeping mma out of New York: http://mmaweekly.com/dana-white-takes-on-culinary-union-ufc-137-video And here is the new story, where the UFC is deciding to fight back and sue the New York state officials for prohibiting mma: http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2011/11/16/ufc-sues-new-york-state-officials-in-latest-mma-legalization-attempt/ Of course, the news article calls it "legalizing", but it is actually just ending the mma prohibition.
http://www.wktv.com/news/local/Co-founder-of-UFC-defends-lawsuit-against-NYS-134079093.html
Update, Lorenzo Fertitta brings up a good point saying
:"I think that the only question here is - why would we not allow the issue to come up for a vote? That's the bottom line," Senator Griffo said. "We've had a lot of controversial issues and we've allowed them to come up for a vote."
Very good point.
Here's what I see in the future:
UFC 1
NY 0