...it sounds like a bunch of money for the city...just for ONE event!!! $11.5M just for a coupla hours of almost-naked men alternately beating the shit out of each other and laying wrapped up in each other's arms? Bit like the cast of The Sopranos saying goodbye to each other in the sauna, no? I mean, what the fuck - why was this ever turned down? Let 'em rub butter on each other while whispering "How Much for That Doggie in the Window" into each other's cauliflower ears and then pretend to "fight" all they want, and let's get the damn money!
And don't say the sport is "inhumane" - hey, I'm about to have to sit through 6 months of the fucking Knicks; I don't wanna hear about "inhumane."
In the Daily News, the head of the "sport" is now asking for another chance to throw some money around:
At this point, it's very odd that New York would allow and even celebrate a sport like football, in which people have experienced serious and lasting physical injuries, and cling to the fiction that MMA is legalized assault.How successful would the sport be here? We got a taste a few weeks ago. A fight at the Rogers Centre in Toronto brought in ticket sales at the gate of more than $12 million - the largest for any event ever held at the arena. The sellout crowd of more than 55,000 - bigger than when an NFL game was held there - poured in to the city early and stayed late, purchasing arena concessions, staying in hotel rooms, dining at restaurants and taking taxis.I am positive that an event in New York would have the same kind of success. While Madison Square Garden is obviously a pinnacle for any sport, we have a large fan base in cities like Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and Albany, all of which could use the economic lift.We commissioned an economic impact study to demonstrate how much revenue one of our events would generate for the State of New York. The study, by HR & A, found that sanctioning MMA in New York City would generate more than $23 million in net new economic activity. In Buffalo, an event would generate $5.2 million in economic activity.
You could sit around for a long time before you could even dream up a sport more violent than football, and yet we fervishly cheer it on. Meanwhile, from what I can tell, ultimate fighting is just a coupla guys rolling around in their drawers hugging. It's not violent, it's boring as shit. And if they wanna give us their money, I think we're fools (and hypocrites) not to take it.
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