(Oh, you fickle lady, you.)

In the old days it used to take something near to a seismic event to get the Associated Press to move a story on MMA.  That’s slowly changing, and this new report on the UFC’s legalization efforts in New York is a great example.  It’s all the same rhetoric from all the same interested parties that we’ve heard before, but once again Assemblyman Bob Reilly doesn’t disappoint when it comes to opening his mouth and allowing idiotic sounds to escape:

"What the people from Ultimate Fighting will tell you is that ‘We’ve changed the rules and it’s no longer this brutal, no-holds-barred sport that it was in the past,"’ Assemblyman Bob Reilly said. "That’s far from the whole story. What they don’t tell you is what is allowed. Kicking to the head. Kneeing them. Sitting on top of them and repeatedly punching them in the head and face. They don’t tell you those things."

They don’t?  Are they somehow hoping to keep it a secret?  

You have to love Reilly’s almost child-like understanding of what goes on in an MMA bout.  Sitting on someone and punching them.  Yeah, that’s a nuanced perspective if you’re an eight-year-old and you only recognize the mount position as that thing your older brother does to you when he finds that you rifled through his stash of nudie magazines.  And this is the man trying his best to keep the sport out of the state of New York.

But in case you’re wondering where Reilly’s peculiar little grudge against MMA comes from, he’d like you to know that it’s not really that big a deal to him:

(A man who never lets the facts influence how he thinks.)

New York State Assemblyman Bob Reilly is doing his best to keep mixed martial arts illegal in his home state, an effort that was successful in the past thanks to his idiotic comparisons between MMA and dog fighting.  The tide seems to be turning in the state, and legalization now seems inevitable thanks in part to the UFC’s lobbying efforts and the new pro-MMA chairwoman of the Tourism, Arts, and Sports Development Committee, Melvina Lathan.

But Reilly is still fighting it because, well, he just doesn’t like it.  And in order to try and prove that it will be bad for the state, he’s prepared to say a bunch of shit that makes no sense at all and come up with brand new flawed comparisons.  Here’s Reilly talking with MMA Weekly, explaining how allowing MMA in New York would actually take money out of the local economy:

Ultimate Fighting, that franchise is owned by interests in Las Vegas. If you have a gate in the city of Albany, the live gate would be 4 million dollars. There’s revenue that would stay here, lets us say a half a million. But three and a half million would go right out of our economy and out of our state to Vegas, and I think that’s harmful to our local economy. It doesn’t generate money on a long-time basis. It’s what I call a “false economy.” There’s many examples of this. It’s a stretch from Ultimate Fighting, of course, but our whole problem with our financial industry and whatever. Or gambling, which I think is a better analogy. I think the projections of revenue coming in, you have to look at a bigger picture, and the bigger picture is not so beneficial. And of course, the real money in sports, which isn’t addressed, is the hundreds of millions of dollars taken in by television, especially pay per view.

Got that?  MMA would take money out of the economy because not all of the money generated by it would stay in the state.  By that logic, any company now doing business within the state of New York that is not headquartered there is also sucking money out of the economy.  Take it from the guy who knows all about the “financial industry and whatever.”

After the UFC’s lobbying efforts failed to get MMA legalized in New York, Zuffa’s Marc Ratner vowed not to give up so easily. Not long afterwards, Melvina Lathan was named as the new chairwoman for the New York State Athletic Commission, and guess what? She seems friendly to the UFC’s cause, despite being a "boxing purist" according to a recent Newsday article:

"I would hope that New York would keep an open mind," Lathan said. "There’s room for two sports. I’m a boxing purist and I will always be, but I truly believe MMA is a sport all of its own. I think the more people are educated about it, the more they understand it and accept it."

The article goes on to tell the story of Lathan growing up in Philadelphia, where she would peek into a local boxing gym on her way home from school. One day a man opened the door and invited her inside to watch. Turns out the man was Sonny Liston, or so the story goes. Ratner describes Lathan as "a wonderful asset to the sport" and implies that she’ll be the boost they need to get MMA legalized when the Tourism, Arts, and Sports Development Committee revisits it in January. But not everyone is pleased with Lathan’s appointment: