Keep Congress Out of Mixed Martial Arts

In the past day or so of emailing with boxing bloggers and journalists, I am yet to find one that believes the Muhammed Ali Act was any kind of success.  Instead, like almost all attempts at "government reform," it was a ruse disguised as reform rather than anything meaningful.  A discussion of why it failed could go on for days, but the single most important reason is that it was designed by people that knew nothing about the boxing business, and influenced by people that had an interest in maintaining the status quo.

If the issue of MMA regulation is brought to Congress, the result will not be good.  Whatever nonsense reform comes out will likely be heavily influenced by the UFC, and they might be able to get Congress to put in provisions that make it even harder to compete with them, rather than the other way around.  The art of lobbying is the art of tricking legislators into making things harder for your competition in the name of something that sounds wonderful.  I can just see it now, the "Fair Fighter Compensation Act of 2010" would probably result in killing a bunch of small companies by requiring certain things that only the UFC could afford, and not making any exceptions.  Do any of us want these kind of unintended consequences?  People should be very careful of what they wish for.  There's no reason to believe Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner are going to come save the day for fighters.

Further, why should they?  Fightlinker asks why the government should even be involved here at all, which is a very good question:

My main issue with the Ali act is it’s government interference where it doesn’t belong. Why the hell should the government be setting up laws on who gets to fight who in the goddamn Ultimate Fighting Championships? What ever happened to letting the free market decide what happens and what doesn’t? Hey, I’m all down for making sure fighters don’t get fucked - but I’m more down for making sure people in general don’t get fucked.

Of course, he's absolutely right.  MMA is almost the perfect situation for the market to work without interference.  Everybody who gets into it is fully aware of what they are doing, the relatively low pay is made public for everyone to know, and nobody can train for more than a week without becoming very aware of the risks involved. 

Congress should stay away from Mixed Martial Arts.  Congress doesn't have the expertise necessary to draft complex regulation, and anything they do will likely have more bad consequences than good.