New York Assemblyman, Bob Reilly Talks MMA - "Violence Is Not Good for Our Society"

This dude is do full of shit. It is dissingenuous to pretent that football, hockey, boxing and wrestling are not violent, yet mma is. Even most original olympic sports (javelin, discus, ets) have deep roots in combat.

A standing eight count or two followed by more heavy blows won’t do any damage. /sarcasm

He’s good. For the uninformed he makes a very compelling argument. He sounds as if he admires Mixed Martial Arts on some level, then presents his counter argument. This makes it sound as if he’s looked at both ends of the argument with no bias then made his judgement. Obviously, this is not the case, as he is presenting stereotypes in his arguments (fighter safety). Hell of a salesman.

He’d have no problem gobbling the collective dongs of Dana & the Fertittas.

but I thought he set up and presented his points well.

He isn’t even looking for financial supporters (or is he?) and he isn’t the first to ride a cause to the forefront of the daily headlines.

In short order, the man is a Fame whore.

That’s all you need to hear folks.

Big Momma govt wants to tell you what to eat, how to live, who you can marry, who should be taxed in such a such a way to help others while sacrificing your own life…..and in this case, they want to tell adults how they should conduct sports…even though they are consenting adults and they know full well they are FIGHTING….or playing football where it’s totally violent yet that’s on every Saturday and Sunday!

Stop controlling people and protect their individual rights and that includes the right to Prize Fight if they want to!!! And don’t tell me what I can watch or not watch you FOOL!

Who cares? If consenting adults want to watch other consenting adults all voluntarily partake in this, they should be able to. No ones being forced or coerced into anything so where does the government get off pretending it knows whats best for us?

Is this cracker serious? Is he trying to say Boxing ISNT violent? Someone please explain to me how getting punched in the head a few hundred times over 12 rounds isn’t violent, and then maybe I’ll lose to urge to choke this guy out…

Genius, pure genius. This man does not know his head from his ass; typical of the types of people we allow in office. I’m sure if the right amount of money found it’s way into his hands, he would suddenly be all for it. At least that’s the way it works with politicians here in New Orleans.

Bloody Elbow have just issued me with a warning because i posted a comment about a man who clearly does not care about MMA or its fans and is being highly ignorant and is trying to bash the sports credibility. I would like to apologise to Mr. Bob Reilly because my comments were said out of a love for the sport that I care a lot about. I actually love Bob and I hope that he one day decides that MMA and its fanbase will be good enough to grace Madison Square Garden where they have promoted many non violent Boxing matches and have been declared the home of the WWE where they have also promoted non sexually explicit story lines and non violent matches. I also would like to apologise to BloodyElbow and hope they will forgive me. thank you!

Mr. Reilly is clearly misinformed, has a hidden agenda or both. The NFL has been changing the rules of the game year after year under the auspices of "making the game safe." That is the party line but it is nonsense. The reason they have been changing the rules is money.
Take the rules that have been put in place since the mid eighties as they relate to what is considered legal hits to the Quarterback. It is not that the QB’s are pansies or are any less tough than lineman. It is also not done because the NFL wants to safeguard the players. Again, it sounds like the right thing to do and to be fair, it may play a small percentage of the reason. The main reason they have these rules in place is money. Some of the biggest advertising firms on Madison Avenue determined that when the starting QB was not starting or playing in a game, viewership was down. If viewership is down, the networks are not able to sell as much advertising and not able to sell it at a premium. The networks put pressure on the league, league complies. At the end of the day, cash is king. Just the fact that Mr. Reilly tries to imply that boxing, taken by itself, is a non violent sport further also goes back to my opening sentence.

Jesus christ. It’s really unfortunate that we’ve had to put up with this man’s drivel.

The state purpose of MMA is to inflict damage? (No shit?) Boxing’s legal in your state, Bob.

Violence begets violence? Boxing, football, hockey, etc. All legal in your state, all inherently violent.

The NFL is trying to control violence? It took them YEARS and constant prodding to even begin to initiate a program to deal with concussions in the sport. The NFL constantly denied that concussions were a significant problem and commissioned various “unbiased” (wink) studies to prove their point.

Re: his point about combining wrestling and boxing. Absolutely no point is made. Bob asks why you can’t hit a guy on his knees in boxing and answers “safety.” Oh, well, Bob, how exactly is that safer? How is it safer to take successive and concussive blows and then be given time to recover and receive more blows?

Listen, if you want to stonewall MMA because you think it’s violent, fine. You’re out of touch with human nature, in my mind, but whatever. But be consistent about it. Where were you when Roy Jones Jr. and Joe Calzaghe fought at MSG? Why aren’t you picketing outside the Meadowlands? Where’s your pressure on the NHL to prohibit fighting?

No MMA for NY, oh well. If you NY’ers don’t like it, vote this idiot out.

The funny thing is, I contacted Bob a while back and said I wanted to do a completely civil interview where he could try to communicate his concerns to MMA fans and answer questions from the MMA media (me, in this case). They ignored my first few requests and then finally sent an e-mail that simply said “We are not interested. Thank you.”

Of course, as soon as his face can get on TV he’s all about it.

My mom’s 61. She’s a former middle school french teacher. She should, by all logic, fucking hate this sort of thing. And she eats it up as much as I do. I was watching the UFC 100 prelims the other night, and by the end of the Coleman-Bonnar fight, she was on the edge of her seat cheering on Coleman. You telling me this means she’d go and punch her students in the face if she got back to teaching?

DIAF, Bobby.

I would run the next 8 or 12 UFC events in cities within driving range of NYC. Boston and Philly, etc…so that they could illustrate the financial gains, and losses, to be had by having MMA and the UFC in your town.

In boxing fighters can get basically Ko’d and then are allowed to stand back up and keep taking a beating. I think that is even more dangerous.