Commission Watch: Coronavirus concerns need to be addressed in Brazil

The UFC is in Brasilia, Brazil for Saturday’s Fight Night card, which is headlined by a lightweight bout between Kevin Lee and Charles Oliveira. The Brazilian MMA Athletic Commission (CABMMA) oversees the event. A review of the CABMMA rules for MMA shows the commission does a fairly good job on pre-fight medicals, but with the current health concerns throughout the world, there is one spot where the CABMMA is letting down a lot of the individuals who will be fighting and working at the event.

As far as the pre-fight medicals go, CABMMA is almost identical to those required by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Those requirements even include the added tests for fighters over 35, which I believe all athletic commissions should adopt for MMA.

Another positive of the CABMMA website is that includes the forms fighters need for physicals, eye exams and the application for fighter licenses. The forms are only in Portuguese.

The CABMMA website also includes a list of licensed fighters by year from 2018 to 2020. However, the 2020 list does not seem to be up to date as it only includes the names of 24 fighters. The 2019 list has 369 names and the 2018 list includes 395 names.

As for the rules page on the website. The list of information includes PDFs of the Unified Rules of MMA, the use of instant replay and the 10-point plan against extreme weight cutting.

Overall, the CABMMA website is one of the more impressive and complete commission websites I have looked at to date.

The big concern for this event, which will go off without a crowd present because of concerns about COVID-19, is that the CABMMA will reportedly not test the fighters for the virus. In an ideal situation not only would the fighters be tested, but they would test everyone who sets foot inside the arena. There might be fewer than 100 people inside the building, but if even one of those people is infected with COVID-19 that’s one too many.