Heastie: NY Likely to revisit MMA in 2016
Carl Heastie, Speaker of the New York State Assembly: “But I do think there is significant support in the conference for MMA. We’ll see what happens next session.”
“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
-Albert Einstein
But then again, we’re nuts.
For nine years UFC representatives have gone to NY’s capitol Albany to try to get the sport legalized and regulated. Five times it passed the Senate but Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver refused to bring it to a vote. In January, Silver resigned as Speaker, following his arrest on corruption charges.
The new Assembly Speaker, Carl Heastie, is a supporter of the bill. However, this year the bill again passed the Senate, in multiple versions, but it did not get sufficient support in the Assembly, again.
Now Heastie says New York will likely revisit the issue again in 2016, and pointed to the economic opportunities that the State has missed for nearly a decade/
“I took myself off of sponsorship because I didn’t want my personal views to influence the conference,” Heastie told Chris Caya for WBFO. “But I do think there is significant support in the conference for MMA. We’ll see what happens next session.”
So New York remains the last place in North America where mixed martial arts is banned. With the 10th time be a charm?