McCain wants NFL to follow lead of boxing and MMA over CTE
On Tuesday McCain appeared at Capitol Hill again in support of the Cleveland Clinic brain study. Now his ire was directed not at MMA, but at the NFL.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was once the most hated man in mixed martial arts. Back in 1997 he very nearly killed the sport, labeling it “human cockfighting” and forcing it off PPV.
But fighting solves everything. McCain’s fight with MMA transformed it. In its earliest days co-founder Art Davie once notoriously marketed it as a spectacle in which “anything can happen, even death.” Now it is very nearly a mainstream sport, and that was made possible by the sport being regulated.
Japan had an extraordinary MMA scene, but being unregulated, at its highest levels, it was run by organized crime, and when that became public, JMMA died.
In 2014, McCain and a number of MMA notables met at the nation’s capitol to announce support for the Cleveland Clinic Professional Fighters Brain Health Study (FBHS). McCain offered a AXS TV’s Ron Kruck a statement that shows how much he has changed.
“You boxed at the Naval Academy,” said Kruck. “If mixed martial arts was around back then, do you think you would have given it a shot?”
“Absoutely,” said McCain, “absolutely.”
On Tuesday McCain appeared at Capitol Hill again in support of the Cleveland Clinic brain study. Times have changed and his ire was directed not at MMA, but at the NFL.
It’s interesting that it is the least organized of all professional sports, in other words you have all this alphabet soup of boxing agencies and yet in the case of the NFL you have one czar who could dictate that these things happen, said McCain to Les Carpenter for England’s Guardian.
I’m going to be urging the NFL to be joining this Cleveland Clinic program so that we can prevent the tragic outcomes of too many blows. We already know it’s happening, its already been covered enormously by the media.
We’ll see what [the NFL] say.
This is the irony. All these sports like football, hockey, Nascar and the rodeo that have [CTE issues], they aren’t doing this. But [fighters] who don’t have anything, they have no unions, they’re the ones coming in. It’s refreshing.
The MMA cleaned up their act, they really did. When it first started they were able to do the things that are now prohibited. I don’t have a problem with the MMA.
The Senator spoke knowledgeably about head trauma in contact sports with Luke Thomas, noting that head trauma does not mean you end contact sports, but rather that you have to know when to go. The Senator plans hearings to pressure the NFL to do more.
Thomas was asked whether he would support extending his Muhammad Ali Act, which governs boxing at the Federal level, to MMA.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “And I already heard that the [mixed] martial arts people are inclined to support such a measure.”
