Sen. McCain: I ‘absolutely’ would have tried MMA
“You boxed at the Naval Academy. If mixed martial arts was around back then, do you think you would have given it a shot?” asked Ron Kruck. “Absoutely,” said McCain.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was once the most hated man in mixed martial arts, as back in 1997 he very nearly killed the sport, labeling it “human cockfighting” and forcing it off PPV.
In the end though, 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 the world’s fastest growing sport, and everyone understands that that is 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.
McCain and a number of MMA notables met recently at the nation’s capitol to announce support for the Cleveland Clinic Professional Fighters Brain Health Study (FBHS), and 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.”