MMA Fighting Legalized in NY: UFC Plans First Matches at Madison Square Garden

Photo via Chris Weidman/Twitter

The fight is on.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill Thursday legalizing mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting in New York State, about three weeks after the Assembly followed the lead of the Senate and voted to approved the measure.

Right on cue, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the sport's biggest U.S. promoter, announced it would begin holding matches in Madison Square Garden on Nov. 12 — and even sooner at venues upstate.

For the next three years, UFC will host four fight nights per year in New York, according to the MMA Mania news site.

"Some of the UFC techniques were started in New York politics," Cuomo joked at the signing ceremony. "The ground-and-pound started in the [the] New York State Assembly. The arm bar was started by the Senate Republicans."

The governor also said lawmakers "added precautions that will make this sport a better sport," such as bolstering fighter insurance and appointing MMA experts to the board of the State Athletic Commission, the body in charge of regulating boxing and wrestling.

Cuomo added that MMA "is going to be a great economic engine" for the state.

Prior to the governor's decision, New York had been the only state in America where MMA fighting was illegal. Political opposition had long been linked to union groups waging a protracted battle against UFC's owners — key among them, Lorenzo Fertitta — over Fertitta's bad union record at his Las Vegas casinos.

In February, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams publicly called for the legalization of MMA. He claimed the fights "would generate an estimated $135 million each year in the state’s economy, in addition to $5.4 million in state and local revenues."

In one of the uglier moments of the legalization debate, Manhattan Rep. Daniel O'Donnell (the older brother of Rosie O'Donnell) called the sport "gay porn with a different ending."

UFC fighter Chris Weidman was one of many industry men and their supporters to celebrate Cuomo's final signature Thursday: