Mixed Martial Arts Law Blog : Mixed Martial Arts Lawyer & Attorney : David Nelmark : Belin Lamson McCormick Zumbach Flynn Law Firm : Intellectual Property, Media Law : Des Moines, Iowa

I was at a local MaxFightsDM event Friday night** when one of my guests, a first time MMA-goer, asked me if a lot of fighters had criminal records. I wish I could have told her it wasn't the case. 

I believe that many, probably even most, mma-practitioners have never seen the inside of a squad card.  Unfortunately, in the past 12 months it seems as if all the time fighters spend in the cage has made a number of them feel equally at home behind bars.

It started with Quinton "Rampage" Jackson playing bumper cars in California.  Not to be outdone, Josh "The Dentist" Neer rang in the New Year by racing the police through my hometown. 

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised when fighters nicknamed "War Machine" or "Rumble" get arrested, but it's disappointing when police end up having to go after someone with a moniker as innocuous as "The Snowman."  I sincerely hope that one of my favorite fighters, Kevin "The Fire" Burns, does not one day get nabbed for arson. (Fortunately, having met Kevin, I can tell you it's highly unlikely.)

The rash of battles with the law isn't limited to those currently in the big leagues either.  It extends from those in the earliest days of the UFC to the newcomers.  Just last night a fighter in North Dakota was arrested after making his professional MMA debut. 

This is not good for a sport trying to shed its reputation as "a bunch of thugs."   For the sake of everyone in the industry, fighters need to clean up their acts.  At a minimum, they need to stop getting arrested for assaulting reporters.  That cannot be good for media relations.   

Fortunately, the year has not brought all bad news. Earlier this year UFC fighter Antoni Hardonk broke up a mugging.  Still, we've got a long way to go to gain acceptance with the mainstream.  The L.A. Times covered the Rampage saga with gusto, but sadly didn't even mention the crime fighting efforts of Hardonk in its own backyard. 

**(PureFight has video; look for the move(s) of the night -- vicious double slams -- at the :32 and :45 marks)

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Square Ring, Inc., the promotional company owned by Roy Jones, Jr., was the entity behind "March Badness" a hybrid boxing/MMA card March 22, 2009, that featured Bobby Lashley in the main event.    Square Ring has now sued UStream for copyright infringement, alleging that the company knowingly allowed users to upload and illegally watch streaming footage of the pay-per-view event.

Copyright laws prohibit copying or re-broadcasting someone else's program.  Thus, if UStream was directly putting copyrighted MMA events online, it would certainly be liable.  The grey area here is that UStream isn't posting any content directly.  Like YouTube or a typical internet bulletin board, users post the content that appears on UStream.  Typically, when a company just provides the space for others to speak, it is protected by "safe harbor" provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  The protection is not absolute, however, as companies like Napster found out.

Square Ring's legal theory is, in a nutshell, that UStream knew copyright infringement was taking place and allowed it to happen.  In fact, before March Badness, Square Ring warned companies like UStream that it would crack down on internet piracy. 

Pirating pay-view events is as old as the events themselves, but the internet presents a whole new set of challenges. It's especially difficult for MMA promoters who serve a young, tech-savvy fan base.  Dana White has acknowledged that the UFC had an "incredible underground internet fan base," reported to have kept the sport of MMA alive in the lean years when its pay-per-view events were banned by cable distributors. 

The UFC has attemped to capitalize on the marketplace of the internet, offering live broadcasts of UFC events on Yahoo! for $44.95.  The flipside is that it also has to deal with mirror sites, like this one registered to a user in Istanbul, which offer the same broadcasts for substantially lower fees.

Like Viacom's ongoing lawsuit against YouTube, this case could have a dramatic impact not only on how MMA fans watch future broadcasts, but how user-generated content is distributed on the web in general. 

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There is a common misconception that most states had banned mixed martial arts until Zuffa bought the UFC and got the Nevada State Athletic Commission to sanction it.  (Note: the linked article is just a retrospective illustrating the purchase; its author, Todd Martin, has no such misconception.)  In fact, most states' athletic commissions simply had not issued rules to oversee the sport.  A notable exception is New York, which did actually ban professional MMA in 1997.  (New York, like Iowa, continues to allow amateur MMA with a "hands off" approach.)

Because the UFC will not put on shows where they are not under the auspices of an athletic commission that particular organization is, in effect, still banned in a few states where MMA is legal, but not regulated.  These states include Massachusetts, although momentum is turning in the Bay State.  Other promoters have no such policy, and sometimes go to states like Alabama (which had no commission until May 7, 2009) to promote fights that had been rejected by other states' athletic commissions.

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As reported in an excellent piece by MMAJunkie.com, the Association of Boxing Commissions has adopted revisions to the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts.  The change that has gotten the most press is an amendment to the "no strikes to the back of the head" rule taking some aspects of the "mohawk" rule (no strikes along the center line of the head running towards the spine) and the "headphones" rule (no strikes at any location that would be behind a pair of headphones worn on the head).  The new rule uses the mohawk interpretation towards the top of the head but then widens the prohibited striking area towards the base of the neck. 

Another rule change is the prohibition of "12 to 6" elbow strikes (striking downward with the point of the elbow).  This is a reversal from changes the ABC made to the Uniform Rules of MMA in 2008 when it acted to eliminate the restriction against such a move.

Although ABC's MMA committee hopes that the revisions to the Uniform Rules will be adopted, well, uniformly, state athletic commissions are free to reject any or all of them.  For example, although the ABC changed the breakdown of weight classes in 2008, most commissions (and the UFC) kept the MMA light heavyweight class at the traditional 186 to 205 pounds.  

One thing that makes universal adoption more likely than in the past is that the rules changes were created by  the ABC committee on MMA rather than the ABC itself.   The MMA committee, which was adopted in 2008, largely in response to complaints about the proposed new weight classes, counts as its members the directors of many of the most influential state athletic commissions.

It would greatly benefit the sport of MMA for all states to adopt the modified rules.  Even if a particular commission disagrees with a particular rule change, having a common rule set makes it easier for fans to understand what is happening, it makes it easier for officials to oversee matches, and it makes it safer for the fighters.   

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Since this blog launched, a lot of people have asked: "What is Mixed Martial Arts Law?"  The real answer is that any law can affect a mixed martial artist or MMA promoter (as loyal readers to this blog can attest).  That said, a more precise definition is: "the collection of statutes, administrative rules, and regulations that govern mixed martial arts competitions." 

Many people don't realize that, on the flipside, some mixed martial arts contests do not have to comply with any MMA-specific laws.  In Iowa, for example, professional MMA is explicitly allowed and is regulated by the Iowa Athletic Commissioner, but amateur MMA (unlike amateur boxing) is not under the purview of the Commissioner.  Nonetheless, that aspect of mixed martial arts continues to thrive in Iowa.  

After explaining the above, I sometimes get this follow-up question: "If a state athletic commission does not oversee mixed martial arts, why aren't the fighters arrested for assault?" The answer is, typically, that the activity is consensual.  In Iowa, assault is defined by section 708.1.  After listing the activities that constitute assault, the code section provides an exception for cases where the persons engaged in the activities are:

voluntary participants in a sport, social or other activity, not in itself criminal, and such act is a reasonably foreseeable incident of such sport or activity, and does not create an unreasonable risk of serious injury or breach of the peace . . .

Without such an exception, mixed martial artists would face assault charges, but so would participants in any contact sport.  

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