It is the opinion of the State Athletic Commission that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competitions are not legal in Maryland, but a bill before the Maryland General Assembly may change that.

Sen. Joan Carter Conway, a Baltimore Democrat, and Del. Kirill Reznik (he studies Kempo!), a Montgomery County Democrat, have introduced respective Senate (SB 649) and House (HB 795) bills that would legalize MMA by giving the State Athletic commission oversight.

State regulation of athletic competitions depends on a State’s particular statutes and agency regulations. Some states allow any competition that they do not specifically regulate, whereas Maryland falls on the other side and disallows any striking competitions not regulated.

Currently, more than half the states in the U.S. allow both amateur and professional MMA competitions. For a comprehensive listing of all states, see the International Kickboxing Federation listings.

If passed in Maryland, the new law would require the State Athletic Commission to promulgate regulations for MMA competitions, similar to those already existing for boxing, kickboxing, and wrestling. Likely Maryland’s regulations would follow New Jersey’s Mixed Martial Arts Unified Rules of Conduct.

Unfortunately, agency regulations are promulgated through a long notice and comment procedure where proposed regulations are drafted, then reviewed by agencies and respective counsel, and then published for public comment. Agencies then review the public comments before finalizing the regulations and republishing. This process is not quick and it is doubtful that MMA competitions will be taking place in Maryland anytime in 2008 even if the current bills are passed.

Even that is not a done deal, as there are many reasons why a particular bill may be held up in committee, fail to be passed into law, or just turned into useless sausage by the grinding political process.

If you are at all interested in seeing MMA in Maryland, the best thing you can do is contact your district’s State Senators and Delegates (i.e., not your U.S. Senators and Congressmen) and let them know by telephone, email, or letter.

You can find the contact information for the Maryland elected officials representing your area here: http://mdelect.net/. Let them know you are a voter that supports Mixed Martial Arts and ask them to vote in favor of Senate Bill 649 and House Bill 795. 

Big thanks to Ground Control’s John Rallo who has been pushing for this for years.

Current Maryland regulations and laws regarding boxing, kickboxing, and wrestling:

Maryland Athletic Commission Regulations (COMAR)

Subtitle 14 STATE ATHLETIC COMMISSION

09.14.01 General Provisions
09.14.02 Applications and Licensing
09.14.03 Boxing Contracts and Sanctions
09.14.04 Safety and Health Standards for Boxers
09.14.05 Boxing Facilities and Equipment
09.14.06 Conduct of Boxing Contests
09.14.07 Ring Officials
09.14.08 Wrestling Regulations
09.14.09 Control and Taxing of Tickets
09.14.10 Prohibited Practices
09.14.11 Hearing Regulations
09.14.12 Amateur Boxing Regulations
09.14.13 Prohibited Substances
09.14.14 Kickboxing Regulations
09.14.15 State Championships

Maryland Statutes on Athletic Contests

Md. Code, Business Regulations.

TITLE 4. ATHLETICS

Subtitle 1. Definitions.

• 4-101. Definitions.

Subtitle 2. State Athletic Commission.
• 4-201. Established.
• 4-202. Membership.
• 4-203. Chairman.
• 4-204. Quorum; meetings; compensation; surety bond; staff; office.
• 4-205. Miscellaneous powers and duties.
• 4-206. Disposition of money.
• 4-207. Authority of Secretary.
• 4-208. Termination of certain provisions.

Subtitle 3. Boxing, Kick Boxing, and Wrestling.
• 4-301. "License" defined.
• 4-302. Scope of subtitle; headgear for amateur boxing.
• 4-303. License required.
• 4-304. Qualifications of boxers and kick boxers.
• 4-304.1. Blood tests for boxers and kick boxers.
• 4-305. Applications for licenses.
• 4-306. Surety bond.
• 4-307. Issuance of license.
• 4-308. Scope of license.
• 4-309. Term of license.
• 4-310. Denials, reprimands, suspensions, and revocations - Grounds; penalties.
• 4-311. Same - Hearings.
• 4-312. Judicial review.
• 4-313. Contests authorized.
• 4-314. Neurological examination required.
• 4-315. Boxing contests.
• 4-316. Boxing, kick boxing, or wrestling in fake contests.
• 4-317. Publication of seat prices.
• 4-318. Ticket scalping.
• 4-319. Ventilation and safety of structures.
• 4-320. Allowing unlicensed person to act or participate in contest prohibited.
• 4-321. Accepting money or gifts for favors.
• 4-322. Penalties.
• 4-323. Injunctive relief.

Here I’m defining “modern MMA” as anything occurring after the 1993 debut of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (”UFC”). Not only because that promotion became the driving force behind MMA’s current popularity, but because earlier fatalities may or may not have much relevance to the sport in its current incarnation. In other words, events today are roughly similar due to a common agreement on exactly what the sport of MMA is and how it should take place. Looking at older MMA fatalities includes problems of documentation and interpretation beyond the scope of this post.

For example, look at the difficulty figuring out exactly what happened in the most famous MMA death to ever occur, that of Arrichion, which is still being discussed millennia later. I also have no doubt that there have been vale tudo deaths, but until someone who knows Portuguese spends a lot of time in Brazil doing interviews and reading old papers, we can’t know for sure. More recently, but still pre-modern MMA as I have defined it, there was the death of fifteen year old Alfred Castro Herrera in 1981. He was participating in “full contact” in Tijuana Mexico, which was described as “boxing mixed with karate and judo” in the St. Louis Globe Democrat (April 15, 1981). Was that MMA? Sounds like it, but maybe it was some Mexican wrestling hybrid, or maybe it was all stand-up striking. For the sake of consistency, I’m using the first UFC as the starting date.

Incidentally, the Herrera death was pulled from EJMAS.com. Joseph Svinth has added a separate MMA fatality section to his excellent resource Death Under the Spotlight: The Manuel Velazquez Boxing Fatality Collection . Go to the MMA fatalities to see the listings of known recent MMA deaths. The deaths prior to Vasquez are there and include Douglas Dedge’s fight in the Ukraine and Lee’s in Korea.

The reports on Lee are sketchy, but it appears that he may have died from a heart attack (myocardial infarction). Dedge is less clear, but there are numerous reports that he had been experiencing dizziness and blackouts in training. See Sherdog.com, which discusses those reports and gives a more balanced presentation than the earlier Guardian article cited at EJMAS. Judging by the video of the end of the Dedge fight, the Guardian made up its description of the fight wholesale. In fact, other than Dedge being either outclassed, tired, or both, it appears little different from any U.S. sanctioned bout, including a closely watching referee and prompt medical attention. While there are mandatory medical screenings before sanctioned events, it is questionable whether Dedge’s medical issues would have been discovered, because he obviously was avoiding diagnosis of the problem.

The “sanctioned event” spin assumes that the existence of athletic commissions and regulatory bodies are a necessity in putting on a safe fight, but safe fights regularly take place in states without commissions. Similarly, there are few, if any, boxing deaths in non-commissioned states. Obviously more boxing matches take place in commissioned states, but the point is that the promoter is probably more important to the safety of a bout than a regulatory body. MMA’s track record is not much different, as the UK and Japan have both held a significant number of unsanctioned shows without deaths and few serious injuries.

Commissions with weak enforcement may be worse than having no commission at all. In a non-regulated state or territory, coaches and fighters know to judge a promoter on his/her merits and past events. The presence of an athletic commission may grant a false sense of confidence if the commission fails to strongly enforce its own rules. An unscrupulous promoter in such a state ignoring proper safety precautions or lining up mismatches is worse than a good promoter in a non-sanctioned area. A good promoter in a state with a good commission would be the best of both worlds.

Based on the very few MMA deaths that have occurred, Joe Svinth pointed out in correspondence the same thing I had noticed, which is that there appeared to be two potential risk factors when looking at the three deaths in modern MMA. Those factors are the age of the participant and the length of time since the participant’s last fight.

The age correlation is shown in the Velazquez Collection with boxers; older boxers are at a higher risk than younger. See, e.g., Harris, C. Harris, DiRusso, S., Sullivan, T., and Benzil, D.L. (2004, May) Mortality risk after head injury increases at 30 years, Journal of American College of Surgeons 198:5, pp. 852-853. It is likely that the risk of mortality in MMA also increases slowly with the age of the fighter once they pass 30.

Also, a long layoff between fights likely increases the potential risk of mortality. However, this may be a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation, as fighting too frequently in boxing also raises the risk of injury and mortality.

On the other hand, as Joe Svinth pointed out, both of those conclusions are drawn from a pretty small MMA pool and might be best considered a working hypothesis.

Lastly, although it would be difficult to quantify, it stands to reason that risk of serious injury increases when inexperienced fighters are mismatched against those significantly more experience.

A separate point to be drawn from the recent attention is the clear need for proper health care and disability insurance. Mandatory health, life, and disability insurance may be a good place to start. Boxing has a high incidence of career-affecting hand, head, and eye injuries. Because MMA has a higher incidence of striking injuries due to the lighter and smaller gloves and the allowance f elbows (see, e.g., Gregory Bledsoe, et al., “Incidence of injury in professional Mixed Martial Arts competition,” Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (July 2006) 5, pp. 136-142, which can be downloaded here), it is even more important that MMA fighters are sufficiently covered.

I think distinguishing MMA deaths based on “sanctioned” versus non-sanctioned bouts serves little purpose. MMA is a sport, and just like any other sport, it will experience future deaths. Instead of trying to define away past deaths, let’s move forward MMA safety while remembering those who have lost their lives in the sport they love.

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Q - What is Bartitsu?

A - An eclectic martial art founded in the late 19th century by E.W. Barton-Wright. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu for the basics, http://www.bartitsu.org for a more thorough summary and buy the Bartitsu Compendium for the whole story. The Bartitsu Forum message archives, Files and Photos sections are also full of information and the best place to get involved.

Q - What is the Bartitsu Society?

A - An informal, international community of Bartitsu enthusiasts who communicate via this email list. Since 2002 we have been active in the research and restoration of Barton-Wright’s “New Art of Self Defence”. Our major project to date has been the publication of the Bartitsu Compendium in 2005 and our major interests include:

* the early history of European jiujitsu

* the eclectic Japanese/European self defence methods developed between 1899 and the early 1920s, and the lives of their founders and practitioners

* street gangsterism, the suffragette movement, “physical culture” exercise programmes and other Victorian and Edwardian-era social phenomena, as related to the martial arts

Q - What is the difference between canonical Bartitsu and neo-Bartitsu?

A - Canonical Bartitsu refers to “Bartitsu as we know it was”; the specific self defence techniques and sequences demonstrated by E.W. Barton-Wright and his colleagues between 1899-1904. Today, canonical Bartitsu is practiced as a mark of respect for Barton-Wright and as a form of living history martial arts training. It also serves as a common technical and tactical “language” amongst contemporary Bartitsuka.

Neo-Bartitsu refers to “Bartitsu as it might have been” and to “Bartitsu as it can be today”; to modern, individualised interpretations of the art, potentially including sport, self defence and performance applications. We are currently developing the second volume of the Bartitsu Compendium to provide resources towards neo-Bartitsu. In any case, we hope that neo-Bartitsu forms will hold to the spirit and feel of the c1900 methods.

Q - What is the Barton-Wright memorial project?

A - E.W. Barton-Wright died penniless in 1951, and was buried in a “pauper’s grave” in Kingston Cemetery, Surrey, England. In 2006, Bartitsu Forum member Phil Giles discovered the exact location of B-W’s grave-site. All proceeds from sales of the Compendium and Kirk Lawson’s Bartitsu DVD have been dedicated to creating a suitable memorial for B-W as a pioneering martial arts innovator. We have nearly reached our target figure!

Q - How can I get involved?

A - Easy! Post your questions, ideas and comments to the Bartitsu Forum (and by all means, an introductory post will be welcome). The Forum is an active and notably positive venue for communication on all matters Bartitsuvian.

This book is a must-have for martial artists, grapplers, and especially judo players.

“Jiu-Jutsu or Jiu-Do” was originally printed in 1918 by an early Kodokan-trained judo master. As such, it offers the best English-language view of Kodokan judo as practiced in the early days of Jigoro Kano’s famous judo school.

Included are the fundamentals of balance and posture as well as the throws, locks, and chokes still seen in judo today. Also included are techniques since banned in modern judo competitions, such as leglocks and atemi (strikes).

This volume serves as an excellent introduction to judo and jujutsu as well as a resource for more advanced students to learn the banned techniques no longer practiced. This reprint of an extremely rare volume of judo is sure to please any martial arts enthusiast.

Click on the cover to check it out:

To read an independent review of the original book and see what an original cover looks like, check out the Ju Jitsu Norway review.

The Bartitsu Compendium is a complete guide to the history, theory and practice of Bartitsu, an eclectic martial art founded by E.W. Barton-Wright in the year 1899. Bartitsu was a combination of four of the most effective self defence methods known at the time - jiujitsu, boxing, savate and stick fighting. The Compendium features over two hundred and seventy pages of original essays, rare vintage reprints and never-before-seen translations, illustrated with hundreds of fascinating photographs and sketches.

A lot of time, effort, and money went into primary research, obtaining rare original copies for quality scans, and authoring new material for this compendium. But probably the greatest thing about the project is that all the proceeds go towards purchasing a suitable gravesite memorial for E. W. Barton-Wright, buried in a pauper’s grave in the 1950s.

Therefore you can feel good about purchasing your copy here or by clicking on the book cover above.

Related links:

Bartitsu Forum- talk about all things bartitsu

Bartitsu.org- a comprehensive resource including seminar updates