Canadian Medical Association speaks out against UFC's planned July event in Calgary

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

The UFC is targeting a pay-per-view event in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada this July, the first time they've traveled to the province, but they're already getting some backlash from the The Canadian Medical Association.

The CMA has been opposed to mixed martial arts in general, but the UFC in particular, and has been outspoken during the UFC's trips to Vancouver and Toronto especially. Now, they're voicing their objections to this potential event, which is expected to come to the Scotiabank Saddledome on July 21.

"The objective is to render your opponent insensible," said association president Dr. John Haggie in an article from the Calgary Herald.

"It's the commercialization of violence, it sets a very bad example for children. It's not a sport in my book. It's two guys out to pummel each other.?

The association wants to outlaw both MMA and boxing, differentiating combat sports from those such as hockey and football due to what they believe is simply an intent in combat sports to harm their opponents. UFC fighter and Calgary native Nick Ring commented on the matter, and believes MMA should be much less of a concern for these doctors from an injury standpoint.

"It's hard for me to believe that some of these doctors aren't putting their own personal biases onto what they think fighting is or how dangerous it is," Ring said. "It's not as dangerous as they think."

?They might see it as barbaric, and they're trying to say that people shouldn't participate, but they're trying to use the injuries as an excuse for it. There's a lot of sports that are a lot higher on the list for injuries than MMA."

Penick's Analysis: Ultimately the UFC will not likely face too many issues in regards to actually running the event in Calgary, but it's clear that there is still a lot of education to be done and opinions to be changed about the sport. I don't understand the desire to ban MMA or boxing while leaving sports like hockey and football untouched, because the injury issues are certainly more prevalent in the team sports. As a former longtime hockey and football player, I know the dangers inherent in both of them just as well if not more than what comes for fighters training and stepping into the cage, and it simply seems asinine to blanket MMA as more dangerous than either of them. Still, some perceptions haven't yet been changed, and there's clearly a long way to go on that front in many areas, even in one of the UFC's biggest fan populations in Canada.

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