UFC VP of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner is the man who made all of the details run smoothly at Vancouver UFC 115 card, in spite of the amateur nature of the VAC officials he had to deal with.
Sitting in the press conference a few days before UFC 115 took place, I couldn’t help but shake my head at the sight of the humbled and tentative Mirko Mladenovic, the former chairman of the Vancouver Athletic Commission (VAC). Mirko sat their alone, possibly shocked that it was all happening in spite of his interventions, which at times put the whole event in severe jeopardy.
I say former because this is what happened yesterday, coming as no surprise to those of us who closely followed the proceedings of how the UFC finally got to Vancouver.
Comments like this show how clueless this guy really is:
““I’ve been on the board for three terms. I am only into this one four months. What has changed? What has changed is they wanted to kill UFC and I approved it.”
Excuse me? YOU approved it? And THEY wanted to kill UFC?
Wow. Here’s the real story folks.
From the day that City Council lifted the MMA ban for a trial period of two years, the writing was on the wall that UFC was coming to Vancouver.
UFC VP of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner had been in contact with both GM Place and City of Vancouver officials for the past three years, and the December vote was the culmination of his efforts.
From December until April, the UFC and the City of Vancouver were in closed door discussions about liability, imdemnification and insurance issues. In spite of shoddy reporting from the likes of Showdown Joe, the event was not ever in serious danger of being moved.
Although, after taking a look at these comments made by the grandstanding former head of the VAC:
“The City of Vancouver does not want to be in the sanctioning business. After the UFC, we’re going to be at a major impasse.
“The UFC isn’t going to make any money off this.”
it isn’t hard to figure out why such misinformation was being spread amongst the media. In the midst of heavy-duty and highly sensitive negotiations, Mirko was out in the media being a showboat, claiming that it was the VAC’s approval of UFC that was prompting city officials not to dispose of the event. NOTHING could be further from the truth. In fact, Mirko’s ill-timed comments that the City didn’t want to sanction UFC almost provided the impetus for the whole negotiating process to fall apart. He was a hindrance, not an advocate that made a positive impact.
Far from being at an impasse, the City is now aggressively pursuing a way of importing a more professional system of sanctioning in lieu of the BC Government showing any initiative to form a provincial sanctioning body. Talks with Quebec to piggyback off of their system are already in the works.
And UFC didn’t make any money off of the event? Give me a break. The take for Dana White and crew was about $4.5 million, making it one of the highest gates in UFC history. That is of course not even counting PPV revenues, which is where the real money is made.
How clueless was Mladenovic in this whole process? Well, here is just one example: he had to get Ratner to print up forms for the judges’ scoring and bring them up from Vegas because he didn’t have any idea as to what was involved in his role. In fact, on a myriad of issues, from medical requirements to sanctioning to rules and regulations to purses for the fighters, Ratner had to spoon-feed the entire VAC throughout the two months from the announcement of the event to the day of the fights.
And so what did Mirko do to make up for his shortcomings? He made it a point of giving City of Vancouver staff a taste of his venom with abusive comments and emails. From what I have heard, to call him belligerent would be the understatement of the year. There is apparently a file f0lder full of correspondence from Mirko that accused officials of corruption, incompetence, stupidity – and the language used indicates that harassment and intimidation was his preferred method of getting his point across.
Dave Rudberg is perfectly suited to take on this file. In fact, with all of the issues of insurance and safety, his Olympic experience will be invaluable in making things run smoothly from this point forward. He gets how to run a big event, he understands the issues and concerns of the city intimately, and he is professional and well versed in how to deal with the media.
Don’t feel sorry for Mirko, folks – he is far from an MMA martyr.
UFC will be back next year, folks – you can take that to the bank.
Thank goodness that Marc Ratner and his staff won’t have to jump through all the hoops that were necessary this time around.
UFC is big business, and the City of Vancouver needs mature professionals handling the file from this point forward.
Rudberg certainly fits that bill.
