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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief After a meeting Tuesday with the Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux, the organization overseeing alcohol, racing, gambling and combat sports in Quebec, the UFC has come to a compromise which will allow the planned April 18th event at the Bell Centre in Montreal to go on as scheduled.
According to the report at the French language CorusSports.com, the UFC's Lorenzo Fertitta and Marc Ratner came to a compromise with the RACJ over certain Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts which apparently ran contrary to the organizations allowed activities in combat sports. Two of the main points of contention were elbows and kicks to the head, both of which will be allowed at the event. In fact, the only change to the rules appears to be the outlawing of foot stomps for the event.
Would Fertitta and Ratner have been unable to come up with a way to save the show they were preparing for a back-up venue, which more than likely would have been the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
UFC 97 will now for sure take place at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on April 18th. It will be headlined by Anderson Silva defending his Middleweight Championship against Thales Leites, and will also feature a bout between Chuck Liddell and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua.
Penick's Analysis: It would have been an absolute shame if they wouldn't have gotten this taken care of, especially considering the inept RACJ "not knowing" that the UFC ran an event in their province not even a calender year ago. The absence of foot stomps shouldn't be noticeable in the least, and it certainly shouldn't affect the quality of the fights in any way. The UFC won out on this one, as they should have, and the Montreal economy will hold on to the economic benefits of holding a UFC event and all of the fans that have already purchased tickets won't have to deal with not having a show to go to.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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