UFC 115 in Vancouver (June 12th) May Be In Jeopardy

According to the personal blog of MMA pioneer Paul "The Mauler" Lazenby, there is a chance that the UFC's debut in Vancouver may not happen on its long-rumoured date of June 12th, 2010.

"The Mauler" attended a meeting of the Vancouver Athletic Commission yesterday (Mar. 2nd) and was discouraged to hear that sanctioning of MMA in Vancouver is not yet a done deal and may not be for some time. The following is an excerpt from Mr. Lazenby's blog, click it to view the entire post:

In spite of Vancouver City Council's approval of a two-year trial period for MMA, I found out that there are still no regulations in place to promote the sport professionally within the city. The problem lies in the fact that the city is still expressing grave concerns about legal and financial liability, while movement toward a resolution of those concerns appears to have been extremely sluggish.

At one point, newly-elected VAC chair Mirko Mladenovic (a supporter of properly-sanctioned MMA) asked Mr. Hammel when the legal issues might be resolved, to which Mr. Hammel replied, "About two months" in a manner that indicated to me that it may be even longer.

Hearing that a legislative process is being dragged out is far from surprising, so it probably is not the right time to hit the panic button just yet. There is a pretty good chance that the UFC can still ram the necessary santcioning agreements through the VAC like they have in the past when they ran up against similar regulation problems in Montreal. B.C. MMA Fan will continue to monitor this story as it develops.