Week-in-Review: UFC Making Moves in China

Rafael Natal file photo: Peter Lockley/Sherdog.com

• One month after the UFC held its first event in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, despite political controversy, the city council fired the head of its athletic commission, who greenlit the UFC event. Mirko Mladenovic was fired after three terms and replaced with longtime city bureaucrat Dave Rudberg, The Vancouver Sun reported. Reasons for the dismissal were not clear, though apparently it had something to do with Mladenovic’s management style. Mladenovic pointed to his approving the UFC 115 show on June 12 over the objection of city councilors. The Sun also reported that a two-year trial period for the sport in Vancouver may very well expire before another is sanctioned. The city has yet to draw up standard requirements to stage a professional card in the city, leaving interested promoters in the lurch. The city required almost $12 million in insurance indemnity for the UFC event -- a seemingly impossible cost for smaller promoters to afford.

• The UFC announced that its newest international office will open imminently in China. A UFC Chinese-language Web site launched this past weekend, and the company recently hired an executive to run the office. The move comes after the UFC opened offices in Canada and the United Kingdom. Earlier this year, the company announced a deal with Internet portal Sohu.com, popular in Asia, as its key broadcast outlet on the continent.

• The UFC has again come up short in its fight to get MMA legalized in New York. The state legislature left Albany for the Independence Day holiday without taking further action on an MMA sanctioning bill that had passed the Senate. An MMA budget provision proposed by the governor was stripped from the legislative spending plan. It appears an MMA bill will not be back before legislators until the next session begins in January.

• Fresh off a years-long main event run in World Wrestling Entertainment, professional wrestling star Dave Batista has taken up MMA training with the Cesar Gracie camp in Lodi, Calif. Gracie told Sherdog.com that Batista showed good athleticism and power and that a meeting was held with Strikeforce’s matchmaker about booking his first MMA fight.

• The UFC has signed to a four-fight deal Rafael Natal, a Renzo Gracie student and gym instructor who most recently knocked out Travis Lutter on the Moosin MMA pay-per-view in May. Nate Diaz and Spencer Fisher have also re-upped with the promotion with four-fight deals.

• The UFC announced via press release that it had reached settlement agreements with 500 different parties for illegal pirating of its pay-per-view content. The parties were not named as part of the agreement. The UFC has doggedly pursued Web sites, bars and restaurants for unauthorized screening of its content.