CASPER — There will be blood.
Always.
The mixed martial artists are after it, the fans expect it and the violent package of flying fists, feet, knees and whatever else virtually assures some at any event.
Limiting the damage beyond that is a responsibility that ultimately falls on promoters like Kick Down’s Steve Alley — particularly in the absence of a commission to regulate the sport, something Wyoming currently doesn’t have.
“It will come sooner or later,” Alley said. “It always does.
“But I do things the exact same way I do here as I would in Denver. If the Colorado commission would have been at this show (in Casper), everything would have been the same here as it would have been there. We’ve had 51 shows, never as much as an insurance claim for me.”
It’s an impressive run to be sure, and Alley hasn’t needed much outside help to maintain it when he takes his show north to Wyoming, one of eight states where MMA is legal but unregulated by an athletic commission.
Although, should that streak ever end, Kick Down or any other fight promotion would almost certainly open the eyes of legislators in a state that hasn’t had a boxing commission in roughly 20 years — despite recent efforts to recreate one.
“You’d hope that it doesn’t take some kind of tragedy to force the hand and start some legislation,” state Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, said. “Unfortunately, sometimes it takes an incident to shed light on an issue before anybody tries to do something about it.
“That’s one of those things where I think you’d be inclined to support some kind of oversight if we’re going to start having more and more of those events around.”
MMA isn’t going away, and Casper has certainly become a viable market for the sport regionally.
Alley’s last card featured 13 hometown fighters and two more from Torrington, and though all of them avoided significant injuries, stricter safety guidelines rarely hurt anybody.
“As a promoter, I see it both ways,” Alley said. “If the reason they enacted the laws in Colorado or other states is the fighters’ safety because you had drunk people that were coming in walking on to fights, well I wouldn’t allow that. Our cards are set three, four weeks in advance.
“But when you ask the question if it would be better if a commission came into Wyoming, to me, I don’t see any big difference. All it would do for me, the only thing it would change, I would probably have to end up spending more money to please a legal entity that certainly will come eventually.”
It won’t come before Alley’s next card here in August, since a commission would have to be approved by the Legislature before it could be put in place.
That sets the timetable somewhere around next March at the earliest, assuming a potential bill gets more support than the last attempt in 2007.
“That’d be something that I’d sure want to look at, and I’m sure a lot of other legislators would too,” Landen said. “I tell you what, it just hasn’t come to light yet. In the case of these events, truthfully I just wasn’t aware of the fact that we didn’t have much oversight.
“As legislators, that’s what you do. If you see a problem, then you get down to Cheyenne and fix it or help somebody with it. It’s something we’d want to look at, legislation is something we can do and we’d probably model it after some states that have done it the right way.”
That list, perhaps, could start with Colorado.
Alley’s already using those guidelines here anyway.
“Nothing’s different that I do here as opposed to Colorado,” he said. “When you talk about fighters’ safety, I’m not saying people don’t get injured, but we have a stellar, Guinness Book of World Records-type of track record and I’m proud of that.
“Sooner or later there’ll be (a commission). It always happens, but until it does I’m going to continue to do exactly what I’ve done.”
Provide a good show, typically with some blood.
Then limit the damage from there.
