This week’s UFC on Fox event will be held in Calgary. Alberta is, to my knowledge, the only Canadian or US jurisdiction that regulates combative sports not on a State-wide or Province-wide basis, but rather on a municipal level. To this end the Calgary Combative Sports Commission will have regulatory oversight for this event.
The Calgary Bylaw creating the Commission requires publication of rules for combative sports events noting “When the Commission has established or adopted rules which govern the conduct of a combative sports event pursuant to subsection (1), the Commission must cause notice of the rules to be published.”. Due to apparent updates to the Commission’s website the rules in play for this week’s UFC event are not published. I reached out to the Commission for the rules in force and they provided me with a copy. In short they are using the latest ‘unified’ rules of MMA as agreed upon by a majority of the members of the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports. The so-called ‘new unified rules’.
The complied ‘unified rules’ as put together by Calgary with footnotes and explanations about how certain rules are to be interpreted are the most comprehensive and reader-friendly that I have seen to date. They did a great job putting the ABC’s various rules and amendments together in a single document. I would encourage any jurisdiction looking to overhaul their MMA regulations to review Calgary’s template.
The full rules can be found here and are worth a read for all MMA stakeholders and fans alike – Calgary Combative Sports Commission Unified MMA Rules
Combat Sports Law 