According to a new post at Corus Sports, there will reportedly be a meeting next week between the RACJ (which oversees the Quebec Boxing Commission) and UFC President Dana White in regards to what rules UFC would have to abide under for the April 19th event in Montreal at the Bell Centre. The report claims that this meeting will either make or break the event from taking place.
Both Jason MacDonald and Joe Ferraro are hopeful that cooler heads will prevail. The Canadian Press? Maybe not so bullish.
Richard Labbé of La Presse, which is a big French-language newspaper in Canada, seconds what the Corus Sports report claims and says that it was White (not the QBC) that asked for the meeting to save the show. La Presse quotes Réjean Thériault, who has been adamant about the QBC going back to pre-Unified rules, stating that the rules the QBC would be going back to are similar to those in Ontario (where MMA currently isn’t legislated). Thériault is insisting on no knees or elbows.
Thériault is also quoted as saying that ‘the old administration’ of the QBC was tolerant of the Unified Rules, but that the laws the QBC wants to enforce now are the same ones that have always been on the books. Again paraphasing him, he told La Press that if the UFC wants to run a show at the Bell Centre, they will have to follow the rules. Thériault is not publicly wavering yet on the possibility of UFC canceling the event.
It doesn’t feel like this story is going to have a happy ending. There’s always a chance that the QBC could relent and allow the Unified Rules to be placed in time for the show, but the situation feels like a political minefield that Zuffa isn’t going to escape from this time around. One would think that they’ve already got a backup venue secured, but the ticketing situation is going to be messy.
