It’s not a new story that the California State Athletic Commission has found itself in a lot of trouble in 2012. Since May, Zach Arnold of Fight Opinion has been chronicling the serious issues facing the west coast commission. The first situation to be widely publicized came out when the CSAC was facing insolvency. Since then, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Former commissioner George Dodd was relieved of his position in July and replaced by the inexperienced Che Guevara. Ineffective policies and negligent practices followed. Now, after 6 months of tribulations, the CSAC has caught the attention of the Associations of Boxing Commissions.
Fight Opinion’s Zach Arnold announced Friday evening via the site’s Twitter account:
The Association of Boxing Commissions has suspended ties with the California State Athletic Commission in regards to #MMA. @mmasupremacy
— FightOpinion (@FightOpinion) October 12, 2012
Arnold followed up with a report on the straw that broke the camel’s back for the ABC. Apparently, Che Guevara and the SAC chose not to pay the ABC’s required fees. Zach explains the situation in more detail:
The source claims that ABC is fed up with CSAC not paying for the use of the MMA database (to check for suspensions and other sorts of information). ABC is also going after commissions who are not requiring promoters to register their events and pay the fee owed to ABC. This fits right in with everything we know about how Che Guevara & DCA operate CSAC. So, ABC is giving CSAC an ultimatum — pay your bills or get cut off from the database and have your state be considered as the wild west
In a letter to commissioner Guevara, Kirik Jenness explained that California’s access to the MMA database immediately. He emphasized that this action was a first for the ABC, as no other member commissions have had difficulty paying their dues. Additionally, if the CSAC is unable to pay their bills, the ABC will stop accepting results from them on November 11. This will leave a big question mark for any other commission planning to feature someone fighting out of California.
If this were a solitary issue, it may not be a huge deal for the CSAC. Jenness noted that their back payments for the past quarter was $3600. For a statewide organization, that shouldn’t be but a drop in the hat. But this isn’t an isolated problem. The entire infrastructure of the CSAC is in disarray. The drug testing fiasco at Strikeforce: Rousey vs. Kaufmann proved they can’t handle even the most basic of event supervision. Even with all these problems, it seems things are going to get worse before they get better.
About the author
