The story of the UFC’s fight for acceptance is an oft-told one but, while the biggest promotion in the sport is currently enjoying mainstream acceptance after winning that battle, the amateur side of MMA is facing a global fight every bit as big as the one the Fertitta brothers and Dana White fought with state governance and TV companies back in the early 2000’s.
The global body for MMA, the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) has been fighting for the sport’s official recognition for the past four years, as they have worked to put MMA in a position to achieve Olympic sport status in the years ahead. The organization runs amateur MMA tournaments around the world, including the IMMAF-WMMAA World Championships, and supports the inception of national MMA federations to help regulate and promote the sport across the world. But while they have successfully expanded their membership to more than 100 member nations, IMMAF’s quest to gain acceptance as a sport from the Olympic movement remains ongoing.
It’s a process that has seen IMMAF hold countless meetings, negotiate bureaucratic red tape and even merge with the similarly-aimed World Mixed Martial Arts Association (WMMAA) in a bid to clear the hurdles placed in their path.
It’s been a long, drawn-out fight against a system that, according to IMMAF CEO Densign White, has stacked the deck against MMA from day one.
White, a three-time judo Olympian for Great Britain and former Commonwealth Games gold medallist for England, has spearheaded the federation’s bid for official recognition from the Global Association of International Sports Federations, (GAISF). But, as he explained to MMA Junkie, the sport has faced opposition at every turn.
IMMAF CEO Densign White
The issue of “rivalry”
On paper, the path to recognition should be a straightforward one. Apply to GAISF to become a member and become a signatory of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code. Applications were made to achieve both but, due to issues flagged by GAISF, they were unsuccessful. A court case with WADA is in process, but currently on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The dialog with GAISF remains ongoing, but has left White frustrated by the group’s lack of transparency and clarity.
“That (application) was rejected without any explanation and we subsequently had meetings with GAISF and they said there were ‘rivalry’ issues,” he explained. “You cannot be a ‘rival’ to an existing member of their organization. They said there was ‘rivalry’ but without being specific about what the rivalry was or who it was from.”
Eventually, IMMAF learned that the aforementioned rivalry issues didn’t come from within GAISF’s existing membership at all. Instead, they were told there were concerns about the existence of two organizations looking to achieve similar aims.
“What they essentially said was the rivalry that we needed to address wasn’t within GAISF, it was outside, between us and the World Mixed Martial Arts Association, which was the other international MMA body out of Russia led by Vadim Finkelstein,” White explained. “So we met with WMMAA and we agreed that we would merge, and that happened in the summer of 2018.
“We gave all this information to GAISF and let them know we’d now solved the rivalry problem, and there was still no movement from their side and they continued to talk about the rivalry issue. We met with them in Bangkok in 2018 and had a meeting with the (then) president Patrick Baumann and the chairman of the GAISF membership panel Antonio Espinos, who is also the president of the World Karate Federation.”
Hidden agendas
White said the presence of leading administrators from other combat sports in top-ranking positions within GAISF has proved to be a major stumbling block in IMMAF’s fight for MMA’s acceptance.
“This is kind of the problem,” he continued. “A lot of the influential positions within GAISF are controlled by leaders of the combat sports. The vice president of GAISF is the general secretary of the Internation Muay Thai Federation. You’ve got Nenad Lalovic, who is the president of United World Wrestling, who has influence in GAISF. He’s an IOC (International Olympic Committee) executive member and holds some position within WADA as well. So in every direction that we turn we are coming up against these combat sports figures who have a lot of influence.”
With a straightforward path to GAISF membership and official sport status seemingly blocked, White and IMMAF tried to take a different, riskier route, but hit a brick wall once again.
“GAISF has introduced something called ‘observation status’ which is kind of a vetting process for sports that don’t quite meet the criteria to become full members,” White explained. “It’s kind of a holding position which you’re allowed to be in for 12 months and, at their discretion, they can renew for a further 12 months. But if you’re still not ready after that period of time you’re out of the process altogether.
“So, although we felt we met all the criteria to be a full member, we decided to apply for observation status. Even if there was any doubt that we’d achieved all the criteria, we should easily receive observation status. But even that was rejected without reason. So we pushed for explanations for why, and they came back with the same ‘rivalry’ reasons, and they even talked about our commercial relationships – and obviously, they’re talking about our relationship with the UFC, which they don’t like, either.”
IMMAF then reapplied immediately and this time GAISF replied to say that they had given the other member combat sports the opportunity to formally protest IMMAF’s potential membership. Despite no formal protests being lodged in the years prior, in January 2020, IMMAF was informed that other combat sports had protested, and this time a different term was used to justify the denial of IMMAF’s application.
“They dropped the word ‘rivalry’. Now they’ve started talking about ‘compatibility’, whatever the hell that means,” said White. “So we asked them to define what they meant by ‘compatibility’. What are you talking about? Are you making a value judgment about the sport of MMA? Because if you are, you need to look at some of the other sports you’ve already recognized, like muay Thai; and combat sambo, that allows kicks to the groin and head butts. And in their kids’ event, they allow head shots, which we do not. So we set our stall out very rigorously and vigorously. Then the coronavirus happened and everything just stopped. There’s been hardly any communication at all with them and we’re just waiting to see when the decision is going to be made. But it’s looking very unlikely that anything’s going to happen until the back end of this year.”
IMMAF Amateur World Championships
Going public
With the bureaucratic process seemingly at a standstill during the pandemic, White and IMMAF have moved to keep public their push for official sport status. They launched a campaign, titled “#mmaisasport”, that includes an online petition that has already received more than 14,000 signatures.
“We want to highlight our situation and the unfairness and the lack of transparency that’s going on within these umbrella organizations, and if we can bring this to the attention to the IOC even, because GAISF are acting as the gatekeeper,” White explained. “I think that’s how they see their job, to act as gatekeeper, and to keep us as far away as possible from the IOC. We’d like to raise this problem at the IOC level.
“The petition is just to put pressure on and to highlight the unfairness and unequal treatment that MMA is receiving. It’s not transparent, these people are not accountable. It’s supposed to be a democratic organization – the members of GAISF are supposed to decide who can become a full member or not. But you’ve got a couple of individuals who are very powerful within that movement, which are the combat sports, actually acting as gatekeepers within the gatekeeping organization. It’s another wall of defense, and they’re obviously very afraid of the growth of MMA, the power of MMA, because we’re moving very quickly. A lot has happened in five years. We’ve come from virtually nothing to a federation with over 100 members.”
White also revealed that GAISF’s persistent opposition and ever-changing criteria for acceptance have led him and IMMAF to investigate other avenues of progress, which may involve bypassing GAISF altogether and dealing directly with the IOC themselves.
“I’ve been having some interesting conversations this week and the intel has been saying, yes, there is a way, and other sports have managed to bypass GAISF and be recognized by the IOC,” he said. “So we’re exploring that and working out how that might be possible. We’d prefer to go through the front door, but if that’s not possible then we’ll look at the other options.”
In the meantime, White said he hopes fans of the sport will rally behind their cause as they look to help the sport get officially recognized, which in turn will help the push to legalize MMA across the globe and, eventually, see the sport gain Olympic recognition in the years ahead.
“They’ve got to be vocal,” he said. “They’ve got to sign the petition. We’re over 10,000 now, but we want to get it up to 100,000. I think it’ll be very difficult for anybody to ignore a petition with 100,000 signatures to it. I think that would be very powerful.”
Red tape and 'rivalry': IMMAF CEO Densign White on MMA's fight for Olympic acceptance
