Former Victorian Sports Minister Damian Drum is "adamant that Victorians do not want the Ultimate Fighting Championship staging events in their state," according to Ronny Lerner of THE AGE. Victoria's new Labor government announced on Wednesday that it had "lifted the state's ban on cage fighting, which has paved the way" for the UFC to hold its first-ever global pay-per-view event, UFC 193, in Melbourne at Etihad Stadium on Nov. 15. Drum: "This is effectively a sport that we would rather be somewhere else. ... Our view simply is this normalizes the brutality, this normalizes the violence." Despite research data indicating MMA bouts taking place in cages "makes the sport safer, Drum said people who believed that would also believe in 'the fairy godmother.'" The former Fremantle coach said the cage only served to "glorify" the sport and "a ring should be used instead." Drum said, "Quite simply, it's the cage that will bring the crowd, it's the cage that will bring people who are not really interested in the fine attributes of the sport." While Drum is "strongly opposed to cage fighting, he did not have an issue with other combat sports such as boxing and was actually okay with mixed martial arts at a grass roots level." He said, "If you want to learn the skills, if you want to get your body into great shape, if you want to actually partake in MMA in Victoria you can do it -- but you can do it in a backroom gym somewhere" (THE AGE, 3/5).
