Ron DeSantis Opened Florida to the Fight Business. One Rule Would Finish the Job

By Larry Goldberg

Ron DeSantis leaves the governor’s office in January. Before he goes, he has one job left that costs the state nothing, needs no new building, and would outlast every press conference he ever gave. He can finish what he started in 2020.

He has already done the hard part once.

In April 2020, with the country shut down, his administration amended Florida’s essential services list to cover professional sports and media productions with a national audience, as long as the building was closed to the public. Asked about WWE taping in Orlando, DeSantis told reporters, “We look at it on a case-by-case basis.”

A month later, UFC 249 landed in Jacksonville after a planned card on tribal land in California fell apart. Two more UFC cards followed at the same arena that same week. DeSantis explained his thinking at a press conference on May 15, 2020. Empty arena, fighters tested before they walked, as low risk as it gets. Then he said the line that matters: “We reached out to UFC and said, ‘Guys, come.'”

They came. On May 18, 2020, he posted to Dana White and the UFC, “You are always welcome in Florida.” In April 2021, Jacksonville hosted UFC 261 in front of more than 15,000 fans, billed as the first full indoor arena in American sports since the shutdown. DeSantis stood next to White at the pre-fight press conference and welcomed everyone to what he called an “oasis of freedom.”

That same week, the secretary of his own Department of Business and Professional Regulation called Florida the “fighting capital of the world.”

Florida does a lot of things better than everybody else. It has the weather, the tourism, no state income tax, arenas in six major markets, deep Latin American and Caribbean fight culture, and more working boxing gyms than almost anywhere in the country. It has the UFC’s loyalty. TKO runs one of the best medical operations in all of sports, and it chose Florida when no one else would open the door. This April, DeSantis signed the bill that gives Florida a UFC license plate.

Florida is the one state that gets out of people’s way. That is why it won 2020. That is why businesses and families keep moving there.

It is also why Florida is on everybody’s radar. By its own commission’s testimony to the United States Senate, Florida ranks in the top five in the nation for all combat sports and the top three for boxing. A state that gets that much should be regulated like it.

Here, we need the state in someone’s way.

This is not about the people. Florida has professional, full-time regulators. The problem is institutional. The rules are lax, and a regulator can only enforce the book he is handed.

Start with head exams. Florida does not require them. Under Florida’s rule, a brain MRI is required only for fighters 40 and older. Under 40, no imaging is required at all. The executive director can order one if there is cause to believe a fighter has been hurt. By then it is late.

Florida is not the only state like this. According to the Association of Boxing Commissions’ own survey of medical requirements, 45 states do not require a head exam for every fighter. A handful do. They are the standard. Most of the 45 do very little business. Two of them do a lot. Texas and Florida.

Then the matchups. In September 2021, a promoter lost its main event on short notice and put Evander Holyfield in as the replacement against Vitor Belfort. Holyfield was 58 years old and had not fought in a decade. California refused to license him. The show moved to Florida. “We have approved this as a full pro bout,” the Florida commission told ESPN. Belfort stopped him in the first round, in under two minutes.

That is commission shopping, start to finish. And it is the real test of a commission. Anyone can turn down a fight nobody wants to see. The question is whether Florida will say no to an event that is clearly a commercial draw and is also not in the best interest of boxing. A state built on saying yes to business has to be able to say no to that one. Right now the book gives the commission the power to refuse and no written test for when to use it.

In most businesses, getting out of the way is the right instinct. In this one, somebody has to stand between a fighter and a bout he should not be taking. That is the whole job.

Washington is about to help. Senator Ted Cruz’s Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act has cleared the Senate Commerce Committee with a medical table that applies to every professional boxer in every state. Cruz’s bill does better than Florida does today. For the first time, a Florida fighter under 40 would face a brain health requirement.

But the bill gives a choice. An MRI or a neurologic exam. The exam is cheaper, so the exam is what gets used. That is the floor.

I support the medical provisions in that bill. They are the biggest step forward for fighter safety in a generation. I wish they went one step further and required the scan. If they did, I would not need to write this column about Florida. They do not, so the job falls to the states.

Florida has already made the case for going further. When Cruz’s committee held its hearing on April 22, one of the four witnesses was Timothy Shipman, the executive director of the Florida Athletic Commission and the president of the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports. He is a 21-year Marine with two decades as a regulator. “I have seen firsthand how strong health and safety regulations can make a difference,” he testified. His written statement spoke of Florida’s “already high standards.”

He is right that strong rules make a difference. That is the argument for this one. Florida has a director with that résumé and that conviction, and a rulebook that does not require a brain MRI until a fighter turns 40. The problem is the rulebook, not the director.

Florida can be what its director described. It has the volume, the staff, the venues and a seat at the head of the national commissions’ table. The only thing missing is the rule that makes the testimony true.

Ron DeSantis can finish the job. Florida needs to be the state where every fighter gets an MRI. No age cutoff. No “or.” Every professional, before a license is issued.

That would not make Florida an outlier. It would put Florida on the short list of states that already do it, including New Jersey, New York, California and Nevada. Those are the real states. They do the volume and they do the scan. They are the commissions the rest of the sport measures itself against. They scrutinize matchups. They say no. Florida does not have to invent anything. It has to take the best of what already works and run it better, which is what Florida says it does with everything else.

There are two jobs here. One he can set in motion today. One he has to hand to the Legislature.

The first is the rule. The governor appoints every member of the Florida Athletic Commission, and the commission writes its own rules. The authority is already there. No new law is needed. Write the standard down. An MRI for every fighter. A real magnet. The right sequences. A set expiration date. And a rule that an abnormal scan means no license unless a neurologist clears the fighter in writing. Put a chief medical officer in place to read the scans. People change when governors change. A written rule stays.

The MRI closes one door. Matchmaking closes the other. Florida should use the same test the serious states use: record, opponent, weight, age, experience, and a written reason when the answer is no. Write that down too, so the answer does not depend on how many tickets the fight sells.

That part is his, and the clock matters. A rule in Florida is not a signature. It runs through public notices and waiting periods, a couple of months if nobody fights it. Start now and it can be on the books before he leaves. Start late and it is at least moving when the next governor walks in. Wait, and it never happens.

The second job is the structure, and the one to copy is New Jersey’s.

Look at where each state puts the job. In New Jersey, the State Athletic Control Board sits inside the Department of Law and Public Safety, under the Attorney General. Its neighbors on the org chart are the State Police, the Division of Criminal Justice and the Division of Gaming Enforcement. New Jersey is the only state that regulates combat sports out of the Attorney General’s office. That is why it has teeth.

In Florida, the Athletic Commission is a five-member board appointed by the governor. By statute, it is assigned to the Department of Business and Professional Regulation “for administrative and fiscal accountability purposes only.” That is the same department whose Division of Professions licenses cosmetologists, barbers, auctioneers and landscape architects. The commission is not the cosmetology board. But it shares a department, draws on the same support staff, and answers up the same chain as the people who license hair salons.

A sport where people get hit in the head for a living should not sit on a licensing shelf. Florida should follow the New Jersey model. Put combat sports where it belongs, under public safety, with law enforcement authority behind it. That is where the tools and the mandate come from. The freak shows and the bad matchups are an enforcement problem. Right now Florida asks a licensing department to solve it.

That move takes a bill. The commission’s home is written into state law, and no governor can sign it away alone. But a governor can ask for it by name on his way out the door, and a governor’s last ask still carries weight. The rule is his to deliver. The structure is his to start.

Either way, the goal is the same. The best pre-fight and post-fight shop in the sport. Streamlined. Safe. Competent. Fair. A commission with teeth. A promoter who does it right should find Florida the easiest state in the country to work in. A promoter who does it wrong should find it the hardest.

Here is the message that sends. Promoters shop commissions. Everyone in the business knows it. When a fighter cannot get cleared in one state, somebody looks for a state that will not ask. Right now, for any fighter under 40, Florida does not ask. One rule tells every promoter in the country that Florida is not the place to commission shop. No fighter gets in a Florida ring without having his head checked.

And be clear about what this is not. It will not move the biggest fight of the year out of Las Vegas. Florida is not competing for that night, or with anyone’s checkbook overseas. That is not the prize.

The prize is that the words “the Florida standard” mean something. Florida already has the volume. Put a real medical packet behind that volume and a Florida clearance carries weight in every other commission office in the country. So does a Florida denial. When Florida says a fighter is not cleared, that follows him everywhere. When Florida says a fight is not a fight, it does not happen here.

His own department called Florida the fighting capital of the world. His commission’s director told the Senate that strong health and safety rules make a difference. This is how the state starts to earn both.

Safety is not the cost of doing this. Safety is the selling point. Fighters and their families want it. Serious promoters want it, because a tough commission is what makes a result mean something the next morning.

In 2020, DeSantis told the fight business to come. It did. The last thing left is to make sure that when the next governor takes over, what he inherits is not just a welcome mat. It is the safest place in America to fight.

One rule. One ask. That is a legacy.