The Senator’s Cheat Sheet to the Ali Act Debate

By Larry Goldberg

The Senate Commerce Committee marks up the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act on Wednesday. If you are a staffer, a senator, a fighter, or a fan trying to understand what is actually being argued about, here is the whole debate on one page, with links to every side.

What the bill is

S. 5188 amends the Professional Boxing Safety Act of 1996, as amended by the Ali Act of 2000, in two ways. It creates a federal medical floor for every professional boxer in every state: an annual brain MRI or a neurological exam for fighters under 40, MRI plus MRA and a stress test over 40, plus an eye exam, EKG, physical, and blood work. And it creates a new category of organization, the Unified Boxing Organization, that can own its titles, run its rankings, and sign fighters to exclusive league contracts, a structure the original Ali Act was written to keep apart: promoter, rankings, and titles under one roof. The UBO is an exception carved into that firewall. Two of the bill’s terms reach the whole sport: the medical table and a $200-per-round minimum purse. The rest are UBO-only: a first contract capped at three years for a fighter with no prior promotional deal, later deals up to six, a 90-day negotiation window, an anti-doping program, and an extra physician and ambulance at every UBO event. The House passed its version, from Reps. Brian Jack and Sharice Davids, by voice vote in March. Cruz and Rosen introduced the Senate version in July. The committee takes it up Wednesday at 10 AM ET, item eight of ten.

Who wants it

TKO, which owns the UFC and launched Zuffa Boxing, and which would almost certainly be the first UBO. Nick Khan made the case to the committee in April, and TKO answered the committee’s written questions. The Teamsters, on the House record last December, not restated for the Senate text. IATSE, the stagehands union that builds the ring, which wrote Senate leadership last week on S. 5188 specifically. Arena operators, the Association of Boxing Commissions, Lonnie Ali, and Mike Tyson are on record from the House phase.

Who wants to kill it

The Ali Act Preservation Alliance, which is Nico Ali Walsh, Oscar De La Hoya, Mauricio Sulaiman, and Carlos Newton, wants the bill killed. So do a set of promoters and lawyers outside that group, and the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association. Their position is that the UBO is a monopoly by another name and will revive the coercive contracts the original Act ended. Walsh, Muhammad Ali’s grandson, testified against the bill that carries his grandfather’s name, which puts the Ali family on both sides of it. Bob Arum’s letter to the committee is the clearest version of the promoter case. Pat English, who helped write the original Act, has called the bill a betrayal of it. De La Hoya testified against it in April. USA Boxing pulled an earlier endorsement in late February and now takes no position. Playboy published the mainstream version of the argument last week, and the MMAFA’s reaction to the IATSE letter is here.

What everyone is fighting about

Money, and specifically one clause. The Ali Act was written in 2000 to end the coercive contract: the option a fighter had to sign to get a title shot, and the deal that extended itself every time he won. A UBO built on exclusive league contracts is the one structure that could bring that back with a federal blessing. It already exists next door. A PFL contract that entered the public record in litigation starts at one season, extends, extends again, and extends automatically the moment the fighter becomes champion, which means winning the title costs him his freedom. In boxing that has been illegal for 25 years. So the fight is over who owns the fighter, who owns the titles, whether a league model is a renaissance or a cartel, and whether the champion clause comes back through a side door. That is a real fight, both sides have serious people, and it is not the fight this publication is having. On this one we ask for a single sentence in the statute: winning a title cannot extend a contract.

What this publication is fighting about

Medicals. To be plain about it: business is business, and the UBO question will be settled by people with lobbyists. BoxingInsider.com is arguing for the medical reform in this bill, because it is the biggest update to federal fighter safety law since the 1996 Act and because nobody with a lobbyist is fighting for it. One misplaced word lets fighters under 40 skip brain imaging entirely. The bill’s authors never priced their own medical table. It covers boxers and nobody else who gets hit in the head for a living. And it reaches every club show in America, which is where the damage actually accumulates. By the Association of Boxing Commissions’ own published data, only about five states require brain imaging for every professional fighter at baseline. Everywhere else it is triggered by age, or by a case-by-case call, or it is not required at all. If this bill passes with the medical provisions fixed, that changes overnight, in every state, regardless of whether a single UBO is ever formed.

And the reach goes past boxing. If the committee defines covered combat sports on Wednesday, every athlete in America who takes sanctioned blows to the head gets a federal medical protection for the first time: MMA, kickboxing, bare knuckle, slap fighting. As written, the bill covers boxers and stops. Which means a fighter who fails a brain scan in boxing can walk across the street to a bare knuckle promotion and fight the same weekend, because no federal rule follows him and most states are not looking. One definition closes that. It is one sentence, it costs nothing, and it is the difference between a medical floor and a medical floor with a door in it.

And the committee should understand how the bottom of this sport actually works, because it does not look like the top. Down there the athlete is not a boxer or an MMA fighter or a bare knuckle fighter. He is all three, in the same year, sometimes in the same month, taking whatever purse is available in whatever state will license him. He boxes on a club card in one state, takes an MMA fight in another, and turns up on a bare knuckle show in a third. The bill treats those as separate worlds with separate rules. The fighter treats them as one calendar, and his brain is not filing them separately either. A federal floor that stops at the word boxing does not protect that man. It just tells him which door to use.

What we asked the committee to do

The open letter to Senator Cruz and Senator Rosen, sent to every office on the committee, concedes the UBO and asks for nine fixes. Three can be offered Wednesday:

1. Strike the “or” in the brain health table. Imaging is the baseline, the neurological exam is additional.
2. Define covered combat sports as any state or tribal sanctioned event where blows to the head are permitted, so the medical floor does not stop at the word boxing.
3. Put a national medical registry and a chain of custody for medical documents in the manager’s amendment.

Also in the letter:

4. CT as the licensing baseline, escalating to MRI with age, findings, and after a serious knockout.
5. A high bar for UBO certification, measured at the parent level, with a regulator holding audit, subpoena, and revocation power.
6. Cleanup of Section 21A(f)(3), the betting scope, and the deleted title reform.
7. Sanctioning body accountability: public explanation of ranking changes, audit authority, loss of recognition.
8. Officials certification that does not rest solely with one association, with assignment isolated from promoters.
9. No UBO contract that extends because the fighter won, and no title shot conditioned on signing away future fights.

The model for most of it already exists. New Jersey runs combat sports out of the Attorney General’s office, with a chain of custody, every matchup reviewed, and officials assigned without promoter input. Florida is the reason this matters at markup. The bill hands national certification of referees, judges, and ringside physicians to the Association of Boxing Commissions, which is currently led by the executive director of the Florida commission, and Florida last month permitted an Orlando card with an unlicensed referee and a bout that never appeared on the state’s official sheet. And Florida requires no brain imaging at all to license a fighter, unless the commission already has cause to believe a neurological injury happened. It looks inside a fighter’s skull after the damage, never before. That is the commission whose director now leads the association this bill would put in charge of the national standard. New Jersey is the model. Build the federal floor on the states that already do this right.

This is not a partisan bill

Neither was the last one. John McCain’s bill, from the same committee twenty years ago, had the two things this one lacks: a national medical registry and real regulation of the sanctioning bodies. Those belong to no party. Nobody has ever built the registry, and no state can, which is exactly why it takes a federal bill. New Jersey has run the state version of the medical piece for decades, the chain of custody and the review before a fighter is cleared, but a state can only stop a fighter at its own border. McCain’s bill and this one, side by side. The history of Congress trying to fix boxing. Why the coercive contract is the thing everyone is afraid of. And the UBO that already exists in MMA.

What to watch Wednesday

Whether a manager’s amendment posts before the session and what it changes. Whether the “or” survives. Whether the definition of covered sports moves past the word boxing. Whether anything on contracts, the registry, or officials makes it in. And whether any senator submits stakeholder letters for the record.

After Wednesday

Markup is not the end. If the committee reports the bill, it still needs floor time, 60 votes if anyone holds it, and a reconciliation with the House text of H.R. 4624 before this Congress ends on January 3, 2027, or it dies and starts over. The committee votes on sentences, and the question that started this whole series gets its first real answer at 10 AM.

Get the medicals right and this bill will save lives. More than anyone will ever know, because a failed MRI is never public. Nobody writes a story about the fighter who was quietly told no.

Larry Goldberg is the publisher of BoxingInsider.com and a licensed boxing promoter in New Jersey and New York.