Those of you who watched in amazement as the Nevada Athletic Commission let Jon Jones off the hook for blowing his drug test on cocaine already know that there are some strange gaps in commission rules. And now Josh Neer has revealed another one. A couple of days ago video surfaced of Neer beating the everlasting sh*t out of some loudmouth idiot who showed up at his gym to challenge him. And what did the Iowa Athletic Commission think of that? Via TMZ:
As we previously reported … the IAC launched an investigation into Neer (who’s 36-14 in pro fights) to see if he broke any Commission rules when he decided to fight Patrick Martin earlier this week.
But according to IAC honcho Joe Walsh … Neer is clean — telling TMZ Sports, “We’ve determined that we don’t have anything in our rules that covers incidents that take place in a gym.”
Walsh adds, “Because of that, there will be no further investigation. We’ve closed the case.”
This is somewhat shocking: the government body that exists specifically to regulate where and under what circumstances mixed martial arts are allowed to occur just determined there’s nothing in their rules that prevent oldschool dojo ass whuppings. If you want to fight, you’ll have to submit paperwork and provide medical documentation and have the proper emergency services on hand. OR just hit the gym and have at it, boys!
This once again exposes the sad way things work with most of these commissions. They have a couple of three ring binders laying out all the rules and regulations and everything to do with their job. If it ain’t in those binders, it ain’t in their purview. And you’d be shocked at what apparently isn’t in their purview.
Lose a fight (and some vision) because of eye pokes? Sorry, the rules offer no remedy to this. Get caught using testosterone, but you have a medical prescription for it? THERE’S NOTHING IN THE BINDERS THAT PREPARED US FOR THIS! License that man for a title shot! Hell, there’s such a lack of common sense being applied to things that Benson Henderson continues to chomp on a toothpick during his fights. Because no commission has bothered to tell him to knock it off.
As time has passed, this whole regional commission system has become one of the sport’s major problems. You’ve got people dying in states with underfunded and under-regulated commissions. Every kind of half-assed drug testing scheme imaginable. Ironically, the biggest thing standing between the UFC and their new goal of Ultimate Testing is this patchwork group of largely useless bureaucrats.
And if you want to change the rules, it’s gonna take who knows how many meetings to do. And how many billable hours with lawyers? Even if you do manage to change the rules for the benefit of safety and justice, its for a single state! And you probably can’t even retroactively apply it to the asshole you wanted to charge in the first place.
In this case, that asshole is Josh Neer. And the TL;DR of all this is I understand why the IAC just decided to say “F*ck it, whatever.”
[TMZ]