UFC forced to remove support from European judo

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have agreed to stand down as British Judo sponsors with immediate effect, to support the progress of the British Judo Association and British Judo athletes.
British Judo and the Ultimate Fighting Championship have amicably agreed to part ways meaning further sponsorship and advertising through British Judo will come to an end. The UFC had previously planned to sponsor the British Open, which will take place in July, but have now stepped down as sponsor.
We would like to thank UFC for the way they have handled this situation and for their support and sponsorship to date.


http://www.britishjudo.org.uk/news/ufc-stand-down-from-british-judo-sponsorship-deal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PlanetJudo+%28Planet+Judo%29

So the EJU and IJF have a hard anti MMA stance. They have branded MMA fighters as "stupid", spoke about about MMA as a spectacle "with-out honour" and commented that it "shares no common values" with Judo.

Marius Vizer is president of the IJF.
He is also President of sport accord.

I hope poor old Marius wasn't too offended by what he had to see at WMMAA's world championship. He would of been unable to avoid the horrors as he was sitting in the VIP area.

Have a look at who runs WMMAA. I'm sure they could be relied upon to put in a good word for the UFC!

“Thank you very much for your trust. I will deliver the best for our organisation,” Mr Vizer said right after the announcement.



http://wmmaa.org/en/news/198-sportaccord-s-president-visits-2013-world-mma-championship?highlight=WyJtYXJpdXMiLCJ2aXplciIsIm1hcml1cyB2aXplciJd

I don't think you have to put down MMA. I don't. All he needs to say he doesn't like what he sees in MMA and doesn't want that to be part of judo. That is how I see it. We all see things we don't like and avoid them. Or keep them at arms length.

factchecker - The UFC made a bitch move by letting the world know how the deal fell apart. Who knows how much money they wanted for the sponsorship?

So you offer sponsorship, and then you get hysterical and make an ANNOUNCEMENT about that when the deal doesn't go through?? There is no honor. What kind of punk attitude is that??

The European officials must have felt that they had made the right decision after they heard this announcement.

Actually, reading your post again, you had the wrong idea of the timeline.

The sponsorship had "gone through"; the BJA were quite happy and had UFC logos on their website. (These were removed during the last week.)

FOX Force Five,

Thanks for your response.

Just to make things simple especially for myself, my reply was posted on the other thread.

I have done the same. :)

Just to wrap this up, Kerrith Brown has now resigned as Chairman of the BJA

He is going to concentrate now on his role with IMMAF

It also has emerged that Marius Vizer met with the UFC last year in Vegas but came away empty handed.