UFC may be big business in Australia, but that doesn’t mean the members of Australia’s parliament have any clue what the sport is about or who the biggest stars are.
That’s probably why the UFC is still doing stuff like sending Alexander Volkanovski and Robert Whittaker to the Parliament House of Australia in Canberra for a ‘Parliamentary Friends of MMA’ event.
“Our aspiration is to engage and work with the nation’s leaders to better understand our sport and how the next generation of athletes can
be supported,” a representative for the event explained in a video from the UFC.
The politicians in parliament certainly need some help understanding the sport. When Volkanovski was seated in the House, Speaker Milton Dick introduced him … and completely mangled the featherweight GOAT’s name.
“I’m pleased to inform the house that seated in the front row of the galley is Mr. Alex … Volakavensko, the current and two time UFC featherweight champion and the first Australian-born fighter to win a UFC title,” Dick said.
Later on in the day, another politician stood up and claimed to be a big fan of “The Volk.”
Lordy. We’d say we were shocked, but any decent functional government would be dealing with the impending energy crisis the country is about to get KO’d by, not goofing about honoring someone they didn’t even bother to learn the name of.
UFC does better when it comes to local state government. While we make no promises on how well they’d be able to pronounce fighter names, the New South Wales and Western Australian governments have paid tens of millions of dollars in tourism fund money to entice the promotion to visit regularly with shows.
