This was the walk out shirt for Matt Serra when we sponsored his title defense against GSP (and lost) in UFC 83.
There was a lot of buzz this week about the UFC and their position on gun sponsorships after a writer on one of the gun blogs noticed that the GunsAmerica sponsorship was blurred out on the television. This “new” discovery was spun up to imply that the UFC, and even MMA fighters, were anti-gun.
Some of you may remember that starting in about 2008, GunsAmerica sponsored a bunch of MMA fighters in the UFC and some of the minor fighting organizations, most of which have been bought up by the UFC over the years.
We also had former UFC Welter Weight Champion Matt Serra at our NRA booth one year, and UFC Heavyweight contender Shane Carwin was the star of our SHOT Show booth back in 2011.
Over the years we sponsored dozens of fighters, and in generally we found that the UFC was very gun friendly. Hornady, Leupold, and of course fans will recognize The Gun Store, a Las Vegas shooting range, all sponsored UFC fighters over those years. It was a lot of fun for those of us who are fans of the sport, and I can say that here at GunsAmerica, we had hundreds of requests to sponsor fighters.
We sponsored Martin Kampman a couple times. He hasn’t been around for a while now.
Then in January of 2012, that all changed. We were sponsoring Shane Carwin at that time, and we were told by his management that we could no longer sponsor any UFC fighters because Fox had made a deal with the UFC, and because of international restrictions on the advertisement of firearms, all gun sponsors would be removed from the fights from that point forward.
Dana White apologized to those of us who had been fans and sponsors, and explained that it was really out of his hands. Dana is a gun guy, and business is business.
It is irresponsible reporting to say that the UFC and/or UFC fighters are anti-gun. We paid Shane Carwin for this sponsorship WITH GUNS! Notice that Las Vegas machinegun range The Gun Store is also on the shorts. Shane is actually an engineer, so he moved on from fighting to a more stable but significantly less glamorous living. It is absolutely absurd to say that the UFC is just a crude blood sport. It is more real that 99% of what is on TV today.
I think this is more a commentary on the how lame the internet is in vetting information, and publishing it as first run, but I won’t get into that.
I also won’t get into the cabal owned Fox News and what they have done to the true conservatives who could have contributed positively to this country had they not been led down the Sean Hannity Patriot road.
All I can say is Anderson Silva looked unbeatable at one point. I hope the cabal meets the same fate.