Casino to Host MMA Show in Ontario
Saturday night will see the first legal Mixed Martial Arts show held in Ontario, and the event will be hosted by Casino Rama.
MMA has become the hottest new spectator sport and has even sidelined traditional fighting sports such as boxing in terms of popularity.
Casino Rama has lined up three MMA events this year, which means that no more boxing shows are scheduled for the rest of 2011.
"All the excitement from the public is all MMA, MMA, MMA," noted the Vice President of Marketing for the casino, Jeff Craik.
"We have done better with this than any of our boxing events."
This Saturday's show is testimony to that, with all seats already sold.
MMA was legalized last year, and since then there has been a surge in demand for this sport, especially among the younger spectators.
The man promoting MMA in Ontario, Robert Waterman, is amazed by the interest in MMA.
"I've got people phoning me up just to talk to me about it," he said. "I've never had that before anywhere. Maybe the absence of MMA from Ontario has created an extra pent-up demand."
Casino Rama, which hosted 13 top boxing events in the past couple of years, said that it would resume staging these events in 2012 as long as a promoter offered matchups with enough importance and action.
