You guys have to check this out. It’s a great read about how MMA was pushed through legislation in Maine.

Proposing legislation was just the beginning. Now Matt Peterson had to convince Maine’s House of Representatives that mixed martial arts was worth regulating.

“More often than not the most common (sentiment) was, ‘That’s brutal’ or ‘That looks violent,’” says Peterson, 31, a first-term Democratic member of Maine’s House of Representatives representing District 92. “That’s how 90 percent of the conversations started.” So Peterson sat down and talked with his fellow legislators about MMA, the training regimens, the rule sets, and so forth. “I’d get longwinded and go on a little bit,” he says. He brought in Mike Brown, Marcus Davis, and others to testify before the legislature. If he really wanted to win someone over, he delivered them a copy of A Fighter’s Heart by Sam Sheridan—“the definitive text on MMA,” Peterson says.

read the rest of the article here:

http://news.fightmagazine.com/rep-matt-peterson-mmas-maine-man-651/