Eight years after they quickly satisfied in the octagon, Cat Zingano and Ronda Rousey preserve a personal connection, texting each other about family and profession. So when Rousey connected to Zingano on a legal expense to produce a pension fund in California for mixed martial arts fighters, Zingano was all ears.
“She’s a big part of it right now, and she wanted me to be a big part of it,” Zingano said Wednesday on The MIXED MARTIAL ARTS Hour. “Her and her mom, we all talked and figured out how to be the female voice of this. I felt honored and excited.”
On Monday, Zingano did her part by affirming in favor of the expense, officially referred to as AB 1136, which develops a retirement advantage for fighters who schedule in between 12 and 14 battles in the state and vests when they turn 50.
The expense, which moneys the advantage with a $1/ticket tax on mixed martial arts occasions promoted in California and product sales, all passed the California Senate’s Committee on Business and Professions. It might quickly receive a basic vote on the assembly. If it passes, it then goes to the guv’s desk to be signed into law. (The expense will not use retroactively to older fighters, indicating just those who combat after it is signed will benefit.)
Here is Zingano’s statement, which she published on her Instagram account.
Zingano gotten on an airplane to California after talking with Rousey and her mom, AnnMaria De Mars, who acts as a commissioner on the California State Athletic Commission.
“We have some very personal things that connect us, being some of our life experiences, and I think there’s a mutual respect there,” said Zingano of her relationship with Rousey. “It’s constantly been something extremely cool there.
“With all of her fights before, there was this gameplan of being a bully to them, but she threw me off by never being rude to me. She’s only had my back, and I’ve always only had her back.”
It didn’t hurt that Zingano really concurred with the property of the expense, which was to produce a little step of a safeguard for expert fighters. Boxers have actually taken pleasure in the advantage because 1982, when the California legislature voted to produce a pension fund that reserved money from a tax on tickets. The typical payment, according to the LA Times, was $17,000 per fighter, though that figure significantly increased for California-based stars.
“I’ve been around since the beginning, and I’ve had the crazy fights and the fights where I get injured, and I’ve had the crazy life outside the octagon and had to make everything work,” Zingano said. “I’ve had the feelings of being supported. I’ve had the feelings of being alone. All of that, so I feel like I’ve noticed all spectrums of this.”
The hazards of a profession in expert mixed martial arts make Zingano careful of advising the sport to youths. She said the retirement advantage would a minimum of offer a counterbalance to the obstacles physical and monetary that fighters deal with in and outside the cage.
So far, she’s discovered “offense and defense” from promoters careful of a modification in the method business is done; the expense will affect a promo’s bottom line by taxing an occasion’s live gate. She hopes that at the minimum that business interests don’t obstruct of the advantage to fighters.
“All of us fighters have been sitting back and saying, ‘What’s going to happen?’ A lot of different things to be progressive in fighting have been scary to do because you don’t know what the backlash is going to be, and you don’t know if it’s going to help or hurt,” she said. “It seems like a battle, even when I was speaking Monday with the senate, I felt extremely worried. It felt precisely when you enter into a battle – you have one opportunity to do whatever right, and if you don’t, there are certainly repercussions. … I believe it’s going to be the start of some truly advantages for fighters turning up.
“If we could make it what we’re trying to make it, which is just a completely supported sport, where you’re actually looked at and treated like a professional athlete, it could be a good idea for people to do this sport.”
Read more
