Sheldon Silver to be arrested, Man behind NY MMA ban
Sheldon Silver to be arrested, Man behind NY MMA ban
Sheldon Silver, the longtime speaker of the New York state Assembly, is expected to be arrested on corruption charges by federal authorities on Thursday after prosecutors subpoenaed records in a probe of undocumented payments he received from a law firm, sources said.
Silver, a Manhattan Democrat who has served as speaker for more than 20 years, is expected to be charged following an investigation sparked when Gov. Cuomo abruptly shut down an anticorruption commission he had created in 2013, sources said.
The specific details of the charges were not clear, but sources said that it was related to money Silver received from a small real-estate tax law firm.
Silver has done the bidding of Las Vegas Culinary Union local 226, which has a long-time vendetta against UFC co-owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. This is one of the main reasons why MMA still has not been legally sanctioned in New York. Every time the bill comes up, Silver shuts it down.
The Fertittas own Station Casinos, which is not unionized. The culinary workers have gone to extraordinary lengths to get back at the Fertittas in an attempt to pressure them into allowing its workers to unionize.
That is a wholly separate issue from MMA in New York. MMA in New York would have a massive economic impact in the state and would clearly benefit New York’s many union workers.
It wouldn’t just be the Fertitta-led UFC that would promote shows in New York. The multi-million dollar battle to overturn the 1997 state law that banned MMA in New York has almost entirely been funded by the UFC, but legalization in New York would benefit dozens, if not hundreds, of promoters.
