Brian,
There has been NO CHANGE at all. There has not been a San Shou event in NY since Sept 8, 2001. We have moved our events to New Jersey... where the athletic commission is reasonable, helpful, intelligent and not corrupt. The Daily News ran a three page story on how corrupt the NYSAC is. And despite the fact that they now admit they were WRONG about amateur events, they will not put anything in writing to clarify this point.

Our last press release

Manhattan, NY - The last time New York City saw an event dedicated to the Chinese martial art of San Da was September 8, 2001. While we all know what happened to New York a few days after that, that tragedy wasn't what has killed the sport in the Big Apple. No, terrorists, hate and prejudice didn't stop America citizens from enjoying the best in Chinese martial arts action sports. Instead, it was the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC), an organization that has failed to do it's primary job, promote revenue producing boxing shows (they sanctioned one boxing event in all of 2003), and continues to eat up $886,000 of tax payer money per year (source: New York Daily News, April 20, 2003). Former legal council to the NYSAC, Hugo Spindola (who made $90,000 a year according to he Daily News), for several years acted as a wall between interested parties (promoters, sanctioning body presidents, athletes and innocent tax paying citizens who wanted their voices to be heard) and the powers that be at NYSAC. Mr. Spiondola also spread a lot of misinformation about the law and how the NYSAC had interpreted it. Mr. Spindola told numerous parties that the NYSAC had authority over AMATEUR events as well as professional ones and that the NYSAC would close down any "unauthorized" amateur shows. Only under mounting political pressure and investigations of corruption and abuse within the scandal plagued NYSAC did one of the executive directors of the organization admit that the NYSAC has no authority over amateur events.

With this revelation, or rather official statement by an official within the administration, there has been talk about San Shou/San Da finally returning to New York. Certainly, it was an injustice that those who write the laws in Albany insured the freedom of Japanese Americans to practice Judo and Korean Americans to practice Taekwondo while ignoring the substantial Chinese population within the state. It became a true insult when people informed the NYSAC of this unequal treatment and they made no effort to correct the situation. Perhaps it should also be noted that Filipino, Russian, Brazilian, Thai, Vietnamese and even French martial arts were also similarly disregarded by the legislators in Albany. A number of observers also noted that the NYSAC closed down only certain events. Professional Karate events which were not sanctioned by orgnizations on the NYSAC's "approved list" were not shut down.

What will the NYSAC do now? Will they continue to mindlessly enforce racist legislation that they in fact have known for years they have been enforcing incorrectly to begin with? January 2004 wll be the first amateur San Shou/San Da event to take place in NYC since the "new people" at NYSAC took over and decided to enforce the 1997 legislation. Will they show up again, closing down the show, when they have now admitted publicly that for three years they were selectively enforcing the statute and incorrectly applying it to amateur shows? It waits to be seen but one thing is for certain, you can never predict what is going to happen in New York.