By Larry Goldberg and Boxing Insider Staff
The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act passed the House on March 24, 2026. The Senate passed boxing reform bills unanimously twice before, in 2004 and 2005, but the House never voted on either one. H.R. 4624 is the first boxing reform bill to pass the House since the original Ali Act became law in 2000. It now sits with the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Ted Cruz.
But between 2000 and now, Congress tried to update boxing law repeatedly. None of those bills became law. And what they tried to do is very different from what the House just passed.
This is a guide to what Congress wanted for boxing, what it could not get done, and what the Senate is being asked to approve instead.
There were additional committee-level efforts in 2002 and 2007-2008 that never advanced beyond the Senate Commerce Committee. These are the six that got the furthest.
2004: S.275 (bill text) Senator John McCain proposed creating a federal boxing commission. As introduced, the bill placed it in the Department of Labor and called it the United States Boxing Administration. The Senate Commerce Committee amended it, moving the commission to the Department of Commerce. The Senate passed it unanimously. The House never voted on it. The bill was opposed by state commissions on both ends of the spectrum. Strong commissions like New Jersey and Nevada did not want a federal agency overriding the systems they had already built. New Jersey’s SACB had already withdrawn from the Association of Boxing Commissions. Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, said “I don’t believe in a one-man federal boxing czar. There are states’ rights issues here.” Weak commissions like Tennessee did not want federal oversight for the opposite reason: they had almost nothing in place and did not want anyone checking. Tommy Patrick, the director of the Tennessee Boxing and Racing Commission, called federal oversight “a bureaucratic nightmare.” Tennessee did not have an independent athletic commission at the time. New York’s State Athletic Commission supported the bill. The result was that both sides, for opposite reasons, helped kill the same legislation.
2005: S.148 McCain tried again with the same basic bill. The Senate passed it unanimously. The House voted on a companion bill, H.R. 1065. It passed by voice vote but failed the recorded roll call. The bill died.
2009: S.38 (committee report) McCain introduced the bill again, now called the United States Boxing Commission Act, with the commission in the Department of Commerce. The Senate Commerce Committee reported it favorably. It never reached a floor vote. Rep. Peter King filed a companion bill in the House (H.R. 523). Both died in committee.
2014: H.R. 5395 Rep. Peter King introduced the Professional Boxing Amendments Act. No Senate companion bill was ever filed. Died in committee.
2016: H.R. 5365 (bill text) Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter, introduced the Muhammad Ali Expansion Act. Instead of creating a federal commission, this bill tried to extend the Ali Act’s protections to MMA fighters. The UFC hired Washington lobbying firms to oppose it. No Senate companion bill was ever filed. Died in committee.
2017: H.R. 44 Mullin reintroduced the same bill with over 50 co-sponsors. No Senate companion bill was ever filed. Died in committee.
The McCain bills all shared the same idea: boxing needed a federal referee.
The proposed commission would have had the power to investigate, subpoena records, suspend licenses, and enforce national standards. It would have created a licensing system for everyone in the sport, not just boxers, but trainers, managers, promoters, physicians, and ring officials. It would have built two national databases: one tracking every boxer’s medical history, brain injuries, and suspensions, and another tracking competitive records and licensing status across all 50 states.
On the business side, the commission would have set mandatory contract minimums for bout agreements, promotional contracts, and boxer-manager deals. It would have required objective ranking criteria. And it would have monitored state boxing commissions to make sure they were actually enforcing the law. A 2003 GAO report found many of them were not.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the whole thing would cost about $34 million over five years.
The Mullin bills took a different approach. They did not try to create a new federal agency. They tried to give MMA fighters the same protections boxers already had under the Ali Act: the ban on coercive contracts, the requirement that promoters disclose financial arrangements, the firewall between promoters and managers, and objective ranking standards. All three died without a Senate companion.
If the McCain bills had become law, boxing today would have a federal commission with staff, a budget, and enforcement authority. Every promoter, manager, trainer, and ring official in the country would be federally licensed. A fighter knocked out in New Jersey would have his medical records in a national database accessible to every state commission before he could get licensed to fight in Florida three weeks later.
Rankings would be based on published criteria instead of sanctioning fee payments. Contracts would have federally enforced minimums. State commissions that were not doing their jobs would have a federal regulator looking over their shoulders.
If the Mullin bills had passed, MMA fighters would have the same business protections boxers have. Contract clauses that allowed promoters to extend deals indefinitely would be unenforceable. Fighters would be entitled to financial disclosures from their promoter. The firewall between promotion and management would apply to every combat sport in America.
None of it happened. The House never voted on the first McCain bill and voted down the second. The Mullin bills never got a Senate companion. Boxing went 26 years without a federal update.
The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act takes a completely different approach. No federal commission. No national licensing system. No medical database. No subpoena power. No federal enforcement staff.
Instead, the bill creates a new kind of entity called a Unified Boxing Organization, or UBO. A UBO is a private company that combines promotion, rankings, titles, and sanctioning under one roof. One organization controls who fights, when they fight, how they’re ranked, and what belt is on the line.
The bill also raises safety and pay standards for all of professional boxing: a $200 per round minimum, $50,000 in medical coverage per bout, $15,000 in accidental death coverage, certified ringside physicians, and drug testing for title fights.
Those improvements are real. But they amend the same law that the GAO found state commissions were already enforcing inconsistently, and the bill creates no new federal mechanism to make sure the rules are followed.
The CBO estimated the total federal cost of implementing the entire bill at less than $500,000 over five years. Compare that to the $34 million the CBO estimated for the McCain commission.
Here is where it gets complicated.
The existing Ali Act protects fighters in three specific ways: it bans coercive contracts, it requires promoters to disclose financial arrangements, and it prohibits the same entity from acting as both promoter and manager. Those protections apply to “promoters” and “sanctioning organizations.”
A UBO is legally defined as neither. It is a new category: “an association, a league, or a centralized industry organization” that operates “without reliance on a sanctioning organization.”
Under Section 24(a) of the bill, a UBO is “deemed to be in compliance” with the Ali Act if it meets its own set of conditions. Those conditions cover safety, medical standards, drug testing, and contract minimums. They do not include the three core business protections listed above.
Bob Arum identified all three exemptions in a letter to Congress, calling them the core protections the original Ali Act was built to provide.
A club fighter who signs with a UBO might get $200 a round and real medical coverage for the first time. He could also be locked into a long-term contract with no required financial disclosure from the organization that controls his rankings, his title shots, and his paycheck.
Congress spent years trying to give MMA fighters those same three protections. This bill creates a path where boxers don’t have them.
Yes. That is exactly what a Senate committee is designed to do.
When the Senate Commerce Committee receives a House bill, it has several options. It can hold hearings and invite testimony from people the House did not hear from, including active fighters, club promoters, state commissioners, and matchmakers. It can mark up the bill, which means committee members propose and vote on amendments to change the text. It can rewrite sections entirely through what is called an amendment in the nature of a substitute, essentially a new version of the bill that keeps some parts and changes others.
The original Ali Act went through exactly this process. It took two sessions of Congress, multiple Senate hearings, and testimony from across the sport before the final version became law.
H.R. 4624 had one hearing in the House. It was voted out of committee before written answers to members’ questions were received. It reached the floor under a procedure that prohibited amendments. Two members who voted for it, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), publicly called on the Senate to strengthen protections against coercive contracts, forced arbitration, and market consolidation before passage.
Specific fixes the committee could consider: restoring the coercive contract prohibition for UBO fighters, requiring UBOs to provide financial disclosures to contracted boxers, preserving the promoter-manager firewall, capping or eliminating the deductible on required medical coverage, creating a federal oversight mechanism for UBO compliance, and establishing a national medical registry to track fighter health across state lines.
The Senate Commerce Committee is the same committee that unanimously reported out three McCain bills with all of those elements. The members have changed. The institutional authority has not. If the committee decides this bill needs work, it has every tool to do it.
The question is whether anyone in the Senate picks up the phone.
Larry Goldberg is the founder of Boxing Insider Promotions and owner of BoxingInsider.com, established in 1998. He is a licensed boxing promoter in New Jersey and New York.
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