Soa Palelei banned from visting kids in hospital for charity

You read that right, the Princess Margaret Hospital, in Western Australia has banned Palelei from visiting sick kids at the hospital, even though he and retired rugby player - Matt Fuller, have already raised $46,000 for said kids.

Due to the fact that cage fighting in Western Australia is banned. Palelei is obviously very disappointed and hurt by this; on top of this charity, he is a Make a Wish Foundation ambassador. He also understands what a lot of these children are going through, as his son suffers from absence epilepsy.

A spokesperson from the hospital had this to say, "Following the significant media coverage of controversy surrounding UFC and 'cage' fighting, which is currently banned in Western Australia, a decision was made by the Princess Margaret Hospital Executive that it would not be appropriate to have a representative of the sport visit the hospital. Princess Margaret Hospital has a duty of care to its patients, their families and staff. With many people in the community having very strong views about this particular sport, due to its perceived level of violence, executive staff felt this was the best decision at the time."

The Western Australia Sports and Recreation Minister; Mia Davies, commented on the decision, saying "The state government does not support the use of a fenced enclosure for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) contests, believing it is not in the best interests of the wider community to endorse or encourage participation of fighting in a 'cage."

This is beyond ignorant. Palelei isn't asking to put on some sort of charity fight in a cage, he just wants to visits children in the hospital, but because of his occupation he is not allowed to.

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Haha I thought he was taking the money from the kids.

Stupid reason.

@Cthulhu, it's even stupider than that. The sport of MMA isn't banned in Western Australia, doing it in a cage is (they have legal MMA in boxing rings). So because Soa does that thing that's ******* legal but he does in a cage, not over there where it's illegal, but somewhere else where it is legal, they don't let him visit the kids he's raising money for.

This is most definitely one of the worse cases of idiocracy I've seen in my life. And the thing is that they're actually risking the kid's benifit too. No one would Blame Soa for saying "well **** this, I'll take my charity elsewhere" and they'd lose tens of thousand of dollars for those kids (he's already raised 40 something thousand if I remember correctly). I don't think Soa will do that, he seems like he's the bigger man (in more ways than one) but it's no thanks to the decision makers in that hospital who literally have their heads so far up their asses they can chew their food again.

* Edited at 10.05.2015, 5:40 PM ET *

Well, I can understand them, everyone knows that MMA in a ring is way less violent than MMA in a cage. 




Can't have them vicious cage fighters influencing our kids.

* Edited at 10.05.2015, 5:50 PM ET *

They just don't want these terminally ill children growing up to be cage fighters. Makes perfect sense.

God forbid any of these kids get inspired and grow up to be a professional athlete.

**** the Western Australian government.  They really take exception to Palelei, after doing a wonderful humanitarian act for kids with cancer, showing up at a hospital in that region of the country because he is an MMA fighter? 

So ******* stupid.