Virginia Postrel notes that McCain is An Instinctive Regulator:
McCain is an instinctive regulator who considers business a base pursuit. It doesn’t help that the senator’s personal connections with commerce are largely limited to a highly protected local industry (distributing beer) and outright corruption (the Charles Keating scandal). And he’s every bit as moralistic as Hillary Clinton, our would-be national nanny. His first response to something he doesn’t like — particularly something commercial he doesn’t like — is to ban it. The most extreme, and effective, case of this instinct was his holy war against ultimate fighting, a peculiar cause for a boxing fan and one McCain took up when he was still in his “conservative” stage.
Back in 1998, Slate‘s David Plotz, recounted his run-in with the senator:
When I tell people I’m an ultimate fighting fan, they invariably respond: “Don’t people get killed all the time doing that?” But no one has ever been killed at the UFC — though boxers are killed every year. No one has even been seriously injured at the UFC. On the rare occasions when a bout has ended with a bloody knockout, the loser has always walked out of the ring.But this does not impress boxing fans, who are the most vigorous opponents of extreme fighting. McCain sat ringside at a boxing match where a fighter was killed. When I asked him to explain the moral distinction between boxing and ultimate fighting, he exploded at me, “If you can’t see the moral distinction, then we have nothing to talk about!” Then he cut our interview short and stormed out of his office.