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Guest Editorial: Why the Muhammad Ali Act Should Apply to Mixed Martial Arts

EDITOR’S NOTE: The topic of the Muhammad Ali Act and its potential application to MMA was first raised prominently last year by Mark Cuban. As MMAPayout.com addressed recently on Inside MMA, the gravity of the situation is such that the UFC has retained a Washington DC lobbying firm to address the subject.

Rob Maysey is a licensed attorney in the states of Arizona, California, and Minnesota . He received his BA in Politics from Whitman College and his JD from Cornell Law School . He has followed the sport of mixed martial arts closely since being introduced to Brazilian jiu-jitsu in 1998 by a law school classmate. Rob is also the founder of the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association, which aims to create a brand owned and controlled by fighters that can be leveraged to secure revenue from advertising, merchandising, and group licensing.

The following guest editorial is an abbreviated version of a lengthier article which can be read in its entirety at MMAFA.tv/blog.

Why the Muhammad Ali Act Should Apply to Mixed Martial Arts.

By Rob Maysey

This article argues that the Muhammad Ali Act should apply to mixed martial arts, which contains the majority of the substantive legal protections for boxers.

I. Summary of Federal Boxing Law.

In 1996, the Professional Boxing Safety Act (the “PBSA”) was signed into law. The PBSA was a Congressional measure that established minimum requirements to protect the health and safety of boxers.[1] The PBSA also sought to address the lack of public oversight of boxing. The PBSA, among other things, (i) requires State athletic commissions to oversee all professional boxing events; (ii) prohibits medically-suspended fighters from participating in boxing matches; (iii) assures that States are aware that a fighter may be suspended in another State; (iv) requires adequate medical services to be available at ringside; and (v) requires all boxers to be given an identification card issued by their State commission.[2]

Congress, however, sought further reform of the boxing industry. In May of 2000, the Muhammad Ali Act was signed into law. In short, the Muhammad Ali Act protects the rights and welfare of professional boxers by preventing exploitive, oppressive, and unethical business practices and promotes honorable competition to enhance the overall integrity of the boxing industry.

II. The Muhammad Ali Act in Operation.

A. Objective Rankings Criteria

The Muhammad Ali Act addresses the exploitive business practices faced by professional boxers by requiring objective and consistent rankings criteria for boxers.[3] This provision was inserted into the Ali Act to prevent promoters from abusing boxers and monopolizing the sport by requiring boxers to sign away all their rights in order to obtain an important fight or maintain their current status in the rankings.[4] The Act seeks to prohibit promoters from being “able to rig the sport by placing favored boxers who have signed away promotional rights in the top rankings,” and for those boxers who refuse to cooperate, from being “arbitrarily dropped from the ranking or prevented from moving up.” In short, the Act attempts to prevent promoters from forcing boxers into coercive contracts as a condition of participating in a given match.

This protection alone is of enormous benefit for all mixed martial artists. Currently, no objective rankings are utilized by any of the major promotions. Title shots should be awarded by merit, and not based upon contracted promotional exclusivity. Fighters and fans alike would benefit, as the best fighters would contend for titles, and fighters currently on the outside such as Matt Lindland, Josh Barnett, and Fedor Emelianenko would be in the public eye. Market value of these fighters would increase, as the public would demand to see the best matchups available, regardless of a fighter’s contracted promotion. The practice of putting fighters into “dark” matches on the undercard would also be noticed by the general public, and would likely occur with far less frequency if the Ali Act governed mixed martial arts. The requirement of objective and consistent rankings afforded by the Muhammad Ali Act also ties into the protections against coercive contracts discussed below.
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B. Protection from Coercive and Exploitive Contracts—the Promotional Option.

The Muhammad Ali Act contains a section protecting fighters from “coercive contracts.” Specifically, the Act greatly curtails the practice of requiring promotional “options,” which is the practice of contractually requiring an “exclusive long term promotional contract with a boxing challenger as a condition precedent to permitting a bout against another boxer that the promoter has under contract.”[5] This practice of requiring “options” stifles competition. As the legislative history of the Act declares, the “athletes would be better served, as would open competition in the sport, if boxers were free to contract with those promoters they personally choose, rather than being coerced to contract with a promoter who is in the position of barring a lucrative bout.”[6] Such is the principle of most laws governing employment and personal services contracts.

Indeed, it appears as though the Couture-Emelianenko bout has not occurred because of Zuffa’s insistence upon obtaining promotional options. Fedor Emelianenko detailed the reasons he chose not to sign with Zuffa. Emelianenko stated:

“The contract that we were presented with by the UFC was simply impossible, couldn’t be signed–I couldn’t leave. If I won, I had to fight up to eight times in two years. If I lost one fight, then the UFC had the right to rip up the contract. At the conclusion of the contract, if I am undefeated, then it automatically extends for an as yet unspecified time, though for the same compensation.”[7]

Likewise, Randy Couture’s disputed promotional agreement with Zuffa reportedly contains a so-called “Champion’s Clause,” which serves to extend the term of the Zuffa promotional agreement in the event a fighter is a champion in a weight-class at the end of the contractual term. The clause provides that “if, at the expiration of the Term, Fighter is then UFC champion, the Term shall be automatically extended for a period commencing on the Termination Date and ending on the earlier of (i) one (1) year from the Termination Date; or (ii) the date on which Fighter has participated in three (3) bouts promoted by ZUFFA following the Termination Date (“Extension Term”). Any references to the Term herein shall be deemed to include a reference to the Extension Term, where applicable.”[8] This clause serves to not only prevent a fighter from fighting outside the promotion, but also restricts his ability to negotiate for higher pay after securing a title. This provision, under the Ali Act, and possibly the contract in whole would be deemed void if the Ali Act governed mixed martial arts.[9]

The Act addresses these so-called “option” contracts by installing “a time limit of one year on all promotional rights that a promoter secures” from a fighter or another promotion “as a prerequisite to the boxer participating in a particular bout.”[10] Thus, if a promoter owns the rights to a champion, and a second fighter wants to fight the champion, then the champion’s promoter can acquire the rights to the second fighter, but only for up to 12 months. Congress believed that the one year limitation will at least provide a fighter with the right to seek the highest bidder after one year, or provide them the option to simply select the promoter of their choosing.

The Act also contains a provision which prohibits certain conflicts of interest. Specifically, the Act prohibits a manager from having a direct or indirect financial interest in a promotion.[11] It “is not plausible for a boxer to receive proper representation and counsel from a manager if the manager is also on the payroll of a promoter. This is an obvious conflict of interest which works to the detriment of the boxer and the advantage of the promoter.”[12] pan> The “fire-wall” between promoting and managing, however, on
ly applies to boxers that are engaging in fights of 10 rounds or more, as many boxers that fight fewer rounds cannot afford to have separate managers and promoters. These firewalls also do not apply where a boxer chooses to act as his or her own promoter or manager.

Matt “the Law” Lindland publicly declared that the practice of promoters selecting opponents also violates the “fire-wall” against conflicts of interest. Lindland declared:

“The UFC contracts are illegal. Based on the Muhammad Ali (Safety) Act, you cannot be the promoter and the manager at the same time. If they are telling you who and when you are going to fight, they are the manager as well as the promoter.”[13]

The Act also requires promoters to disclose all payments made to a fighter, whether by written or oral agreement. Specifically, the Act requires the promoter to provide (i) a copy of any agreement in writing to which the promoter and fighter are a party, and (ii) to provide a written statement under penalty of perjury that no other written or oral agreements exist between the promotion and fighter. No hidden agreements are permissible.[14] If a State law governing a boxing commission requires that information that would be furnished by a promoter under the Act shall be made public, then a promoter is not required to file such information with such State if the promoter files such information with the Association of Boxing Commissions.[15]

The purpose of this provision is again, to protect fighters from exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous promoters.

The Act also required the Association of Boxing Commissions to develop and promulgate “guidelines for minimum contractual provisions that should be included in bout agreements and boxing contracts.”[16] Minimal standards and protections included within standardized bout, management, and promotional agreements for mixed martial artists would serve to benefit fighters for no other reason than greater consistency and uniformity from promotion to promotion.

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