Lindland on Unions in MMA

Zach Arnold of Fightopinion has transcribed a recent interview done with Matt Lindland where he talks about why he thinks the probability of a fighter union forming is pretty low.

“At least in basketball or baseball or football if you don’t like [the politics], you go to another team. If you have a players union and in this sport if you don’t like what’s going on, what’s the other team? You know, essentially you’re relegated to what is considered by the fans as the minor leagues just because you didn’t get along with the management at the time of the one team. So, it’s a completely different industry and it’s not regulated well, you can’t just go to another team, so it’s a lot different you know different stuff about just the business side of the sport.”

“Unless you can get the top athletes and you’re not going to do that. I mean the fighters, they’re all whores, they just fight for the biggest purse and it’s going to be tough unless you could somehow get all the fighters to agree to something like that and you know there’s always somebody going to come up underneath who’s not willing to do it. Like I said, it doesn’t matter who the best guys are, it only matters what the announcers are telling you who the best guys are and the fans are going to believe it.”

“There’s enough support (for a union) but these guys, outside of the cage or outside of the ropes, these guys are cowards, you know they would not dare stand up to the powers-that-be.”

“You only have a finite amount (of years) that you can compete and you want to make as much money as you can in that time and you don’t want to mess around with the politics of the sport.”

Payout Perspective:

I’ve always been of the opinion that the fighters lack the requisite solidarity to join together and unionize. Lindland is exactly right in pointing out that every fighter is out for himself; careers are exceptionally short in this business and guys have to make all the money they can, while they can. However, it’s tough to blame anyone for wanting to avoid the politics. I’m not sure that ‘whore’ is accurate.

The only way I see a fighter union forming is if the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act or some variant is applied to MMA that materially jeopardizes the UFC’s current business model. For example, an act that limits the UFC’s ability to retain fighters for more than a year, denies them access to promotional rights, or prohibits automatic contract renewals like champions clauses. Then it might actually be in the best interest of the UFC to help galvanize the fighters in order to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement; one that might allow the organization to retain league-type business model.

I’ll caution that this is all wild speculation. The Ali Act isn’t likely to be enforced, nor is there any inkling that something similar is coming down the legislative pipeline – lawmakers in the US have enough to worry about.

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In the interview, I found it interesting that Lindland chastised the power of UFC television announcers like Joe Rogan to shape the views and opinions of fans when that was so clearly the intent of his documentary entitled Fighting Politics: The Story of Matt Lindland. The film managed to gather just about every known UFC enemy of state – sometimes with footage that was at least 3-4 years old – and tell the story of Lindland’s fall-out with the UFC from his perspective.

However, as with all things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Was the film hypocritcal? Sure, but perhaps hypocritical was the point. I’m not really sure how much credit to give Lindland, but it’s conceivable his intent was to be overly facetious and prove the point that just because something is said on camera, doesn’t mean that it’s true.