With the news that the Professional Fighters Association is seeking to organize UFC Fighters, it has drawn the concern of long-time organization Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association.
According to a Forbes piece on the issues, MMAFA is taking issue with the fact that PFA did not reach out to its organization. MMAFA has been on the front lines of trying to organize fighters. Rob Maysey, one of MMAFA’s founding members, is quoted in the Forbes piece that they question PFA’s motives.
Maysey’s firm is one of the plaintiffs’ firms currently involved in the UFC antitrust lawsuit in Las Vegas. MMAFA has several current and former MMA fighters involved in the organization.
One of the concerns is that PFA is led by an agent, Jeff Borris, who has represented baseball players. As argued by Maysey, there is a conflict of interest with agents representing individuals and secondly the inherent competition with other agents will make it hard for other agent-represented athletes to join. In addition, PFA’s exclusivity to UFC fighters (it has stated it is seeking to organize UFC athletes), may hurt other organizations.
Payout Perspective:
This was inevitable. The business of organizing MMA fighters. While Maysey makes salient points, there’s the obvious issue that he is partial to MMAFA since he is/was a part of the organization. Aside from these two organizations, there are other groups that are seeking to organize fighters. While this should be good for fighters overall, one can’t help but foresee an internal struggle between groups as to how to organize and what steps are best in ensuring better wages for fighters.
Basically, this will be a long road. What’s the point of an union if all the fighters not going to join at once? It just don’t work in individual sports.
Rob Maysey has made several digs at the UFC since at least just just before they bought out Pride, he’s not going to this for free obviously.
The PFA has much stronger backing and it might be a road they go down. WME-IMG are not known for being as anti union as the Fertitta brothers, so we don’t know what they are thinking, then you have the UFC’s TV deal, they talked about getting $400-500 million per year but that would presumably be at the expense of several PPVs and you have a more stable business. If you look at 2014-2015 you see a union/association wouldn’t be able to guess a % of income, that they can do with team sports, who make a lot more of their income from TV.
I feel their idea of focusing on ufc fighter might not be “fair” to fighters outside the ufc, but it’s much more feasible to me. Like I don’t see how it makes sense to have mixed rankings that would force the UFC WW champ to fight the WSOF WW champ because some athetic commission said so. How would jacare feel about it? Max Holloway? Tony Ferguson? I know those outside It feels to me like the MMAFA are ex disgruntled fighters trying to reinvent the sport/business vs PFA who are trying to adjust themselves to the proven and successful 4 billion$ model.
There’s just too many differences in boxing and mma to simply get the boxing model and stretch it over mma. But the idea of PFA seems to me something everyone could support including UFC
Jason ,
taking a step back a bit. How realistic would it be to litigate for or against on a contract that holds the term “in perpetuity” on an international level? Say in China?
Are there not some crazy stuff in UFC contracts compared to “normal” entertainment/sport contracts?
WME-IMG leadership would use standard entertainment industry type contracts would they not? Have you written about this in the past and how it would be very difficult to win a case on this subject?