The history of fighter organizing illustrates the extraordinary challenges.
In August of 2016, baseball agent Jeff Borris established the PFAapologized for introducing him to other fighters and severed ties, over a perceived violation of privacy. His attorney too severed ties. Borris flatly denied leaking any fighter support information. But nothing has been heard from him in years. Jeff Borris’s PFA has not just a fork, but Aquaman’s Trident of Neptune in him.
In November of 2016, a group of five fighters announced the formation of the MMAAA, which sought to form a players association exclusively of UFC fighters, and then petition the league for a 600% increase in the amount of revenue that goes to fighters. The route to the raise was described as a strategy that had to remain secret. The group’s funding was also described as a secret. It is widely believed that the MMAAA was financed by CAA, Pepsi to UFC owner Endeavor’s Coke. And it’s widely believed that the MMAAA was created by Bjorn Rebney, not known as a progressive promoter. Tim Kennedy emerged as a sometime spokesperson for the effort, but has said nothing of late. The MMAAA has a fork deep in it.
In February of 2018, labor attorney Lucas Middlebrook and then UFC women’s bantamweight Leslie Smith launched Project Spearhead. The group sought to get 30% of fighters under UFC contract to sign an authorization card. The approximately 150 cards would be submitted to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB); that body would look at a list of 11 factors in deciding whether or not UFC fighters are independent contractors or employees. If the NLRB determined that UFC fighters are employees, then we move forward with a unionization effort, which would need 50% of fighters plus one to vote in favor. If the NLRB determined fighters independent contractors, and thus not eligible to become a union, Project Spearhead, planned to continue the voluntary association and focus on bettering the profession. Two other fighters besides Smith came forward publicly as supporters, Kajan Johnson and Al Iaquinta. Smith and Johnson have been released. In October of 2018, Johnson described the state of the effort as “f@$%ed.” The deadline for submitting the signed cards was February of 2019. In sum, Project Spearhead is forked, too.
However, the daddy of all fighter organizations remains.
In 2009 attorney Robert Maysey founded the MMAFA, which seeks to extend the Muhammad Ali Act to mixed martial arts. Their aim is to keep fighters as independent contractors, establish an independent sanctioning and ranking system, and then let the free market do its thing – if you want to have Conor McGregor rematch Khabib Nurmagomedov, then promoters bid for the right, and whoever offers the highest purse gets to put on the fight. Bill H.R. 44, supported by Congressman and retired fighter Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), has been circulating in the congress for two years. The MMAFA is also a force behind the massive Federal anti-trust suit against the UFC, which is ongoing.
Randy Couture is a frequent spokesperson for the MMAFA and talked recently with Farah Hannoun and Ken Hathaway for MMA Junkie about the ongoing efforts in the courts and in the Congress.
The first is the class-action lawsuit that you know is going on, said Couture. And some of the things that are coming out now and that are in their final stages of registering us to the class have been really really interesting and have shed light on all the shenanigans and kind of the crap that’s been going on with our fighters.
The other thing we can do as fighters is come together. I’m the spokesperson for the MMAFA – the fighters’ association. Every other professional sport in our country has a players association or an association – why shouldn’t we have that, too? Why shouldn’t we get to negotiate for our fair share of what’s going on in this sport? And I think the Ali Act, getting it amended – that definition – getting it changed from boxing to ‘combative sport athlete’ will in a lot of ways create that transparency and eliminate some of that lopsided power.
Sanctioning body and promoter shouldn’t be the same guy. It’s way too much power. So separating some of that out, creating that transparency, that disclosure – ‘Look, you made this much off of this event you fought on. You want me to fight again, then I should be able to negotiate my fair share of what’s coming in from the events that I put my butt on the line for.’ That’s basically what it boils down to and what hasn’t been happening, and that’s why they’re lobbying so hard against us because they have a money printing machine and they don’t want to mess that money printing machine up.
H.R. 44 is still being pushed. We’re still being lobbied against pretty seriously. They’ve found ways to stall us. They bounced us from one committee. We were originally in the Energy and Commerce, which is where the Ali Act was originally implemented in 1996 for boxers. We were with that committee. We had 60 bipartisan supporters in Congress. It looked like a no brainer, and then they somehow got us tossed to the Education Committee and then we kind of have to start all over again.
If the bill ever comes out of the committee, it will be voted on in the House. If it passes the House, it will be voted on in the Republican-controlled Senate. If it passes in the Senate, it will be sent to President Trump. President Trump and UFC president Dana White are friends. White spoke glowingly of Trump at the Republican nominating convention, and the two speak regularly. The President can veto the bill, sending it back, where it will need a 2/3 majority vote in the House and Senate to become law. The Trump administration is not pro-union. As noted by Couture, the UFC has hired a lobbying firm to fight the Ali Act expansion. The bill faces a fight, to say the least.
The lawsuit is ongoing and appears to be years from concluding. Fighting professionally is one of the world’s toughest jobs, but fighter organizing is tougher still, by a very large margin.
