How did we get back here, exactly? Back to an MMA world where Dana White and Bellator Dana White are feuding with one another, calling each other names?
Former Bellator promoter Bjorn Rebney is back on the scene, this time improbably as a supposed advocate for UFC fighters. Rebney recently said that the UFC president should be ashamed of how little the UFC pays its athletes, as a percentage of revenue.
He’s right, of course. Not only do UFC athletes make far less as a percentage of revenue than do athletes in other major sporting organizations like the NFL and NBA, but they also don’t have year-round health insurance, opportunities to earn a pension, or the ability to collectively bargain.
White fired back at Rebney, calling him a piece of s***.
Ahh, just like old times, when the two look-a-likes routinely traded barbs through the media and fought over athlete talent.
I don’t know if Rebney is what White called him, but the former Bellator CEO has certainly always seemed to be just as ruthless and vindictive as White is, in business dealings. Under Rebney’s direction, Bellator fighter contracts were as restrictive as UFC ones, in many ways, and the executive made Eddie Alvarez fight during prime years of his career to free himself from Bellator, after his contract had ended.
White and Rebney are two peas in a pod, when it comes to treatment of fighters who work for them. That’s why one can only hope that top fighters like Georges St-Pierre, Tim Kennedy, Cain Velasquez, TJ Dillashaw and Donald Cowboy Cerrone are not led astray of their noble goals by Rebney with their new, totally-not-backed by CAA (the Hollywood rivals of the UFC’s new owner, WME-IMG, which itself is operating with unethical conflicts of interest simply by owning the UFC since they now both promote and manage fighters), MMAAA.
Kennedy has called Rebney a necessary evil because the fighters of MMAAA need someone who has run a top MMA promotion to understand the business side of what the UFC does. He may end up being right.
What is certain is that the types of ideals Kennedy and his fighter cohorts are speaking out about are noble and long overdue for attention and organizing around. Georges St-Pierre has gone from controversy-avoiding to sounding like Cesar freaking Chavez.
Tim Kennedy has always been outspoken but now he sounds more focused, clear and inspiring than ever. Donald Cowboy Cerrone has finally realized that Dana White is not his bestie and that only he and his fellow fighters can look out for themselves.
TJ Dillashaw and Cain Velasquez used to never talk too much about anything outside of training and fighting, but the CAA clients now realize the types of dangers in their new bosses being competitors with their own agency management. Everything these men have talked about in relation to the MMAAA is on-point, just as is the expressed values from the likes of MMAFA advocates like Randy Couture.
The UFC may be the most valuable single sports property in history, and they are on par with just about every other major sporting organization, save for one category – athlete compensation and benefits. It’s no secret – athletes in other major sports organizations got their rights (to free-agency, collective bargaining, revenue sharing, royalties, pensions, etc.) in court and through banding together in unions and associations.
UFC fighters will never get the rights other top athletes do until they also organize.
Right now, UFC athletes can choose between the MMAFA, which has been around the longest, and which is currently focused on lobbying congress to make the federal Ali Act applicable to MMA, the Professional Fighters Association, which stupidly made public names of fighters who had confidentially expressed interest in organizing, and which is run by Jeff Borrs who, as a sports agent is at-best poorly qualified to be a labor leader, and at worst, represents a future conflict of interest. Or, UFC fighters could choose to work with this newest MMAAA – which won’t say where their financial backing comes from, and which has as a poorly defined advisor Rebney – a man whose career in MMA thus far has been mired with fighter exploitation.
So, the good news is that fighter rights and organization is getting more attention than ever before, and athletes have big-name courageous leaders like Randy Couture, Wanderlei Slilva, Georges St-Pierre and Tim Kennedy leading the way and giving them options. The bad news is that as of yet there is no real clarity in which direction fighters should head.
The battle will likely eventually take shape, but as long as UFC athletes realize that they do indeed have to take their warring outside of the cage, and decide to be their own leaders, that’s progress.
About the author:
Elias Cepeda has served as a writer and editor covering mixed martial arts and combat sports, as well as public and cultural affairs, since 2005. He began as a staff writer for InsideFighting, and not long thereafter became publisher and editor of the page. Cepeda then went to write for Yahoo! Sports’ boxing and MMA pages, and edited their Cagewriter blog. He was hired away by FOX Sports, but after several years departed over philosophical differences with the executive leadership around important issues of journalism ethics. A student of and sometime competitor in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA since 1999, Elias brings a unique and vibrant presence to reporting, and enjoys trying to highlight shared humanity and connect common experiences from seemingly different worlds.
We are honored to announce that Elias will be writing a weekly column for The UnderGround.
