UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture appeared recently on Submission Radio for a wide-ranging discussion. Couture is a central figure in the first fighter organizing effort, the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association. The group’s efforts extend across several fronts, including an ongoing class action lawsuit, and Federal legislation currently in committee, to extend the Ali Act to MMA.
The Ali Act was enacted in 2000 in response to widespread abuse of boxers by means of exploitation, rigged rankings, and rigged matches. Sen. John McCain offers a one-page summary here. The extension to MMA would, in theory, create a situation where an independent body (ideally one, in practice in boxing they are legion) names the champion and promotions have to bid for the right to promote a title fight.
In a dark vision of the Ali act applied to MMA, there would be five recognized lightweight champions, another half dozen lesser recognized lightweight champions, plus multiple interim lightweight champions, intercontinental lightweight champions, super lightweight champions, light lightweight champions, interim light lightweight continental champions, and more. Sanctioning bodies only get paid for title fights, so they make up a lot of titles. In another vision of the sport, Conor McGregor’s next fight would, in essence, be bid upon by the UFC, Bellator, ONE Championship, ACB, etc, and he would make more. Further, in this vision, the revenue would trickle down, too.
In sum, Couture sees the current state of mixed martial arts as darker than some find it, and he sees the Ali Act as lighter than some find it. He anticipates a vote on the legislation in months, not years.
We expect it will probably take at least until June, especially with the transition going on, but obviously the transition is moving faster than people expected,” he said. “Again, with the chairman, the vice chairman and the senior member not opposing the language in the bill and what we’re trying to do, that gives it an opportunity to be fast-tracked. So we’re potentially looking within the next two to three months that we’ll take this to a vote instead of waiting six months till June.
“Once it’s in a vote, there will be a transition – If it obviously gets approved – there will be a transition period for the sport. You know, it doesn’t happen overnight. You’re not just going to flip the switch and change the system overnight. It’s going to take some time to change the system and comply basically with the Federal legislation.
“I don’t know how much you guys know or understand what’s going on, but the flaw that’s basically being used in mixed martial arts is that the promoter and the sanctioning body in mixed martial arts are the same person. It’s a lot of power. It definitely skews the leverage and power in favor of the promoter, who is also the sanctioning body setting up the rankings and the titles that we as athletes hope and aspire to fight for. That leverage and power allows them to sign fighters to very exclusive, very limiting contracts, signing away their ancillary rights and many other things in perpetuity forever that normally under the Ali Act with boxing would not be allowed. So that’s the biggest thing that the Ali Act does for us as mixed martial artists, is it changes that structure, it separates those powers.
It wouldn’t just change the UFC’s business practices, it would change the business practices for the entire sport. All the promotions are using the same flawed system. … I think if it gets passed there’s gonna be a transition period where the promotions are going to have to decide whether they’re gonna remain a sanctioning body that sets rankings and titles or if they want to be a promoter that promotes fighters to fight for those rankings and titles. The change would create an open competitive market.
“Right now, it’s a very closed anti-competitive market. 90 percent of the funds that they generate in our sport right now are coming through the UFC, so obviously they don’t want to see this change. They’ve had a license to basically to print money off the backs of fighters since 2000, since the last 16 years. Certainly, the new owners maybe didn’t understand or didn’t see what was potentially coming, but I absolutely believe the Fertittas knew what was coming with the class action lawsuit and then now the fighters uniting with the fighters association and trying to get the Ali act amended to protect us like is does boxers. So I’m sure it’s gotta be concerning to them.
“They are lobbying, they’ve hired lobbyists and my understanding is they’ve spent over a million dollars with lobby groups trying to shut this down and trying to spin it and convince people that it doesn’t need to be changed, that it should just stay the same – which in my opinion is a lot tougher position to sell. But it’s gonna be an interesting year, for sure.
If the bill comes out of the committee which it appears to have, it will be voted on in the house. If it passes the house, it will be voted on in the senate. If it passes in the senate, it will be sent to President Trump. Given that UFC president Dana White spoke in Trump’s favor at the Republican convention, and that they speak on the phone twice a month, it would not be a shock if the Ali Act amendment got vetoed.
Were that to happen, it would go back to the Congress, where it will need a 2/3 majority vote in the house and senate to become law. Both houses of Congress have Republican majorities, a party not renowned for siding with labor over management. As Couture noted, the UFC has hired a lobbying firm to fight the Ali Act expansion. Put simply, the bill faces a fight.
Couture also discussed whether Conor McGregor can get licensed as a boxer and use the Ali Act to break his UFC contract and secure a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather. Notorious has floated the idea.
We’ve already seen the complete 180 from Dana,” said Couture. “Rather than fighting Conor, where he was stripped of his 145-pound title and even dropped out of the top ten rankings in that weight class having not lost a fight, I think was backlash for his public voice about the boxing match. We’ve already seen Dana do a complete 180 and now he’s offering both Mayweather and McGregor significant amounts of money to be involved and promote that boxing match. So I think (John S) Nash’s estimation is exactly right, which is exactly why this is helping our movement and what we’re trying to do on the federal legislative level with the Ali act.
“I think the one issue that McGregor’s gonna have is that he has no real boxing experience, he’s a mixed martial artist. So finding a commission that is going to be willing to sanction him to fight arguably the best boxer in the world right now in Floyd Mayweather, is going to be a problem.
“It’s one thing to have a guy like James Tony get licensed in mixed martial arts even though he had no mixed martial arts background – which happened, obviously. I fought him in Boston. Somebody sanctioned that event. I think James wasn’t exactly, and nor was I, the number one guy in my weight class at that time, so maybe it was a little easier to sell. I think it’s a little tougher to sell Mayweather-McGregor with McGregor’s boxing experience. And it would be tougher to sell Mayweather-McGregor in a mixed martial arts competition to get Mayweather licensed and sanction that event in mixed martial arts. So I think that is the hurdle, is finding a commission that’s going to be willing to sanction that fight and make it happen.
2017 is going to be a very interesting year for mixed martial arts. I think that the sport exploded so quickly, became so popular so fast, and obviously since 2005 and the first season of the Ultimate Fighter, it’s really going to change and skyrocketed on a global level. And it almost seems like there needs to be a bit of a correction.
“You know, we’ve got two, sometimes three shows every weekend now. It doesn’t have the same sex appeal or lustre, or whatever you want to call it, that it had when there were eight or nine shows a year and you kind of got to know those athletes and you wanted to see whether they were gonna win or gonna lose or what they were gonna say in their interview. And obviously guys like Chael Sonnen and now Conor McGregor have took all that part of the marketing and the fight game to a whole new level in MMA, but I just think that – hell, there’s 80 percent of the fighters, I don’t know who they are, I don’t even know where they came from.
