Discontent strongly voiced at UFC Athlete Retreat

Kajan Johnson: “You took food off our plates, so I want to know how you can justify that, I want to know how you sleep at night?”

Kirik Jenness

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The UFC Athlete Retreat this weekend hosted guest celebrities including retired NBA star Kobe Bryant and rapper and actor Snoop Dogg, and introduced fighters to the new UFC Performance Institute among other activities.

This event represents a unique opportunity for you to interact with your fellow athletes, UFC staff and your new ownership group, while hearing from a wide variety of experts across sports, entertainment and business,” read the fighter invite.

However, some of the experts heard from the fighters, too.

“We’re on the verge of forming a union here,” said woman’s bantamweight Leslie Smith to Bryant. She then asked the retired LA Laker to comment on the NBA players union.

“When you guys have this unity, when you guys are operating together on the same page together, it does nothing but simply fortify the sport and make the sport better,” said Bryant, as transcribed by Mike Chiari for B/R. “Not just for the present, but also for the future generations that are coming, so it’s extremely important.”

There was also a big vote down for The Reebok Deal, that was precipitated by a Budweiser rep who was reportedly drunk and obnoxious with a beer in his hand at 10:30 a.m.

Lightweight Kajan Johnson eventually couldn’t take any more and asked questions so pointedly he was eventually escorted from the meeting. The Tristar fighter appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour and discussed what happened.

They’ve got a couple guests that are speaking, one’s from Reebok, one’s from Anheuser Busch, that makes like Budweiser and that, said Kajan, as transcribed by Dave Doyle for MMA Fighting. And, you know, they’re kind of talking at us, not really to us, it’s not like a two-way conversation, they’re just trying to like, saying, yeah, okay, this is what we want from guys that we sponsor.

The Reebok guy was just like telling us about how good the deal was for him, how good the deal was for UFC, and I’m sitting there like yeah, well, it wasn’t very good for me. I’m sure a lot of the fighters were thinking the same thing. And then this Anheuser Busch dude, man. I don’t know what’s wrong with this guy, but he was [allegedly] drunk at like 10:30 in the morning, he comes on stage with a beer.

This guy’s saying that he only wants winners and don’t be surprised that if we sponsor you and then you lose that we drop you, ‘cause we don’t want the guy whose on the ground, we want the guy with his hand raised. Like dude, everybody loses, man, if you’re a company that’s like that, I don’t want to f*** with you. I’m not about that. That doesn’t rub me the right way and it didn’t rub anybody the right way.

I’m sitting there getting more and more pissed off. And then eventually I had enough and I stood up and I was just like, I just have a question for the Reebok guy, I want to know, because I understand the deal was good for you, did great things for your company, I understand the deal was great for the UFC because it shows they could get corporate sponsorship, which led to the, was one of the things that led to them selling for such a high price tag, but, the fighters, you guys took 80 percent of my sponsorship dollars, and that’s the lower end, not the higher end, a lot of guys the higher up on the card got a lot more money taken from them. So you took food off our plates, so I want to know how you can justify that, I want to know how you sleep at night?

Maybe it wasn’t the right forum. Maybe I wasn’t talking to the right people. Reebok is there to look after Reebok, right? So I realize that I probably shouldn’t have been yelling at Reebok because they just made a deal that was good for their company. They’re not there to look after the fighters. The UFC, on the other hand, they have all our exclusive contracts, right? So it’s their job to look out for us and they’re not doing that. So, they’re the people I should have been speaking to, that I should have been yelling at.

Then something new happened. Kajan got the opportunity to yell at the UFC. In fact, the majority of the roster did. The UFC added a new session, and allowed fighters to comprehensively air grievances.

Actually, it ended up pretty positive really, said Johnson. Because after they sat me down, they took a huge list of every single grievance that I have with the game of MMA to date, which is a lot. I just got back from DC, I was lobbying for the Ali Act, in Congress right before I went to the athlete retreat, so I have a lot of grievances. There’s a lot that’s I see that’s wrong with the way they’re conducting business in this game. And so that happened and then after that, that led to them calling a whole ‘nother meeting with all the fighters, sitting us down in a room, and having an open, honest, back and forth two-way discussion, which I don’t think has ever even happened before. It was amazing, the outcome of that was incredible.

All these other fighters started speaking up. Sara McMann had a whole bunch of different solutions that she was proposing. Joe Lauzon was calling them out and asking for transparency in the numbers of the Reebok deal so we can really believe when they’re saying that all the money is going to the fighters. All these different things were proposed and they seemed actually truly empathetic to our situation, upset that we weren’t happy with the current deal and wanting to work around that deal in whatever capacity they could, to make it better for these next four years that we’re still involved with Reebok so we’re happy so that Reebok will actually want to sign that deal again. Because right now I don’t think they’re very happy with the press that they’re getting from this deal, right?

Fighting in the Octagon takes courage, and what Johnson did does too. He hasn’t fought since 2015, and is 2-1 in the UFC. If he loses his next fight, the UFC could cut him.

I’ve been scared that I was going to get cut for a long time, said Johnson. I’m pretty vocal on Twitter with the things I say, I’m in Congress lobbying for the Ali Act. I’ve been scared for a long time that I’m going to get cut, but it’s worth it to me, man. If I can implement some sort of change, even if I have to sacrifice myself to do it, I’ll do it, dude. The game needs to change, everybody knows we don’t make enough money, nobody’s happy, all these fighters are unhappy, everybody’s bitching in interviews, and on Twitter, and being upset, but nobody’s actually going and doing something about it, so even if I have to be the sacrificial lamb, that would in turn spur change and encourage others to step up and to stand up and to get involved.

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