Fitch: Rebney’s public statements are ‘very troubling’

Bellator MMA founder Bjorn Rebney recently launched the Mixed Martial Arts Athlete Association. The group is beginning as an association but plans to become a union.

Rebney plans to organize fighters and then approach the UFC. The UFC in turn, he believes, will want reassurances that they are free from future claims. That reassurance would come in the form of an anti-trust exemption, like that enjoyed by, for example, the NFL. That is only available if there is a union, so under this scenario, the UFC would agree to a union.

However, several fighters who are part of the Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Association filed a class-action lawsuit against the UFC in December of 2014 in the Northern District of California. Among those fighters is current WSoF welterweight Champion Jon Fitch. The suit is currently in discovery; its class-action status will be decided upon in 2017.

The anti-trust suit would be rendered moot if the UFC gets an anti-trust exemption as Rebney plans. Fitch appeared recently on MMAjunkie Radio, and he is not impressed.

It’s very troubling that Bjorn Rebney publicly stated he plans to settle the class-action lawsuit, said Fitch, as transcribed by MMAjunkie. Which would undercut – who knows? – hundreds of millions of dollars of money that should be recovered to fighters who fought in the UFC in order to make a profit for himself.

We have no intention of settling. We need the contracts to change. Any fighter who fought for the UFC from 2010 to today is a part of this class-action lawsuit. Every single one of them is eligible to be paid the recovery of damages. If he’s planning to try to recruit guys in order to undercut and settle, he’s stealing millions of dollars from these guys.

I’ve been trying to stay active for a long time, but I can only get fights about every nine months. Just because that’s the way the contracts and the promotion is working right now. I would love to fight four times in a year. I’d probably have made enough money to retire already if I could fight the pace that I wanted to.

But we’re limited with how much we can fight because of the way with the system of MMA works today.

To borrow from motion pictures, Fitch’s model is like today’s Screen Actors Guild, in which talent can go to the highest bidder. By contrast, the Studio System during the Golden Age of Hollywood saw the industry dominated by a small number of major studios, who held talent in exclusive contracts. The latter model probably is familiar to most MMA fans.

The MMAFA has issued a cease-and-desist letter to the MMAAA. The MMAAA said they would neither cease nor desist, and added that the anti-trust attorneys only represent a few fighters, and were only looking to get some money out of one case.