Leslie Smith: Why other fighter unionization efforts failed
Leslie Smith: “PFA and some of the other efforts didn’t really go anywhere was because they were not motivated by the right reasons: the fighters.”
UFC Women’s bantamweight fighter Leslie Smith recently launched Project Spearhead, a campaign to seek union recognition for UFC fighters. It’s not an easy effort.
When the UFC sold for $4 billion, former baseball agent Jeff Borris tried to organize fighters under the Professional Fighters Association and failed utterly.
He created a board of player agents, shared that information with the fighter agents before we had talked to them, and then that was shared to the media and UFC, explained Smith to Al Neal, the St. Louis bureau chief for People’s World, the news website associated with the Communist Party USA. You can’t imagine how shocked I was to wake up and see it all over the news.
The MMA Fighters Association (MMAFA) is the sport’s oldest organizing effort, and has focused on the anti-trust lawsuit against UFC, and has a bill before Congress to extend the Ali Act to MMA.
I think that both groups [MMAFA and Project Spearhead] are needed,” said Smith. “Project Spearhead’s idea is the union and the unity of all the fighters, not just the UFC, even though that’s where we’re starting at. If Project Spearhead can establish the fighters union and MMAFA can continue its work championing the needs of fighters in other promotions, then we will be able to work together on all those issues.
I think the reason PFA and some of the other efforts didn’t really go anywhere was because they were not motivated by the right reasons: the fighters. Project Spearhead came about after much thought and discussion around what we, the fighters, wanted our union to look like. We decided we were going to work on building our own grassroots organization led by the fighters. Decisions would be made by the fighters, for the fighters, and our agenda set by the fighters.
Everybody wants to get more bargaining power from the UFC. The thing is, everybody has their different issues that they’re going through, but it’s all the same issues. It all boils down to people not getting enough respect from the UFC and being stuck in these restrictive contracts and not being able to move past that. I talk to people and they tell me that they are worried about their jobs. They say they want to get on board with this, but they’re worried about their jobs.
“I am on my last fight with my promotional contract—my eighth fight that I’m currently preparing for—and I don’t know if UFC will renew the contract. Even though I’m in a good spot with the UFC [a two-fight win streak], they didn’t approach me about renegotiation, so I want to use my platform to make as a big of an impression as possible to help push the union.
We need a backbone for the union. I feel like people definitely want it, but they don’t want to put themselves out on a limb for it. Well, that’s fine. The way that this is structured, they don’t have to put themselves out for it. All they have to do is sign a card, send it in.
UFC president Dana White is on record as being neutral about a fighters’ union.
Unions don’t necessarily make things better, you know what I mean? Careful what you wish for,” said White in 2016. “I couldn’t care either way. I could care less. It doesn’t matter to me.
Leslie Smith fights Aspen Ladd at UFC Fight Night 128: Barboza vs. Lee on April 21, 2018, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
