Manager on why fighters need to organize – it’s not what you think
“With all this talk about an MMA fighters union or association, it seems to me we are not focusing on the real issues.”
If UFC president Dana White is the controversial heart of Mixed Martial Arts, manager and ATT co-founder Alex Davis is the sport’s conscience. Davis started Judo at the age of 13 under a Japanese sensei, Takashi Yamagushi, who taught it as a vehicle for the development of character. Davis became a national judo champ in both the USA and Brazil, and now manages a number of top MMA fighters, including Edson Barboza, Luiz Cane, Rousimar Palhares, ‘Bigfoot’ Silva, and Thiago Tavares.
In the latest of a continuing series for MMAjunkie, Davis discusses why the sport needs fighters to organize.
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With all this talk about an MMA fighters union or association, it seems to me we are not focusing on the real issues.
There are some attempts to put together associations – supposedly to represent the fighters and address their problems – but in reality, so far, all the ones that have popped up have one purpose in mind: Go after the UFC and get a chunk of their money. Hardly anyone is looking at the big picture, at the evolution of the sport and saying, The fighters must be heard. They must be heard on the organization, on the rules, on the modifications of anything involved in MMA, for one very simple reason: they are the main players.
Take the athletic commissions. These guys are in charge of regulating the sport. But what often happens, in reality, is that in many cases, you have politically appointed people with a rather shallow knowledge of MMA or even traditional martial arts, creating and imposing things on us, holding us to a standard to which they, themselves, are not also held.
Let’s take a look at the promotions for example – and deeper, the contracts between them and the fighters. Your lawyer would not let you sign most of those. For the most part, they are completely lopsided, guaranteeing only the promotion’s interest, while the fighter is just about always cornered into it for sheer necessity. He or she needs those fights if that fighter is to get anywhere in this profession, and the promotions are aware of that and are able to have a very unfair attitude because of this.
The fighters do need to associate – but not to necessarily go to war with the UFC. No, the fighters need to associate to be heard on these issues, to be heard and give input into the development and improvement of the sport. If things are made easier, more sensible and fairer for the fighter, the outcome will be better fights and a better sport.