Manager: Sponsors who left UFC after Reebok Deal left MMA

Manager Alex Davis serves a long list of fighters, and sometimes serves as the conscience of the sport. On a long list of topics, for many, many years, he has spoken out for what’s right.

Davis spoke recently with Guilherme Cruz for MMA Fighting about The Reebok Deal, which has received an extraordinary amount of criticism in its first nine months. There are more than five years to go. Davis says so far, the deal has not been a good one from his perspective.

“It looks like this deal, at least for me, didn’t bear the fruits both UFC and Reebok expected,” said Davis. “I think it wasn’t good for athletes, and had a negative effect in the MMA industry that was growing and supporting the sport.

“We have to wait. Reebok is a big company and is developing products. I think they will learn with the things that are wrong and fix it. I hope it changes something in the medium and long terms. The Reebok deal might bring a positive effect for the sport long term because it gave the sport more credibility among other big companies, but it became a huge hit for athletes short term because it took a lot of their money.”

Davis is here using the word “hit” not as in a hit record, but as in he got hit and a tooth fell out of his face.

There is widespread criticism of the apparel’s look, which has been likened to an Uno card, but Davis has hopes for improvement.

“I think their graphic design made it less interesting,” said Davis. “They should also allow other sponsors in there. It would be more interesting, and also help fighters compensate the lack of resources in the sport right now. I have a great relationship with Reebok, but this thing isn’t moving the way everybody expected. We knew it would never be like it used to be, but we expected something positive, but we didn’t have this positive return yet.”

One hope was that sponsors locked out of the UFC would seek out fighters in other leagues, but that did not come to pass according to Davis, who would know, as he has fighters in so many leagues.

“What worries me the most is that I expected that the companies that used the UFC to advertise their products would use other promotions to invest their money in other promotions, but that never happened,” he said. “These other promotions don’t have the same platform the UFC does. They are still far from the UFC in terms of production, media, and public relations. They don’t give those brands the same exposure the UFC did. Many companies were hurt with this deal and that took a lot of money away from the sport, which I think is wrong.”

If Davis is correct, it is sobering. It means companies were not investing in fighters. It means they were not investing in MMA. It means they were investing in the UFC. And it goes to a larger question of whether MMA is big, or the UFC is big. The answer to that question is critically important in a wide variety of areas, including fighter contract negotiations, and the UFC anti-trust lawsuit.