MMAAA hit with cease-and-desist letter, responds

There is currently a massive, multi-million dollar class action lawsuit underway, organized by the MMAFA. It was initiated late in 2014.

A new group seeking to organize fighters announced its formation last week, the MMAAA. It was started by Bellator MMA founder Bjorn Rebney. Shortly afterward, Rebney further revealed his plans, which include getting the UFC to acquiesce to a fighter’s union in exchange for an anti-trust exemption, like that enjoyed by the NFL.

Once they’ve agreed to our demands and we’ve reached an agreement, they are gonna want that and they would deserve it at that point, said Rebney. At that point we would become a union.

However, there is already an anti-trust action underway, and they are not impressed. Attorneys have issued a Cease and Desist Order. John S. Nash for Bloody Elbow obtained a copy of the letter, excerpted below.

Dear Mr. Rebney:

As you know, we are the Court-appointed Plaintiffs’ Interim Co-Lead Class Counsel in the above-referenced litigation (UFC Class Action). The UFC Class Action has progressed substantially since it was filed nearly two years ago. We write to express our concern that certain of your recent actions and statements may impede or undermine that progress and thereby ultimately harm the MMA fighters whose interests you are now purporting to champion.

… certain comments you made during your recent announcement of the formation of the MMAAA require an immediate response. Specifically, you said that one of the goals of the MMAAA is to seek a settlement on behalf of current and former UFC fighters to compensate for lost income due to prior alleged wrongdoing by the UFC. As you are aware, the federal court presiding over the UFC Class Action has appointed us, as Co-Lead Counsel, to pursue such claims in the UFC Class Action. Given that appointment, we—along with the six named plaintiff fighters in the case—have made substantial strides on behalf of all UFC fighters over these past two years— strides that your recent actions and statements threaten to undo.

In promoting this goal of the MMAAA, you have denigrated the UFC Class Action and otherwise attempted to divide the fighters into warring groups. Such statements will only serve to undermine the successful prosecution of the UFC Class Action, and thereby impair the ability of all UFC fighters, past and present, to obtain a just remedy for the UFC’s alleged anticompetitive actions.

As you must be aware, establishing a rival group that attempts to recover for identical alleged past harms would only benefit Zuffa, presenting it with the option of paying the lowest bidder to resolve fighters’ claims. Your actions could also damage our efforts, through the UFC Class Action, to seek a binding court order putting an end to certain of Zuffa’s alleged anticompetitive misconduct in furtherance of the goal of creating a more competitive landscape for the sport, benefitting MMA fighters and fans alike. As you must be aware, the fighters are better off united than divided, and thus your attempts to sow division operate to no one’s advantage but Zuffa’s.

Neither you, your attorneys, nor your associates have played any role in the achievements made in the lawsuit to date. And, as just discussed, you have more recently taken to denigrating the suit in your public statements—contrary to the interests of all fighters. 

Worse, as we both know—but which you have failed to disclose publicly—you, your investors, and your legal team had previously sought to be included in our efforts to prosecute the UFC Class Action—as long as you and your investors could share in any recovery. Indeed, well after the UFC Class Action was underway, at the invitation of Ken Pavia, Class Counsel agreed to attend an October 15, 2015, meeting with you (as the former CEO of Bellator), representatives of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Mr. Pavia and your lawyers at the offices of CAA in New York.

You and your representatives told us that you had formed the MMAAA, which (you then said) was supported by hundreds of current and former MMA fighters. You claimed further that you had contemplated starting your own rival antitrust action if Co-Lead Counsel did not meet certain demands. Five days later, on October 20, 2015, the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association was registered with the California Secretary of State and assigned entity number C3836158. We are also now aware of recent reports that you registered the domain name mmaathletesassociation.com in October 2015 and that you continue to own the domain names mihsportsentertainment.com and mihsportsent.net, which may be names for planned MMA promotions.

Ten days after the meeting at CAA, on October 25, 2015, your attorneys presented us with your demands. You proposed that we, as Co-Lead Counsel, promise to devote a certain percentage of any class-wide recovery in the Class Action to the MMAAA, which monies you told us would be used for compensating unnamed investors for unspecified expenses incurred in establishing the organization, among other things. You further demanded that your representatives should be allowed full participation in any settlement negotiations that might occur in the Class Action. As you know, we rejected your demands because we believed that they were neither consistent with applicable canons of professional ethics, nor with our duties as Co-Lead Class Counsel to protect the interests of all UFC fighters in the proposed classes that the Court appointed us (and not you or your lawyers) to represent.

Nevertheless, as we informed you at time, our two efforts could work in complementary fashion if we kept in communication. Despite our offer to maintain open lines of communication, we heard nothing further from you or anyone acting on your behalf until November 30, 2016, when you publicly disclosed the formation of the MMAAA.

To be clear, we have no intention of interfering with your ability to advise the MMAAA or to meet with UFC fighters about joining it. Again, we are fully supportive of efforts that would benefit the interests of MMA fighters. We are, however, concerned that you may well be promoting your own interests above those of UFC fighters. We cannot and will not condone efforts by you, the MMAAA, or any other party to usurp the role of Co-Lead Counsel to represent UFC fighters in the UFC Class Action, prosecute their antitrust claims against the UFC for its alleged illegal conduct or negotiate settlements on class members’ behalf. You have not been appointed to pursue such claims, are not qualified to prosecute such cases, and in our view, your efforts to harm the UFC Class Action will only serve to undermine the achievements made in the Action to date, and thereby ultimately injure the fighters whose interests you are seeking to represent. Your efforts to divide the fighters and orchestrate a reverse auction for Zuffa to pay the lowest bidder, is not in the interests of any UFC fighters, past or present.

Lastly, we understand that you may have caused one or more third parties to solicit at least one of the named plaintiffs in the UFC Class Action. Given the stated goal of the MMAAA to seek a settlement from Zuffa on behalf of UFC fighters, and given your status as an attorney, and given further that the MMAAA is being advised and assisted by additional attorneys, we believe that such communications may violate well established prohibitions against communications with persons known to be represented by counsel in active litigation and improperly interfere with the Court-appointed duties of Co-Lead Counsel. We therefore demand that you, the MMAAA, and any person or entity acting on behalf of the MMAAA, immediately cease and desist any and all efforts to contact named plaintiffs in the UFC Class Action and the other fighters represented by Co-Lead Class Counsel in an effort to settle their claims. Please confirm, in writing, no later than December 9, 2016, that you, the MMAAA and all persons or entities acting on behalf of you and the MMAAA will cease and desist this improper conduct.

More urgently and importantly, we also strongly suggest that you reconsider your recent efforts to divide the fighters, and thereby harm those whose interests you claim to represent.

Sincerely,

Eric L. Cramer Michael Dell’Angelo BERGER & MONTAGUE, P.C. Joseph R. Saveri JOSEPH SAVERI LAW FIRM, INC. Benjamin D. Brown COHEN MILSTEIN SELLERS & TOLL, PLLC
Co-Lead Class Counsel

MMAAA attorneys Jim Quinn and Eric Hochstadt released a statement in response, also to BE.

As Georges St-Pierre, Donald Cerrone, T.J. Dillashaw, Tim Kennedy, and Cain Velasquez made clear in the official public announcement last week, the Mixed Martial Arts Athlete Association (MMAAA) is all about looking out for the fighters and their well-being long-term.

Yesterday, the MMAAA received a cease and desist letter from a group of lawyers seeking to stop the MMAAA from signing up fighters and sticking up for their rights against the UFC and its owners WME-IMG. The MMAAA will do no such thing. Those lawyers – who represent only a few fighters – are focused on getting some money out of one case, of which they seek a significant portion for themselves. Those lawyers do not speak for anyone else, and certainly not the MMAAA and all the fighters the organization represents now and will quickly grow to represent in the sport.

Over a year ago, those same lawyers reached out to the MMAAA to join forces with us. We had a meeting and made clear that the MMAAA’s primary focus would be on achieving three core goals: 1) substantially increasing UFC fighter pay to 50%; 2) securing all-encompassing long term benefits for UFC fighters; and 3) a settlement to compensate past and current UFC fighters for all of the UFC’s wrongs. To achieve these goals for the benefit of the fighters, we also made clear the MMAAA needed to receive a percentage of a monetary settlement to cover the costs to fund the MMAAA for staffing and attorneys both for past work getting to this point and the long fight ahead. The lawyers made clear that they did not share the MMAAA’s vision. They are focused on a short-term monetary recovery, of which they will seek 33%, and then they are gone from this sport. We parted ways at that point.

The MMAAA is all about the fighters benefitting when the UFC is finally forced to take a powerful group of the fighters seriously. The MMAAA will be executing on that plan and will not be stopped in this effort on behalf of fighters.

There is a fighter now on each side of the cage, and the ref just said, “Fight!” Unfortunately, this kind of inter-organizational battle does exactly nothing in the short term for fighters.