The Bottom Line: The Elephant in the Association Room
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of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of
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Evolve Media.
* * *
When the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association was announced on Nov. 30, there were plenty of prominent figures in attendance. Most of the discussion after the announcement centered on the involvement of Bjorn Rebney, a controversial figure because of his tenure as CEO of Bellator MMA. However, the much more important issue was the presence of the other figures on the stage.
In announcing Georges St.
Pierre, Donald
Cerrone, T.J.
Dillashaw, Cain
Velasquez and Tim Kennedy
as the board members for the MMAAA, a lot of star power was put
behind the effort to create a fighters association. That’s in some
ways a good thing, but it also reflects a crucial issue with which
MMA fighters will need to grapple before they can unify behind a
single association or union.
Some of the goals of a fighters association will be easy for all fighters to unify behind. Setting up some sort of pension plan and/or health insurance system for retired fighters would be a popular and laudable goal. Fighters surely want to make more money, and an association or union would fight hard for that aim. Where things get tricky is how that money would be distributed, and that’s something fighters need to address head-on among themselves before they can hope to create a lasting and strong partnership.
Any MMA union or organization is likely to seek that a certain amount of revenue is distributed to fighters. The big question will then be how that money is divided. Without competition among teams to decide that, some sort of system will need to be put in place. There are many options, and each of them is going to benefit certain types of fighters more than others.
Take, for example, a system built around tenure. Fighters make more and more money as their careers advance in the UFC. This would be preferred by older fighters and likely opposed by many younger fighters who will have to wait to make more down the line. It would also more likely be favored by less talented fighters and opposed by more talented fighters, as fighters would only need to hang around as opposed to excel.
As an alternative, imagine a system where rankings dictated pay. This would obviously be more appealing to higher-level fighters and less desirable to lower-level fighters. It would have other key constituent groups. Fighters in low-interest weight classes would like the fact that they would be compensated for being highly ranked in those weight classes while fighters in high-interest weight classes would be aggrieved that fans are paying to see them yet they’re getting the same amount as other fighters fans are not paying to see. Bland fighters would appreciate that winning fights would correlate with more money even if you aren’t doing anything boisterous to capture the public’s attention.
Another system could take into account revenue for individual shows and then distribute money to the fighters based on their place on those cards. This would be ideal for the biggest attractions in the sport but would be much less attractive to champions who don’t draw as well. It would also create problems as far as fighters jockeying heavily to fight on certain cards and not on others.
A fighters association would almost assuredly try to create some sort of hybrid approach, balancing different factors to determine how the pay would be distributed. However, that would not eliminate these conflicting interests. It would simply create a high-stakes negotiation among the fighters themselves with a wide array of different factions jockeying for their particular interests.
That’s where a board of St. Pierre, Dillashaw, Velasquez, Cerrone and Kennedy starts to become an issue. These are all star fighters. They’re going to have common interests with other fighters, but they’re also going to have very different interests in other ways. A board of those five fighters would likely create a vastly different system for pay than a board of Michael Johnson, Charles Oliveira, Tim Boetsch, Liz Carmouche and Ilir Latifi, for example.
The fact that the MMAAA didn’t announce a system for board voting moving forward is a significant issue. Fighters will need to feel that their interests are being looked out for in order to come on board, and those interests are not all in unison. That’s why unions in general try to gather employees who make similar amounts of money and do similar jobs. It makes it much easier to unify.
None of this is to say that fighters won’t be able to create an association or that the MMAAA specifically won’t work. It is to say that there are going to be some difficult negotiations amongst the fighters themselves in order to achieve their goals, and they need to come to grips with this reality and address it before they can move forward.
When the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association was announced on Nov. 30, there were plenty of prominent figures in attendance. Most of the discussion after the announcement centered on the involvement of Bjorn Rebney, a controversial figure because of his tenure as CEO of Bellator MMA. However, the much more important issue was the presence of the other figures on the stage.
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Some of the goals of a fighters association will be easy for all fighters to unify behind. Setting up some sort of pension plan and/or health insurance system for retired fighters would be a popular and laudable goal. Fighters surely want to make more money, and an association or union would fight hard for that aim. Where things get tricky is how that money would be distributed, and that’s something fighters need to address head-on among themselves before they can hope to create a lasting and strong partnership.
In other sports, pay is sorted out through the competition among
teams. Collective bargaining plays a number of important roles,
such as dictating minimum and maximum salaries as well as creating
rookie contract scales. However, the distribution of money is
primarily achieved by teams deciding how much individual athletes
are worth to them. Better players make more money because teams bid
against each other for their services. In MMA, this is
fundamentally different. There is some bidding between the
Ultimate Fighting Championship and other organizations for the
occasional free agent. It’s just much more common that top fighters
negotiate with the UFC alone for the best possible deal because it
has the biggest stage, the biggest paychecks and the best
competition. The MMAAA announced it is looking to represent UFC
fighters specifically because they are similarly situated.
Any MMA union or organization is likely to seek that a certain amount of revenue is distributed to fighters. The big question will then be how that money is divided. Without competition among teams to decide that, some sort of system will need to be put in place. There are many options, and each of them is going to benefit certain types of fighters more than others.
Take, for example, a system built around tenure. Fighters make more and more money as their careers advance in the UFC. This would be preferred by older fighters and likely opposed by many younger fighters who will have to wait to make more down the line. It would also more likely be favored by less talented fighters and opposed by more talented fighters, as fighters would only need to hang around as opposed to excel.
As an alternative, imagine a system where rankings dictated pay. This would obviously be more appealing to higher-level fighters and less desirable to lower-level fighters. It would have other key constituent groups. Fighters in low-interest weight classes would like the fact that they would be compensated for being highly ranked in those weight classes while fighters in high-interest weight classes would be aggrieved that fans are paying to see them yet they’re getting the same amount as other fighters fans are not paying to see. Bland fighters would appreciate that winning fights would correlate with more money even if you aren’t doing anything boisterous to capture the public’s attention.
Another system could take into account revenue for individual shows and then distribute money to the fighters based on their place on those cards. This would be ideal for the biggest attractions in the sport but would be much less attractive to champions who don’t draw as well. It would also create problems as far as fighters jockeying heavily to fight on certain cards and not on others.
A fighters association would almost assuredly try to create some sort of hybrid approach, balancing different factors to determine how the pay would be distributed. However, that would not eliminate these conflicting interests. It would simply create a high-stakes negotiation among the fighters themselves with a wide array of different factions jockeying for their particular interests.
That’s where a board of St. Pierre, Dillashaw, Velasquez, Cerrone and Kennedy starts to become an issue. These are all star fighters. They’re going to have common interests with other fighters, but they’re also going to have very different interests in other ways. A board of those five fighters would likely create a vastly different system for pay than a board of Michael Johnson, Charles Oliveira, Tim Boetsch, Liz Carmouche and Ilir Latifi, for example.
The fact that the MMAAA didn’t announce a system for board voting moving forward is a significant issue. Fighters will need to feel that their interests are being looked out for in order to come on board, and those interests are not all in unison. That’s why unions in general try to gather employees who make similar amounts of money and do similar jobs. It makes it much easier to unify.
None of this is to say that fighters won’t be able to create an association or that the MMAAA specifically won’t work. It is to say that there are going to be some difficult negotiations amongst the fighters themselves in order to achieve their goals, and they need to come to grips with this reality and address it before they can move forward.
