New UFC antitrust lawsuit calls for one-year fighter contracts

The original UFC antitrust lawsuit may have been settled for a whopping $375 million, but there’s still a second antitrust lawsuit ongoing against the UFC … and now two more.

Le v. Zuffa settled last year, with hundreds of millions of dollars being paid out right now to fighters who competed between 2010 to 2017. Johnson v. Zuffa (dba UFC) covers UFC fighters from 2017 to the present day and is still winding its way through court. It’s a tough one because many fighters in that time period signed arbitration clauses and class action waivers which complicate the legal situation greatly.

In a recent back-and-forth between UFC and fighter lawyers, the promotion argued the fighters that filed suit shouldn’t represent the present class of fighters because their specific contracts didn’t include the arbitration and class action elements. So lawyers have filed a new lawsuit with former UFC light heavyweight Misha Cirkunov to represent fighters who signed the more recent, most restrictive contracts.

That’s just some complex legal wrangling to ensure the 2017 onward antitrust suit properly covers all fighters. What’s more interesting is another lawsuit launched with another former UFC light heavyweight, Phil Davis, who hopes to represent all fighters OUTSIDE the UFC.

That’s right: now that UFC has basically admitted their monopsony powers hurt UFC fighter pay, non-UFC fighters are out to prove those powers hurt pay outside the UFC as well. John Nash explained the suit in the latest episode of his Hey Not The Face podcast.

“Phil Davis [alleges] the UFC’s scheme impairs professional MMA promotions like PFL in their ability to attract a critical mass of top-level MMA fighters necessary to compete with the UFC at the top tier of the sport of professional MMA,” Nash said. “And otherwise substantially forecloses competition in the market relevant to the case.”

“What he’s saying is because these other promotions don’t have access to fighters, they cannot put on the big fights,” Nash continued. “Because they can’t put on bigger fights, they cannot pay their fighters like Phil Davis — who’s rated No. 8 on Fight Matrix right now — they cannot pay them more. And so fighters outside the UFC are damaged by their scheme, not just fighters in the UFC. Because the UFC is starving other promotions of a chance to compete for those top level fighters.”

What’s most interesting about Davis’ lawsuit is it isn’t looking for another big financial settlement from the UFC. He’s asking for specific injunctive relief to end the UFC’s ability to lock top fighters up in contracts that never end.

The filing calls for the elimination of restrictive and exclusionary clauses from UFC fighter contracts, the elimination of arbitration clauses and class action waivers, and asks that a provision be added to all current and future UFC contracts that allows a fighter to terminate their contract without penalty after one year.

For a brief moment after the initial UFC antitrust lawsuit was filed, the UFC included a five year sunset clause in their contracts. That was removed after fighters like Francis Ngannou used it to escape the promotion’s control and make $30 million as a free agent. That gives you a glimpse of how even the weakest of fighter protections can shake up the game. A one year sunset clause would effectively blow open the MMA market.

The first UFC antitrust case took a decade to wind its way through court to a settlement. We’ll see how long Johnson v. UFC takes, and if Cirkunov v. UFC has to start from scratch or gets folded into the Johnson case as lawyers hope. Does Davis v. UFC also get assigned to the same ‘biased’ judge? Can it skip several steps because of the ongoing antitrust litigation in these other cases?

UFC lawyers will try to slow down all these lawsuits as much as possible. We’ll keep you updated on whether that’s successful or not.