[Scape]

Never thought I would agree with Jake but wow, Dana got pwned.

[xerxes]

Ugh. This is killing me. He’s right about the UFC. Dana is as big a POS as Vince McMahon.

But goddammit why did it have to be this colossal douchebag to say it?

[Scape]

You would think of all these big tuff hard asses that ONE of them would stand up to the man but no. It takes some punk youtuber with money of his own to stir the pot. Shows you just how powerful management has become in the market. If this isn't a posterchild for unionizing I don't know what is. Sad thing is the people who are the most ardent supporters of UFC tend to be hard core anti-union so there would not be much, if any, support from the fanbase. Much like taking a knee in the NFL union talk is seen as weakness.

[Thanos]

Need to check with the locker room first to see if they even want a union. Odds are they don't, mostly because it would reduce the payout for the winners if a big chunk of their win money ended up going to a union. Just like with boxing and even pro wrestling most of the talent wants to be independent contractors and not employees because they can make much more money as independents.

It would probably be better to create some sort of industry association just to ensure that there's a minimum payout for each fighter, just like the Screen Actors Guild ensures for the small-role performers in film and TV. And don't take money from them for health insurance either, because as independent contractors they can pay for it themselves and then use it as a tax write-off. Any guild/association they form would also have a very important role as a supervisor/overseer/agent to make sure their money is managed properly and that they don't sign contracts with a promotor without proper representation being there at their side. The vast majority of them already have agents doing that sort of thing for them but the association could fill in that role for the fighters just starting out and the lower-ranked fighters who can't afford the management fees for their own personal representative.

This would be about all it would take, and set these guys up with some sort of financial security because by the time they hit their forties the ones who've taken the worst beatings during their career will certainly be showing severe concussion syndrome symptoms and they'll definitely need some professional individual or organization looking out for their interests.

[rickc]

Lets crunch some numbers here. $12,000 minimum for a fight. Only championship or headliner bouts go five rounds. All other bouts go three, five minute rounds. Getting paid $12,000 for 15 minutes of work comes out to $48,000 and hour. Not a bad wage for some dipshit with a 3rd grade education. Medical insurance? Give me a break. People work part time jobs where they go in for several days a week every week of the year and don't get medical insurance. I am supposed to give a shit about some ham and egger who works a few hours a year? I don't think so. MMA is not like your typical athlete on a team sport. They train and work out on grueling schedules. Attendance is mandatory. MMA fighters train when and if they feel like it. Team athletes live on the road. They can be away from home for weeks at a time. MMA fighters literally work a few hours to a few days a year max. Sometimes they go a few years without a fight.

Junior hockey players get a stipend of $50 to $100 a week. They LIVE their job. Before my city got an NHL team we had an ECHL team. Experienced players get $545 a week in the ECHL. That comes out to $13 an hour, if they were working 40 hours a week. They work a LOT more than 40 hours a week! Busting their asses every day living out of a suitcase trying to make it to the big league. I don't want to hear any whining from someone who works whenever they damn well please who pulls down a minimum of $12,000 just for showing up. They can tap out 5 seconds into the bout and still get the $12,000. The hockey players in the ECHL busts their asses for 22 weeks to earn that kind of money. They put their body and health on the line every day of that 22 weeks as well. If the fighters are any good they will advance and earn more, its that simple.

Like Dana said: if dipshit Paul thinks that he can do a better job, than do it!

[Scape]

You mean like the XFL? Give me a break. It's a cowards argument being used if they resort to don't like it? Do it yourself! You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time you have a gripe but if you constantly scraping the bottom of the barrel and expecting the state to pony up for the medical bills rather than establishing a baseline in the industry there is rot that needs to be addressed.

A fighter that taps out for a $12,000 payday will soon find they are not fighting anymore. Prestige is a commodity much like trust, hard to build up and can be lost in an instant. Also, it is the ONLY insurance they have for a payday so why would they burn that?

The same argument is used in the gaming industry where CEO's like Bobby Kotick get away with billions in stock options while staff are barely able to make rent and are expected to crunch working insane hours for minimum pay. I'm not saying CEO shouldn't get payed while the workers get 3 day work weeks but the 'free' market is the last place we need these standards to be set.

Government regulation is at best a suggestion like taxes on the rich. It can be ignored just ask Amazon's Jeff Bezos. It is only thru a combination of public pressure (the fanbase) and industry standards (government regulation of workforce) will there be any baseline established that isn't using fly-by-night standards that the free market will immediately go to if they can get away with it. Anything else and we might as well be living in China.

[Thanos]

There's better places than MMA to argue for that though. MMA is the most brutal and most selfish of all the pro sports. Some sort of unity from the fighters is probably far too much to expect because they all seem to hate each other in a way that was never seen between athletes before, not even in boxing. Half of the MMA fighters are legit nuts and the other half come across like they belong in prison. Like, is anyone going to ever get a genuinely insane shitbag like Connor McGregor to sit down with the boys to start moving towards a union? Not on your life. These jackals in MMA, fighters and promotors alike, would turn on each other in a heartbeat and the whole effort would be sabotaged from within in the blink of an eye. That UFC and the others could easily double the base pay for each fighter per match and not even see it amount to a rounding-error on their balance sheet probably means nothing at all to the fighters because they most likely would rather screw each other any way they can than help each other, even if helping each other was in their own personal best interest.

Leave these violent creeps to their own devices. There's lots of other much better working folks out there who truly have it a lot tougher on a daily basis than anyone involved in the MMA dog-fighting circus does.

[Scape]

1st they came of the MMA fighters and I did nothing...

If they can be treated like dogs what chance to the rest of us have? It's the example they set that worries me. A race to the bottom for labour standards.

[Thanos]

Unless they're in danger of being enslaved and turned into gladiators there's nothing to worry about. Of all the serious labour issues out there any of the ones involving pro sports are literally the least important ones. Millionaire athletes with dream-world lives, and enjoying a level of personal safety & comfort the next ten thousand people in line behind them can only fantasize about, voluntarily working for billionaires and making endless money hand over fist? Big freaking whoop.

[xerxes]

Still, getting $12,000 for a real chance of developing a brain injury later in life is paltry compensation. They may as well be enslaved gladiators at that point.

You look at the NFL and NHL and other high contact sports, and the players there, while taking on known risks with their health, are also compensated a lot for it. Unless they're stupid with their money, they should be able to squirrel enough away for future medical expenses.

$12k a fight isn't enough to do that in a sport with a very high chance of getting CTE or other life altering injuries.

[bootlegga]

rickc rickc:

Lets crunch some numbers here. $12,000 minimum for a fight. Only championship or headliner bouts go five rounds. All other bouts go three, five minute rounds. Getting paid $12,000 for 15 minutes of work comes out to $48,000 and hour. Not a bad wage for some dipshit with a 3rd grade education. Medical insurance? Give me a break. People work part time jobs where they go in for several days a week every week of the year and don't get medical insurance. I am supposed to give a shit about some ham and egger who works a few hours a year? I don't think so. MMA is not like your typical athlete on a team sport. They train and work out on grueling schedules. Attendance is mandatory. MMA fighters train when and if they feel like it. Team athletes live on the road. They can be away from home for weeks at a time. MMA fighters literally work a few hours to a few days a year max. Sometimes they go a few years without a fight.

Junior hockey players get a stipend of $50 to $100 a week. They LIVE their job. Before my city got an NHL team we had an ECHL team. Experienced players get $545 a week in the ECHL. That comes out to $13 an hour, if they were working 40 hours a week. They work a LOT more than 40 hours a week! Busting their asses every day living out of a suitcase trying to make it to the big league. I don't want to hear any whining from someone who works whenever they damn well please who pulls down a minimum of $12,000 just for showing up. They can tap out 5 seconds into the bout and still get the $12,000. The hockey players in the ECHL busts their asses for 22 weeks to earn that kind of money. They put their body and health on the line every day of that 22 weeks as well. If the fighters are any good they will advance and earn more, its that simple.

Like Dana said: if dipshit Paul thinks that he can do a better job, than do it!

While I agree with Thanos that labour issues in pro sports are at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to labour issues, the fact is that MMA fighters don't earn $12,000 for 15 minutes work, anymore than Tom Brady earns $20 million for playing 16 to 20 football games.

I would argue that MMA fighters are pretty much the same as any other solitary athlete - tennis player, golfer, etc. They work as hard as they need to to advance in their sport - and I doubt any serious MMA fighter trains only when they 'feel like it'. I'd bet that most of them train six days a week.

Besides training, MMA fighters are also paid for the diet regimen, recuperation from their last fight, and everything else that is necessary for them to get into the ring. Plus, how many $12,000 paydays does an entry level wrestler get each year? Two, three, maybe four if they are lucky. So they MIGHT earn $48 grand a year for a few years - hardly a great payoff knowing that they will likely suffer from CTE or post concussion syndrome later in life.

Seems like a crappy wage if you ask me. I don't know that I'd even accept those future consequences for the millions that JSP, Couture, Gracie or McGregor earned over their careers.

[Thanos]

If they're half way decent in the ring they also get flooded with endorsement deals. Some of these guys will never win the title belt but they'll still become millionaires anyway thanks to the advertising contracts they get from Red Bull, Monster Energy, a host of clothing makers, supplement & vitamin companies, and dozens of others.