UFC Class action Lawsuit reveals how far manager corruption goes harming the Athletes to curry UFC’s favor

Luke Rockhold stirred up serious drama yesterday when he outlined how UFC uses several prominent managers to strong arm the athletes into accepting subpar conditions.

Rockhold told CBS Sports:

“The UFC uses these two or three managers, we all know who they are, who have lots of key players in the game and those fighters under their banner will never speak up against the UFC. And that’s the UFC’s monopoly, their mafioso tactic.”

Following these comments, one of the plaintiffs in the certified Class action Lawsuit against the UFC revealed something staggering.

“In the discovery of our UFC lawsuit we found emails from managers to the UFC brass saying their fighters will actually take LESS money than offered all to gain favor with the UFC as a manager that is “easy” to work with.
“Beloved” managers.
I can’t wait for it to be public info.”

Comments from both Quarry and Rockhold point out that there are managers who aren’t honoring their fiduciary duty. A fiduciary duty is the responsibility to act in the best interest of your client.

“These folks can’t be named and shamed fast enough. Should be run out of the sport. And sued for breach of fiduciary duty.” MMA ref and lawyer Erik Magraken added.

In an interesting post he also outlined how State Athletic Commissions need to start being more diligent ie to be an MMA manager one has to get licensed by that body.

This is an especially interesting topic considering that UFC is owned by a (Hollywood) management company that even to this day manages several athletes who have the contract with the promotion – not to mention their attempts to vilify and intimidate those represented by agencies of comparable power.

MMA is the wild west and the UFC is eager to exploit the chaos and fatten up their profit margins – all while athletes struggle and compromise their health on the daily.

Sadly it’s not so simple – due to the individual nature of the sport it’s hard to imagine a union forming and even harder to observe UFC’s daily efforts to tarnish the reputations of anyone who goes against their financial interests.