Opinion: False Dichotomy
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.
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In a sports calendar devoid of major events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, men like Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White and former title contender and Submission Underground proprietor Chael Sonnen are trying to prove they are the exceptions to the rule.
Sonnen on Sunday moved forward with SUG 12, a grappling event
consisting of nine pairings overall and headlined by Craig Jones,
who kept his undefeated promotional record intact after taking out
Kevin
Casey via heel hook. The match took place in a converted grain
silo in Oregon, minus the usual throng of fans and with only a
single camera operator and Sonnen—he provided commentary—witnessing
the action firsthand. During the usual round of media appearances
to promote the show, Sonnen, with his trademark combination of
puffery, charm and self-deprecation, attempted to minimize the
significance of pushing forward in an environment where governments
are ordering people to minimize their social contact. In an
interview with UFC.com, Sonnen blithely surmised that, pandemic or
no pandemic, he owed it to everyone involved to push ahead:
“We had this on the calendar. A deal is a deal, and we said we were moving forward and there’s a lot of people involved with this—people who have trained, people who have goals, people who, in all fairness, need to make a living. Not just the athletes, either. We’re talking production and everything. There’s just a lot of dominoes, and if you say you’re going to do something in this space, you do it.”
A similar position has been taken up by White—a man Sonnen defended in an interview with MMAFighting as a guy “trying to do what he said he would do”—in respect of the UFC’s event calendar. For weeks now, White has railed against the medical consensus by attempting to push forward with the promotion’s scheduled shows booked on several different continents, offering an increasingly vitriolic list of justifications for doing so, which includes that it’s all in the name of protecting fighter’s financial interests. In a now infamous Instagram live chat with welterweight champion Kamaru Usman, wherein White lashed out at members of the MMA media for questioning the UFC’s show-must-go-on mentality, he insisted that the alternative was to lay off employees and/or dishonor the company’s contracts with athletes:
“I have over 350 employee who work for me. Multi-billion-dollar companies are laying off all their employees right now. We haven’t laid off one person at the UFC. Every fighter that fights for me will fight three times this year. Our schedule will go on. Everybody’s going to get paid. We will figure this out and we will be the first sport back on, and [expletive] that s---. Everything will go on.”
The dichotomy that is being sold is that the company’s options are limited to either plowing ahead as usual or placing the athletes in financial peril by postponing shows. However, as governments literally beg residents to stay indoors, impose draconian travel restrictions and progressively ban businesses from a wide sphere of economic activity in the hopes of flattening the curve and saving lives, it appears that fighters are beginning to finally speak out about the absurd choice they’re being asked to make.
In an article published by MMAFighting.com, which focused on fighters’ preparing for UFC 250 on May 9 in Brazil, multiple fighters put their reservations about competing in the current climate on record. Citing inadequate training due to a lack of sparring partners and access to gym facilities, the pressure of breaking government directions around self-isolating for the sake of getting in rounds, putting their families at risk of contracting the virus and the ominous possibility that the event will ultimately fall through anyway, fighters like Ketlen Vieira, Bethe Correia and Augusto Sakai are at the vanguard of fighters beginning to question the validity of forging ahead amidst a global pandemic.
More significantly, lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, who was set to defend his title against Tony Ferguson at UFC 249 before travel restrictions left him marooned in Russia, also appears to be railing against UFC exceptionalism. “The Eagle” released a statement on Instagram on Wednesday that questioned why he was still expected to compete while “the whole world should be in quarantine,” confirming his withdrawal from the event.
The reality is that, of course fighters shouldn’t be fighting in this environment, especially if it involves bunny-hopping across different continents to navigate travel bans or, worse yet, puts them in a position where they might not return home. The risks of doing so have already been painfully illustrated in the aftermath of UFC Fight Night 170 on March 14 in Brazil. One fighter, strawweight Randa Markos, suspected she caught the virus but was unable to get tested; another, lightweight John Makdessi, was required to self-isolate and left incapable of accessing medical care for injuries suffered during his bout. That was three weeks ago, when there were only few thousand COVID-19 confirmed cases in the United States. There are now a mind-boggling 200,000-plus cases, with states like New York suffering thousands of fatalities as health officials scramble to mobilize ventilators and hospital beds.
The alternative is to go without a paycheck, right? In the short term, yes, but that’s not necessarily a huge departure from the status quo. Fighters are routinely turfed from bouts at the 11th hour, owing to factors like opponents missing weight or failing drug tests or the UFC requiring the opponent to fill a different booking. In these instances, the promotion generally chooses not to provide compensation unless the fighter has actually made it to the scales at the official weigh-in, even when he or she has incurred significant expenses during training camp. Other athletes are essentially forced into a hiatus because the UFC can’t fit them into its event calendar, with some spending long stretches on the shelf, unable to compete elsewhere because of the UFC’s non-compete clause. The idea that this virus is making fighters’ financial position less secure is therefore misleading at best, simply because the UFC has already forced fighters into bearing the lion’s share of economic risk associated with their vocation.
That leads us to a final observation, which has been made ad nauseum but bears repeating at every opportunity: The UFC makes its money from fighters, but pays them as little as 16 percent of the company’s revenue. It is a choice to hoard the hundreds of millions of dollars which pour into the promotion’s coffers each year from ticket sales and TV deals and allocate it to investor dividends and executive remuneration, all while hundreds of fighters live paycheck to paycheck. Claiming that fighters will be left out in the cold if they’re not offered bouts conveniently omits this odyssey of exploitation and the option of providing them a form of financial support to ensure they’re able to stay safe and healthy until it’s safe to get back to work.
White claims that moving forward with events is about protecting fighters’ interests, but nothing could be further than the truth.
Jacob Debets is a law graduate and writer from Melbourne, Australia. He is currently writing a book analyzing the economics and politics of the MMA industry. You can view more of his writing at jacobdebets.com.
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