Report: Nine Fighters Will Be Announced As Executive Board In Next Step For UFC Union

A vital step in solidifying a potential fighter’s union in the UFC is on the horizon.

The Professional Fighters Association (PFA) started recently by former baseball agent Jeff Borris and attorney Lucas Middlebrook is expected to form an interim executive board made up of nine current UFC veterans within the month, with the board being announced during fight week for November 12’s anticipated UFC 205.

Middlebrook, who infamously went to bat for popular UFC welterweight Nick Diaz last year, told MMA Fighting today that these nine fighters would form a foundation of making policy decisions for the potential union:

“Those nine individuals are going to be responsible for making policy decisions. As the union starts to collect more authorization cards and gets closer to potentially filing with the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board), or asking for voluntary recognition, there’s certain things that you have to do both from an administrative end and from a legal standpoint.”

Middlebrook also elaborated on how the fighter executive board would serve to galvanize a fighter’s union for the betterment of UFC competitors’ careers overall:

“Obviously I’ll be there to counsel them on any legal points and answer any questions they have,” Middlebrook continued. “But it’s going to be a union of the fighters and run by the fighters, so the sooner we can get some sort of executive board in place, really, I think the more genuine and the more realistic that the union is, because you have fighters already making decisions for the profession and their career.”

With the overall climate in MMA certainly trending towards the formation of a union or at least some other organized board, fighter pay and treatment has been at the center of many discussions surrounding the sport after the UFC was sold to talent giant WME-IMG for a record-setting $4.2 billion this July.

Part of the new owner’s introduction to running the company was reportedly to remove a deal offered to longtime welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre for his return, a move that has only served to spark more backlash towards a company that is appearing more cold and cruel towards it athletes. Middlebrook believes a union could help St-Pierre argue his case:

“The way I think it would help him is, typical amongst collective bargaining agreements is you have a grievance and arbitration process,” Middlebrook said. “So if you have contractual disputes, and this could even relate to individual fighter agreements because that would be something that would be negotiated — you would have a standard fight agreement and then obviously fighters could negotiate for different things upward, but you couldn’t go below that — so if you had a situation like this where the parties weren’t seeing eye-to-eye, then GSP could file a grievance through the union process. And the union, if they wanted to, could what’s called ‘fund that grievance.‘

“The union would then be essentially paying for it to be processed through the grievance and arbitration procedure, which is a much faster and cost-effective way to resolve these disputes than going to court and litigating for a year or two and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees. And if the parties can’t resolve it, you go in front of an independent arbitrator or a panel of arbitrators, and you lay out your case. And typically you’re looking at a solution on those things in anywhere from three-to-six months, as opposed to years in litigation.

“So I think that’s one big area where it would’ve helped him and he would’ve been able to have the backing of the union behind him, which is obviously going to provide more leverage than just a single person trying to take on the UFC.”

There’s no announcement as to whether or not St-Pierre will join or even head the executive board, but Middlebrook’s detailing of the scenario makes it seem like a union would definitely make it easier for fighters to stand up for themselves.

Change – and in no small matter – appears all but certain for a UFC roster of fighters disenfranchised with how they’ve been paid and treated, something that doesn’t seem to be improving under new ownership. A union could perhaps level the playing field for the combatants in many ways, and fans will find out which nine fighters will spearhead this long-overdue movement as early as next week.

Let’s hope it results in positive, lasting change for the sport of MMA.