Urijah Faber Could Work With Fighter Organizations
Longtime UFC bantamweight contender Urijah Faber has decided to call it a career after his unanimous decision win over Brad Pickett this past weekend (Saturday December 17, 2016), and walked away from the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA) with his hand raised in victory in front of his hometown crowd in Sacramento, California.
Just because ‘The California Kid’ is retired, however, doesn’t mean he’s done with the sport completely. During a recent interview with MMA Junkie, Faber discussed the hot topic of fighter unions which have ramped up in conversation as of late given the formation of the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association (MMAAA):
“Three unions? C’mon,” said Faber. “How are you going to have a union and have three friggin’ unions? I’m not super educated on it, but I would think there can’t be three unions if they’re going to work well, and if they’re actually trying to unify.”
The three unions Faber refers to are the MMAAA, MMAFA, and PFA. While Faber has been contacted by all three parties in attempt to get the Californian to jump on board with their cause, he has instead remained focused on his fighting career and his many ventures outside of the sport as well.
One interesting factor involving all of this that interests Faber is the involvement of the CAA, a rivalry agency company to new UFC owners WME-IMG, who’s MMA clients have joined forces with the MMAAA:
“In the fight world, that’s like Chael Sonnen and Anderson Silva at the prime of Chael talking about slapping Anderson’s wife on the ass,” he said. “And CAA’s behind this union; it’s their way of getting their hands on the MMA game, I feel like.”
Faber would then suggest a different approach to a solution to the problems the three unions hope to solve, in which fighters use their relationships with the UFC to sit down with the company’s brass and hash out their differences:
“I would rather work with and build a relationship with the UFC brass and be somebody that can say, hey, if you guys don’t want to do a union or be part of a union, let’s talk about some things that could really help us out as fighters,” Faber said. “I don’t think having three different groups trying to do a union is the answer. If we’re going to do a union, it has to be unified. It has to be one group, and we all have to come to the same conclusion.
“We have to work with the UFC and say OK, this is what we’re trying to do. I’d like to pick Dana (White)’s brain and Ari Emanuel’s brain and say, ‘Hey, what’s the problem with having a union? Why wouldn’t you want it? Why would you want it? What are some of the good things that a union could do?’
Faber, who once served as a jiu-jitsu instructor for WME-IMG co-CEO Ari Emanuel’s son, learned of the new UFC owner’s background in wrestling and said that there is definitely a ‘voice of reason’ that can reach the executive to hear some of his new employee’s issues with the state of the organization:
“I don’t think these guys are unreasonable, and they want to take care of people. So I would work as a go-between. I think it makes better sense for good relationships to talk to organizations, and everybody work toward some better ideas.”
“I think there’s definitely a voice of reason that could reach that guy because I think he cares about the fighters, as well,” Faber said. “It has to be from the right heart, the right place, and with the right people,” Faber said. “I’m going to research it because I definitely am going to be a part of this sport in a lot of different ways.”
With Faber now being done with his work inside of the Octagon it allows him to focus his attention on how to help grow the sport even more than he already has. To have a voice such as Faber’s advocating for fighters in the near future will certainly help bring about change in the organization, but will the ‘California Kid’ be enough to get through to the new owners such as Emanuel?
