End of an Era: Fighter-Manager Handshake Deals Die as MMA Grows

Former fighter Jeff Clark, who along with another former fighter, Matt Stansell, runs NCFC Fight Management in Carlsbad, Calif., said many of the new MMA agents are “rejects” from other sports.

“They were a baseball agent or they were something else and they didn’t make it at that so they’re trying to jump on something they can make it at,” said Clark, who manages such fighters as Brandon Vera, Diego Sanchez and Cox’s former client, Huerta. “And then some of them are just attorneys that see an opportunity.”

Unlike Cox and Bergmeier, Clark and Stansell always put their fighters under written contracts. So does relative MMA newcomer Ken Pavia, who owns MMA Agents in Huntington Beach, Calif., which represents about 50 fighters, including Phil Baroni, Chris Lytle, Jay Hieron and Joe Riggs.

“I would never do anything on a handshake,” said Pavia, who has verbally sparred with rival Cox on MMA sites. “I’m a law school graduate and I know that you violate a number of provisions by not having it in writing. But second of all, all relationships start good. It’s when the relationship starts to sour that you need a defining document.”

The difference between a manager and an agent, Cox said, is that a manager develops young fighters’ careers by placing them with good trainers, carefully selecting their opponents and building them up in smaller promotions. The end goal of the manager, Cox said, is to prepare fighters for the bigger promotions, of which the UFC is the biggest.

Pavia, who makes no pretense that he is a manager, said his job as an agent is to “find opportunities and present them and then the fighters make the ultimate determination. I don’t manage them day to day or prepare them for their fights.”

Cox and Clark believe that many of the new agents do not understand the MMA business and, as a result, make financial promises to fighters they can’t fulfill.

“They just go and promise the fighters this, that and everything,” Clark said. “And the fighters unfortunately don’t know that and they just hear numbers and go after the numbers.”

Cox put it more bluntly: “A lot of times, they’re promising them bull----,” he said. “And it amazes me that you could come in and not know anything about the sport and think you can do it.”

Cox related one such episode. He said about two months ago, Lawler told him another agent was promising him $200,000 for a fight with a big-name promotion.

“And I said, ‘Bull----, it’s not true.’ And I called up the guy running the show and the guy laughed and said ‘that is bull----.’ Well, I ended up keeping Robbie only because he had come to my house and said, ‘Dude, I got to talk to you face to face about this.’ Most other fighters would have said, ‘Fine, where do I sign?’”

Cox declined to identify either the agent or the promotion.

But he noted that the big numbers being tossed around by the new breed of agents is creating a climate in which some fighters, unlike Lawler, are showing disloyalty to the managers who built them up.

Bergmeier alleged that Kevin Burns, whom he used to represent, is one such fighter.

“I got that guy the fights that he needed to get to get into the UFC,” Bergmeier said. “I sold the idea to (UFC matchmaker) Joe Silva about him fighting Roan Carneiro back in June” at UFC 85. “I got him into the UFC and then all of a sudden, he wants to bail on me right after he beats Roan, right before the Anthony Johnson fight” last July at UFC Fight Night 14.

But Burns said he left Bergmeier in large part because the manager did not secure him endorsement deals.

“I was soliciting endorsements, which is something my agent should be doing, but he wasn't,” Burns said. “You know how embarrassing it is when it's your first fight in the UFC” and a fighter has no endorsements?

Burns is now with Florida-based agent Dean Albrecht, co-founder of the MMAdhouse Agency, which represents such other fighters as Quinton Jackson and Michael Bisping. Burns said he pursued Albrecht after leaving Bergmeier.

Clark, meanwhile, said Huerta approached his agency -- not the other way around -- in large part because unlike Cox, a major component of what he and Stansell offer fighters is getting them sponsorship deals.

Clark said before his agency would even talk to Huerta, they told him, “‘You have to clear it with Monte.’ We try not to step on toes.”

Pavia, meanwhile, never lacking in self-confidence, has ruffled some of the old guard’s feathers with statements such as, “I’m the best agent. And I’m actually the second best also. Everybody else competes for third.” Brashness aside, Pavia said he does not engage in poaching.

“For the record, I never poached a client from anybody,” said Pavia. “Now, do they come to me? Yeah, they do. I have at least one or two former Monte clients” including Hieron, “and he has some of my former clients. So, you know, it happens. Welcome to the representation business.”