An MMA Christmas List: 2014 Edition

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Jack Encarnacao, contributor: My Christmas wish is that the UFC make publicly available the full text of its sponsorship agreement with Reebok. I wish for this because it would spare us all what’s likely to be a tedious stream of speculation and supposition in 2015 about what fighters are or aren’t getting and whether or not it’s fair. We need less tedium in MMA -- a lot less.

I’m sure this is a non-starter to the UFC. The company is private, and even if it wasn’t, it probably wouldn’t have to release a document it could easily argue contains privileged, competitive information. With that said, this is a holiday wish list, and what fun is a wish list if you only ask for things you know you’re likely to get?

When fighters start rocking Reebok in the cage in the summer -- and in the months leading up to it -- I can almost guarantee a dizzying stream of whispers about how it is working and what the royalty checks look like. Fighters, likely chilled by anti-disclosure clauses, will give evasive answers, and the UFC will be able to paint those answers as half-truths or lacking vital context. It would be nice to be able to just go to the agreement ourselves, to know, for sure, if the 20 percent fighters will get from sales of their merchandise comes from the overall pool of sales or just what’s left after Reebok takes their cut. It will also tell us how the UFC can argue it is making no money off of the deal.

What’s particularly important is to understand -- in full detail -- how the rankings system will impact payouts to fighters. Presumably, the UFC will be turning to media members to rank fighters in 2015, and I argue it’s critical that these members understand exactly what ramifications their decisions will have on fighters’ livelihoods, particularly considering the sponsorship dollars they’re losing due to the new normal.

For a long time, it has served the UFC’s interests to have everyone guessing about how it all works from a financial perspective. Now, we have a class-action lawsuit levied against the company -- a key goal being to force the UFC to part with this information in discovery. One wonders if more transparency all along regarding what fighters get paid -- no more, no less than we expect from boxing -- may have spared the UFC this litigation. I’ll tell you this: Whenever I learn something new about UFC contracts, like during the Randy Couture and Eddie Alvarez court disputes, I appreciate more where the company is coming from, not less.

I know the mechanics of the UFC-Reebok deal is none of our business, but we know that won’t stop everyone from talking about it. There will be disagreement, but I hope everyone will at least be able to agree on a common set of facts about what exactly this game-changing deal means.

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