Former Bellator MMA Founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney has aligned himself with top UFC stars Georges St-Pierre, Tim Kennedy, Cain Velasquez, Donal ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, and TJ Dillashaw to form the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association (MMAAA) in an effort to fight for fair rights for fighters who compete in the UFC.
Last week a near two hour conference call was held by Rebney and the fighters to discuss the formation of the new Association and let everyone know what exactly they’re all about. Earlier today (Monday, Dec. 5, 2016) Rebney joined Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour to further discuss his role with the association, first detailing what the first step in the whole process was to get the ball rolling on the MMAAA:
“The first step in the whole process basically — and I don’t want to sing my own praises but I have a lot of experience in this space in another sport, another business, another law surrounding the business — I know the athletes, and about two years ago, probably four and a half or five months, maybe not even that long, after Tim and I had split from Bellator, I was asked by some really smart people who I have enormous respect for to basically create a plan of attack. A plan of attack to force to UFC to completely reverse its outrageous and despicable treatment of its athletes.
“So at that stage, and I was working on some other cool stuff I was working on a great tech venture and an OTT project and some really cool stuff that was unrelated to all the time I spent in combat sports, but I started really digging. The first step for someone like me when you start digging is you do an enormous amount of due diligence, fortunately and thank god I could step back and do a lot of due diligence cause I had the time and wherewithal and the access points to understand the numbers, because we’d all heard it for years. Now you’d heard it, you’d talked about it, we’d all heard it as a promoter who’d done pay-per-view (PPV) and cut deals in 140 countries around the world, etc.”
While Rebney was the frontman at Bellator MMA, he couldn’t really focus on the big picture of what he is fighting for now, as he was more focused on the competitive aspect of beating the UFC. Now that he and the promotion have parted ways, he is able to see the ‘despicable’ nature which the UFC is treating its fighters, so he said he’ll do everything in his power to put a stop to it:
“You hear about it, but you don’t hyper-focus on it because you’re not trying to build a company or promotion that’s trying to compete with the UFC. So I wasn’t sitting there saying to myself ‘Okay, I need to know backward and forward every UFC number and the dynamics and the percentages of what they’re doing and what they’re not. I was more engaged of the competitive aspect of ‘What do we do next to try and take a step up this ladder’, but as you start diving into it and as you start looking at the numbers two plus years ago,
“I thought ‘Okay, well, this is insane, it’s unethical, it’s outrageous, it’s despicable, If you know the sport, you know what happens long-term. Its got wrongful on it in so many different ways, then I said ‘Okay screw it.’ To do this, and to do it right, for the people who’d reached out to me, first of all you got get some of the biggest names in the space of the UFC to step up.”
Having such huge names such as GSP, Velasquez, ‘Cowboy’, Kennedy, and Dillashaw is certainly a plus for the MMAAA’s fighting chance to make some serious change between fighters and the UFC. That change won’t come quickly, and it’s something Rebney says he has been in conversations with St-Pierre to form the MMAAA for years:
“We’re fortunate enough to have Georges, and Tim, and Cain, and ‘Cowboy’, and TJ onboard. And I started talking, I started talking to Georges, years ago, and Tim — and I don’t remember how long ago cause it was so very very long ago, and you secure that. You secure their understanding, you secure the relationship with Georges, Tim, TJ, and Cain, and you sit down and say ‘Here is what’s at stake, here’s what’s going on, here’s how the other leagues work, here’s how a real sports enterprise is supposed to function.’
“And you get them to understand it very clearly, and then you figure out ‘Are they going to be willing to engage? Are guys at that level with those type of names going to be willing to put themselves out to say that this matters and this is important?’
Rebney also pointed to hiring the best legal teams, PR firms, and marketing teams also play a huge factor in one day reaching their ultimate goal:
“Then you have to have legal backing, so you find the greatest attorney literally in this type of legal matter and it’s Jim Quinn. Who has written the book on sports related matters, representing athletes, representing athletes associations, he is responsible for creating and crafting law that governs how the NFL does business. I’m like, ‘Can you get Jim Quinn onboard?’
“And then you go out and you get strategic PR firms to handle both general market and sports related, then you get a team of marketing specialists onboard, then you get key strategic advisors onboard, a whole meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting, and you get money behind it because a fight like this is not a fight like you just send out a few Tweets and say ‘Wow this is really important, let’s get it done.’ You’ve gotta have real support behind it.”
St-Pierre, Velasquez, Kennedy, Cerrone, and Dillashaw aren’t the only fighters apparently on board with the MMAAA. Rebney says there are a whole lot more people involved with the movement, however, they have asked to remain nameless for the time being:
“The people who came to me initially, they have asked to remain nameless Ariel, I said it on the thing and I’m going to respect that. Guaranteed on my eyes there will be a time, without any question, where I am able to introduce them, they will be proud as crap when I can introduce them because — I did not sit back and say ‘This situation is a disaster, I wanna fix it. Who do I put in place?’ People came to me and said ‘This situation is a disaster.’ As I used to say a ‘cluster f*ck’.
Rebney strongly believes that if the sport of MMA continues down the road it is currently on at the moment, it will not survive without any short-term or long-term protection for its fighters:
“And somebody has to fix it, somebody has to make this right because as TJ and I said when we were at the press conference, I don’t remember if he said it first or I said it first, but we both said basically the same thing. If this doesn’t get fixed, we don’t have a sport in ten years. There is no possible way that mixed martial arts (MMA) can continue down this trajectory, and survive. It can’t. And that’s not hyperbole, that’s not a threat, that’s not me sending out a message to Ari Emanuel, that’s the God’s honest truth.
“It will not survive. It has to change. You ask these guys to give up that kind of sacrifice, to give up what these guys are giving up long and short, short-term and long-term, you have to have protections in place. You gotta have pensions post-career, health care, etc. You put that in place, and once those things are in place, you know building something like this out is not just about filing a law suit, it’s not just about making some plans to go visit guys in gyms and talk about the issues, it’s about a legitimate strategy.
While Rebney has equipped himself well for a fight against the big guys at the UFC, he knows he’s in for quite the challenge going up against WME-IMG and the UFC who have a joint $10 billion worth between them, but feels he has executed his strategy perfectly up to this point:
“WME-IMG is a $6 billion company. They are one of the two most powerful agencies in the entire world across the sports and entertainment spectrum. They’re a huge, monstrous, powerful conglomerate. The UFC is now a $4 billion enterprise. Between WME-IMG you’re talking about 500,000 plus employees, monster power, monster influence. You gotta be ready to put a strategy in place. You’re gonna fight somebody like that?
“That’s not jumping out of the seat at a smoker somewhere at going ‘screw it my training went well for the last week I’ll jump in when somebody bounces out of a fight.’ You gotta be prepared. You have to have everything conceivable in place. The backing, the support, the people, the brains, all of it. And that’s what I charged myself with organizing and putting together. And it’s in place.”
With some big names involved and some of the best lawyers, PR firms and marketing specialists already onboard with the MMAAA the future for the association is looking rather bright. How do you believe they’ll fare in their battle against the UFC?
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