(Well, at least he didn’t call anyone a fag. Via Diaz’s Twitter.)
If we know anything about the members of Team Cesar Gracie, it’s that they’re a tightly-wound, fiercely loyal bunch. So when the news broke that Gilbert Melendez and the UFC had failed to reach an agreement on his new contract, prompting “El Nino” to sorta sign with Bellator, we figured it was only a matter of time before his Cesar Gracie counterparts jumped ship as well.
Of course, being that Melendez *was* able to reach an agreement with the UFC after calling their bluff, it comes as something of a surprise that former lightweight title challenger Nate Diaz is now asking to be released from his contract. But that’s what happened yesterday, unless Diaz’s Twitter was somehow hacked. Diaz sent out the above tweet last night, stating “It’s time for me to be on my way…?” This of course, can only mean one of four things:
(Well, at least he didn’t call anyone a fag. Via Diaz’s Twitter.)
If we know anything about the members of Team Cesar Gracie, it’s that they’re a tightly-wound, fiercely loyal bunch. So when the news broke that Gilbert Melendez and the UFC had failed to reach an agreement on his new contract, prompting “El Nino” to sorta sign with Bellator, we figured it was only a matter of time before his Cesar Gracie counterparts jumped ship as well.
Of course, being that Melendez *was* able to reach an agreement with the UFC after calling their bluff, it comes as something of a surprise that former lightweight title challenger Nate Diaz is now asking to be released from his contract. But that’s what happened yesterday, unless Diaz’s Twitter was somehow hacked. Diaz sent out the above tweet last night, stating “It’s time for me to be on my way…?” This of course, can only mean one of four things:
-Nate finally landed that aerospace engineering gig at NASA
-Realizing that Melendez is destined to be the lightweight champion, Nate has decided to step back and devote himself full time to training/coaching his buddy to greatness
-Like Melendez before him, Diaz is attempting to up his value in the UFC by threatening to jump ship.
Personally, I’m going with option 4 as the most likely scenario (hence his use of the question mark at the end of his statement), in which case, all the power to Diaz. His listed salary for his last fight was a measly $15,000 to show, and while it’s obvious that Diaz is making more than that in undisclosed bonuses, there’s no denying that a former title challenger and TUF winner (you know, when that actually meant something) deserves a much higher base rate to get his head smashed in than that.
Hell, I honestly believe that the minimum show rate for any UFC fighter should be $50,000 per fight, no matter how many G5′s the UFC’s head honchos are forced to pay off in installments instead of one down payment because of it. So take to the streets in protest, Nate! THE POTATO NATION HAS YOUR BACK!!
As of this write-up, the UFC has offered no response to Diaz’s request, but expect Dana White to publicly rake Diaz over the coals for being “a f*cking dummy who I’ve already made a millionaire” any second now.
(Sanchez’s contract is officially for eight more fights, but the UFC reserves the right to take him out behind the shed at any time and put him out of his misery. / Photo via Getty)
MMA contracts are unique among professional sports, in the sense that long-term agreements aren’t necessarily beneficial to the athletes. The deals that Cormier and Sanchez signed with the UFC bear absolutely no resemblance to the 15-year, $67.5 million dollar “lottery ticket” that NHL goalie Rick DiPietro signed in 2006. After failing to live up to expectations, DiPietro’s contract was bought out in 2013, at $1.5 million a year for the next 16 years.
That’s what a contract is, after all — an employer’s obligation to pay a certain amount of money for services rendered. What the UFC offers its fighters is something different. It’s like a contract, but not exactly, and it results from the uniquely lopsided power structure in this sport, where there’s essentially one major-league team and no player’s union.
In MMA if you fail to live up to expectations and lose fights, your contract can simply be terminated at any time, and for a variety of reasons. When Eddie Alvarez‘s contract was made public, outsiders got a chance to see the long list of scenarios in which the UFC can cut an athlete loose. As the article’s author Jonathan Snowden notes “So, all those UFC contracts that claim to be for eight or 10 fights? That’s only true if you keep winning. Otherwise, the contract is only as long as the UFC wants it to be.”
A quote from that article, from Northwestern University labor law professor Zev Eigen, shows how imbalanced contracts are for UFC fighters:
(Sanchez’s contract is officially for eight more fights, but the UFC reserves the right to take him out behind the shed at any time and put him out of his misery. / Photo via Getty)
MMA contracts are unique among professional sports, in the sense that long-term agreements aren’t necessarily beneficial to the athletes. The deals that Cormier and Sanchez signed with the UFC bear absolutely no resemblance to the 15-year, $67.5 million dollar “lottery ticket” that NHL goalie Rick DiPietro signed in 2006. After failing to live up to expectations, DiPietro’s contract was bought out in 2013, at $1.5 million a year for the next 16 years.
That’s what a contract is, after all — an employer’s obligation to pay a certain amount of money for services rendered. What the UFC offers its fighters is something different. It’s like a contract, but not exactly, and it results from the uniquely lopsided power structure in this sport, where there’s essentially one major-league team and no player’s union.
In MMA if you fail to live up to expectations and lose fights, your contract can simply be terminated at any time, and for a variety of reasons. When Eddie Alvarez‘s contract was made public, outsiders got a chance to see the long list of scenarios in which the UFC can cut an athlete loose. As the article’s author Jonathan Snowden notes “So, all those UFC contracts that claim to be for eight or 10 fights? That’s only true if you keep winning. Otherwise, the contract is only as long as the UFC wants it to be.”
A quote from that article, from Northwestern University labor law professor Zev Eigen, shows how imbalanced contracts are for UFC fighters:
“The term unilaterally benefits the employer with no reciprocal benefit to the fighter. It’s completely one-sided, completely unfair and seems to suggest that any term is a material term for purposes of the employer. Every breach could be a material breach for the fighter, but nothing is for the UFC.”
So when 38-year-old ex-champ Anderson Silva signs a 10-fight contract after his first loss in the company, we shouldn’t interpret it as a show of good faith or support from his bosses. That’s just the UFC saying, “We’ve got you until you decide to retire, and if you try to work for a competing promotion after you leave, we’ll sue you just like we sued Randy.”
But what if you keep winning all your fights? In that case, you are locked into the pay scale that you agreed to at the beginning of your contract. Presumably your market value will go up as you win fights and challenge for titles, but if your market value exceeds what you are currently getting paid, you can’t really capitalize on it. You can try to re-negotiate your contract, and maybe the UFC will agree to it. Or maybe Dana White will tell everyone about your ridiculous request and publicly trash you during one of his media scrums.
The value of having another high-paying organization in the MMA landscape like Bellator (or OneFC, apparently) is that you can use their offer to leverage a higher paying contract out of the UFC. However, if you are tied to a long-term deal, you can’t take advantage of it. As Cage Potato writer Brian D’Souza pointed out, if UFC fighters are tied up to long-term deals, “No other promoter can enter the big leagues of MMA unless they build their own stars or wait 3-4 years.” Having fighters sign long-term contracts is really only a benefit to the UFC, and it’s a massive benefit.
An eight-fight contract for Daniel Cormier, Diego Sanchez, or any other UFC fighter is not job security, even though it may sound like that to people who don’t follow the business of the sport. We’ve racked our brains trying to think of another professional entity with a similar employer/employee dynamic, and the closest example that comes to mind is the military, where they can give you a dishonorable discharge if you screw up, but you can’t just leave any time you want like a normal “at will” job.
That’s just something to keep in mind for all you MMA fighters out there. If the UFC offers you a long term contract, you’re not being hired — you’re enlisting.
(In the words of my life coach, “If you ask me one more fucking question about that fucking joke Eddie Alvarez, I will fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.”)
The drama continues to unfold in the Eddie Alvarez/UFC/Bellator love triangle that last saw Bjorn Rebney and Co. break go Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer on their former lightweight champion’s ass. And as Bill Shakespeare would tell you himself, no love triangle would be complete without a little dash of comedy. Enter Rebney, who recently attempted to shed some light on the convoluted goatscrew that (Bellator) negotiations oft become in a recent interview with BloodyElbow radio. When Rebney previously told reporters that he had matched the UFC’s offer on Alvarez “word for word,” the general consensus seemed to be that Rebney was simply speaking in hyperbole, for how could Bellator match the pay-per-view stipulations of the UFC’s contract when they don’t in fact broadcast pay-per-view events to begin with?
Well, it turns out that — at least according to the man himself — Rebney was not tugging our respective dicks when he said “word for word”:
I didn’t anticipate that the UFC would come in where they came in. They came in at a dollar figure in terms of the $250,000 signing bonus and the $70,000 plus $70,000 and some of the terms that we felt very comfortable matching. To avoid any questioning, to avoid any conflict, we literally took the UFC contract, took it out of a PDF format and we changed the UFC name to Bellator and we signed it and we sent it back to Ed.
Call me unrealistic, but I’d like to believe that Rebney signed his name in poo, or at least wiped his ass with the reprinted contract before sending it back to Eddie. And then when Alvarez flipped to the last page of this foul smelling document, there was a photo of Rebney, performing said act of asswhipery. Because those are the kinds of shenanigans that people who don’t give a fuck are wont to do.
Much more from this interview after the jump.
(In the words of my life coach, “If you ask me one more fucking question about that fucking joke Eddie Alvarez, I will fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.”)
The drama continues to unfold in the Eddie Alvarez/UFC/Bellator love triangle that last saw Bjorn Rebney and Co. break go Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer on their former lightweight champion’s ass. And as Bill Shakespeare would tell you himself, no love triangle would be complete without a little dash of comedy. Enter Rebney, who recently attempted to shed some light on the convoluted goatscrew that (Bellator) negotiations oft become in a recent interview with BloodyElbow radio. When Rebney previously told reporters that he had matched the UFC’s offer on Alvarez “word for word,” the general consensus seemed to be that Rebney was simply speaking in hyperbole, for how could Bellator match the pay-per-view stipulations of the UFC’s contract when they don’t in fact broadcast pay-per-view events to begin with?
Well, it turns out that — at least according to the man himself — Rebney was not tugging our respective dicks when he said “word for word”:
I didn’t anticipate that the UFC would come in where they came in. They came in at a dollar figure in terms of the $250,000 signing bonus and the $70,000 plus $70,000 and some of the terms that we felt very comfortable matching. To avoid any questioning, to avoid any conflict, we literally took the UFC contract, took it out of a PDF format and we changed the UFC name to Bellator and we signed it and we sent it back to Ed.
Call me unrealistic, but I’d like to believe that Rebney signed his name in poo, or at least wiped his ass with the reprinted contract before sending it back to Eddie. And then when Alvarez flipped to the last page of this foul smelling document, there was a photo of Rebney, performing said act of asswhipery. Because those are the kinds of shenanigans that people who don’t give a fuck are wont to do.
Now, I know less about contract stipulations/negotiations than I do about sexual harassment in the workplace (according to Break’s HR department, at least), but has anyone ever heard of this kind of maneuver being pulled with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line before? Clearly Bjorn was surprised by how apparently low of an offer Alvarez received, but damn, I put more effort into the articles I copy/paste together for a living. This one, for instance.
And indeed, it was the lowball offer Alvarez received that in turn led to the current dispute between promotions:
The reality of the situation is Eddie and I had a really good working relationship for four years. I would hazard to even say we had a good friendship going for a lot of years. The last couple weeks have not been the highlight, the high water mark of that relationship. We entered into a contract with Eddie. In that contract, just like in the UFC deal, there’s what’s called a matching provision and what that means is when the contract comes to an end, you’ve got the right as the promoter that had the contract with the fighter to match it. What that requires is that you match all the material terms of the deal.
If Eddie had been presented with a Hector Lombard type of deal, I told Eddie after his fight with us where he knocked out Patricky Pitbull, he and I sat and had a drink, spent some time together after the fight. I said, ‘Look, dude. If you get a Hector deal, I’m just gonna wish you the best of luck, I’m gonna be your big fan and I’m gonna root for ya and I’ll just let you go. I’m not gonna match that deal because I don’t think we can monetize that deal.’
We scheduled a call last week and there were a series of attorneys, I think five or six for Ed and it was me and my partner on the phone and we talked through it and we recognized by the tone of what happened last week as did Ed’s team. I’m sure that it was headed in a bad direction. They indicated to us that they weren’t going to accept the match. It wasn’t 30 minutes after the call ended, it was 42 and Ed’s team filed a lawsuit against us in New Jersey and we filed a lawsuit against them. The lawsuits are not lawsuits because we dislike Ed. They just say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to enforce our contractual rights,’ and they’re lawsuit, which I have not yet read because I do not have a copy of it, I don’t know what it says but I’m assuming it makes whatever their claim is relative to not wanting the match to abide but they filed on us literally, I think it was within an hour of the phone call ending.
And as far as those pesky pay-per-view numbers Alvarez had been promised by both parties? Turns out, the UFC’s figures/points were just as hypothetical as Bellator’s. Again, according to Rebney.
The way that it would work is this: When you look at these contracts, what we are obligated to do, as per our matching rights just like what the UFC is obligated to do with their matching rights is you have to match any element of the contract that is guaranteed. So if the UFC says they’re gonna give Eddie Alvarez a $250,000 signing bonus and they say, ‘This is when the signing bonus will be paid,’ we have to do the same. If the UFC says, ‘We’re gonna pay you $70,000 to show and $70,000 to win, provided you are declared the winner of the bout by the applicable athletic commission blah, blah, blah,’ we have to provide that exact same opportunity for Ed.
So that’s the essence of what the matching is. There is no guarantee of pay-per-view in any way, shape or form in the agreement that was sent by the UFC. We’re held to the level of having to match a guarantee. We’re not held to a level of having to guarantee or having to match what was projected or what might happen. I think that’s the key misunderstanding. It’s not a matter of what could or might happen, it’s a matter of what’s guaranteed under the contract and that’s clearly understood and clearly the way it’s written.
Definitely an interesting development in what has quickly become one of the more prominent pieces of news currently floating around the MMA landscape.
Rebney went on to say that he harbored no ill-will towards Eddie and hoped that his promotion and the former champ could reconcile their differences in time for Bellator’s upcoming Spike debut. Rebney also stated that he was hopeful to try and book a rematch of Alvarez and the man who took his belt, Michael Chandler, somewhere down the line should Alvarez end up back in Bellator. In my opinion, this would be the only silver lining in the scenario where Alvarez sticks with Bellator. If I could tread so lightly, I would go as far as to say that the pair’s first fight sat atop Dan Henderson and Mauricio Rua‘s epic brawl at UFC 139 on my end of the year list, but that is neither here nor there.
But what say you, Potato Nation? Is Alvarez worth all the trouble? Or should Bellator simply let him go, being that he clearly wants no part of their business anymore?
(Last warning, Hector. If you grunt like that one more time we’re going to revoke your membership.)
In a new report about Eddie Alvarez’s impending free-agency, MMAFighting.com got Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney to share details of a similar situation in which his promotion got into a bidding war with the UFC. It happened six months ago with their former middleweight champ Hector Lombard, and in that case, it didn’t exactly work out for either party:
Lombard hit the open market, where he was immediately offered a lucrative deal with the UFC. Rebney said that contract, which according to him paid Lombard a $400,000 signing bonus, a $300,000 starting purse per fight and pay-per-view participation points, was cost-prohibitive from Bellator’s standpoint.
If the UFC came in with a similar offer for Alvarez, who is considered by most observers to be right around the top five lightweights in the world, it is believed that would make him the highest-paid 155-pounder in the UFC. On the other hand, Lombard’s debut in the UFC was considered a disappointment, as he lost a lackluster split-decision to Tim Boetsch. That development could cause the UFC to reconsider a big-money offer for another free agent.
(Last warning, Hector. If you grunt like that one more time we’re going to revoke your membership.)
In a new report about Eddie Alvarez’s impending free-agency, MMAFighting.com got Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney to share details of a similar situation in which his promotion got into a bidding war with the UFC. It happened six months ago with their former middleweight champ Hector Lombard, and in that case, it didn’t exactly work out for either party:
Lombard hit the open market, where he was immediately offered a lucrative deal with the UFC. Rebney said that contract, which according to him paid Lombard a $400,000 signing bonus, a $300,000 starting purse per fight and pay-per-view participation points, was cost-prohibitive from Bellator’s standpoint.
If the UFC came in with a similar offer for Alvarez, who is considered by most observers to be right around the top five lightweights in the world, it is believed that would make him the highest-paid 155-pounder in the UFC. On the other hand, Lombard’s debut in the UFC was considered a disappointment, as he lost a lackluster split-decision to Tim Boetsch. That development could cause the UFC to reconsider a big-money offer for another free agent.
“Disappointment” is an understatement. Part of the thoroughly-cursedUFC 149 main card, Hector Lombard vs. Tim Boetsch was supposed to be a guaranteed slugfest, and a possible coming-out party for Lombard in the UFC. Between Lombard’s superhuman knockout power and Boetsch’s never-say-die grittiness, what could possibly go wrong? As it turned out, both fighters spent long stretches of the match just staring at each other, unwilling to commit. Boetsch ultimately claimed a split-decision victory — playing the spoiler role once again — but since the fight came directly after two main card bouts that were just as terrible (James Head vs. Brian Ebersole and Cheick Kongo vs. Shawn Jordan), it was a frustrating moment for almost everyone in the building.
After the fight, Lombard blamed his uncharacteristically dull performance on a sternum injury, but the damage to his reputation had already been done. A hyped-up champion from Bellator stepped into the Octagon and completely crashed-and-burned — and it cost the UFC more than $700,000 to make it happen. And as MMAFighting.com points out, that doesn’t bode well for Eddie Alvarez’s chances of getting a big-money offer from the UFC. (Fool me once, etc.)
– Diaz has signed a new eight-fight deal with Zuffa, which allows him to fight for both the UFC and Strikeforce. But the plan for Diaz isn’t necessarily to jump back and forth between promotions. Asked if the new deal marked the end of Diaz’s run in Strikeforce, Gracie replied, “Hopefully. If he’s back in Strikeforce, I would imagine that’s because he lost his next fight.”
(Post-fight press conferences are about to get even more uncomfortable for Ariel Helwani. Photo courtesy of CombatLifestyle)
– Diaz has signed a new eight-fight deal with Zuffa, which allows him to fight for both the UFC and Strikeforce. But the plan for Diaz isn’t necessarily to jump back and forth between promotions. Asked if the new deal marked the end of Diaz’s run in Strikeforce, Gracie replied, “Hopefully. If he’s back in Strikeforce, I would imagine that’s because he lost his next fight.”
– Diaz won’t be able to pursue a boxing career while under contract. “He obviously had to be compensated for not boxing and taking this fight instead,” Gracie said. (Points on the pay-per-view, perhaps?)
– There’s still no word on what, if anything, will happen with Diaz’s Strikeforce welterweight title in the aftermath of the GSP fight.
So, will Diaz be able to “play the game” enough to last eight fights under the stricter watch of Dana White and the UFC? Or will it be hospital fights and in-cage riots until he’s eventually booted? Personally, I wouldn’t expect Diaz to suddenly cheer up just because he’s been given everything he’s wanted. Can’t wait to see the next installment of this storyline…
