The Bottom Line: The Elephant in the Association Room

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.* * * When the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association was announced on Nov. 30, there were plenty of prominent figures in attendance. Most of the discussion after the announcement centered on the involvement of Bjorn Rebney, a controversial figure because of his tenure as CEO of Bellator MMA. However, the much more important issue was the presence of the other figures on the stage.In announcing Georges St. Pierre, Donald Cerrone, T.J. Dillashaw, Cain Velasquez and Tim Kennedy as the board members for the MMAAA, a lot of star power was put behind the effort to create a fighters association. That’s in some ways a good thing, but it also reflects a crucial issue with which MMA fighters will need to grapple before they can unify behind a single association or union. Some of the goals of a fighters association will be easy for all fighters to unify behind. Setting up some sort of pension plan and/or health insurance system for retired fighters would be a popular and laudable goal. Fighters surely want to make more money, and an association or union would fight hard for that aim. Where things get tricky is how that money would be distributed, and that’s something fighters need to address head-on among themselves before they can hope to create a lasting and strong partnership. In other sports, pay is sorted out through the competition among teams. Collective bargaining plays a number of important roles, such as dictating minimum and maximum salaries as well as creating rookie contract scales. However, the distribution of money is primarily achieved by teams deciding how much individual athletes are worth to them. Better players make more money because teams bid against each other for their services. In MMA, this is fundamentally different. There is some bidding between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and other …

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