MMA Needs Its Marvin Miller

Contributor: Tim Bernier

“Marvin Miller, along with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, is one of the two or three most important men in baseball history.”– Red Barber, 1992.

John Cholish and Tim Kennedy reignited the debate about fighter pay. Cholish last fought at UFC on FX 8 in May, but decided to retire before his fight, whether he won or lost. Following his loss he stated that the reason he retired was because of the low pay. Cholish is college educated and can get more money without the trials being an athlete in MMA. Most guys will take the job where they don’t risk brain damage.

Since then UFC President Dana White has vehemently disagreed that fighters in the UFC are underpaid. Now the debate wages on for the first time since ESPN’s Outside the Lines report that UFC fighter pay is low. Everyone has thrown their ideas, solutions, and analysis into the bucket. Iain Kidd at Bloody Elbow wrote a particularly great piece outlining the fighter’s low percentage of pay compared to a smaller revenue organization of Major League Soccer.

Here is my solution to the fighter pay issue. First, I have to state that it is an issue. The complacency some MMA fans toward the fighter’s pay is mind boggling. They just don’t pity the fighters that are fighting for peanuts. They don’t believe it’s a problem. Maybe it’s because MMA fans tend to be wealthier than other sports fans on average and they don’t know what it’s like to be strapped for cash, according to Sports Business Journal.  We know a large majority of the fighters get paid shit. If the UFC wants to keep talking about how they’re going to be the biggest sport in the world, they’re going to have to pay their athletes like the other sports do. Right now, they’re not. It’s much better to be an Major League Soccer player (very low on the soccer totem pole) than be your average UFC fighter.

Now for a little history. MMA and the UFC have a relationship that is quite unique. The UFC is unlike any other professional sports organization. Despite that, you can take pieces of many model sports and associations and draw adequate comparisons. First off: baseball. America’s pastime has been around for around 140 years, compared to the UFC’s 20. They’ve had the time to get their act together. Major League Baseball is the model sporting organization. They have slightly less revenue than the NFL, but the players’ salaries are way higher AND they’re guaranteed. Every cent a baseball player contractually agrees to, they will receive. Part of this is because of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). The MLBPA is considered one of the strongest unions in the US. There were four failed baseball players’ unions before the MLBPA was founded in 1953. They weren’t able to accomplish much until they hired Marvin Miller in 1966. Miller had a background in union politics. After bouncing around the National War Labor Relations Board, the Machinists Union, and the United Auto Workers, Miller worked his way up through the Steel Workers of America and became their head negotiator and economist.

Two years into Miller’s tenure as the Executive Director of the MLBPA, he was able to work out a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the owners and the Player’s Association. A part of this agreement increased the minimum salary from $6000 to $10,000. Those numbers look awfully similar to ones we see in MMA today, 50 years after the fact. Miller was a fantastic champion of players’ rights. He helped rid baseball of the Reserve Clause. The Reserve Clause allowed a team to hold on to a player’s rights for a year after their contract ended. It made it so a player did not have control over their own career path. This seems an awful lot like Eddie Alvarez’s current situation with Bellator, or the UFC’s Champions Clause. Once the Reserve Clause was defeated, free agency was essentially created. Players were free to explore their options and play for whoever was willing to offer them a contract. Salaries were able to soar due to the natural competition.

Marvin Miller was a hardheaded Union rep. The man knew how to negotiate and get the players the rights they deserved. Miller headed a strike three times in his tenure. It worked. Collective bargaining works. Miller was the Executive Director of the MLBPA from 1966 to 1982. During this time, the average player’s salary increased from $19,000 to $326,000 a year. These are the types of things that could happen with fighters if they had someone like Marvin Miller heading a Fighter’s Association. If you don’t like the analogies between the MLBPA and a fighter’s union because one is a team sport while MMA is individual, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) are both unions that fight for the rights of people “competing” individually. Both work for the rights of individuals, and find success in it. The idea that MMA couldn’t have a union because the fighters fight individually is preposterous.

Now that we know that unions work and are necessary for the fair treatment of athletes, let’s see exactly how it’d get started in MMA, and the rights fighters could hope to achieve. The fighters at the top need to be on board. If you don’t have all of the fighters, the union will not work. The fighters at the top have something to lose, by sharing more with the bottom. It’d be difficult to get them to agree, but it’s necessary. They may have short-term losses while the UFC adjusts to paying fighters at the bottom more, but their long-term benefits soar.

The fighters are very diverse. They live on a handful of different continents, let alone the dozens of countries. Language barriers would be an issue that other sports didn’t have in unionizing. Baseball had broken the color barrier by the time the MLBPA was created, but they didn’t have the diverse player base they do now. They have to convince a large group of people from absolutely different backgrounds exactly why and how they should agree to and go about unionizing. They all have different priorities in what they would want. The only time all of the fighters are together anyway is the fighter summit. The logistics are insane.

A few things need to happen. This debate needs to keep being talked about, publicly. John Cholish and Tim Kennedy just did more for a fighters union than anyone to date because it got everyone talking; it got people to crunch the numbers. That needs to keep happening, but the Tim Kennedys of the world are rightfully scared because they can be replaced. It’s difficult for the fighters to organize something like this.

MMA needs a hardcore Union rep looking to become the face of an MMA Fighter’s Union. MMA needs a Marvin Miller. He needs to draw up interest behind the scenes, anonymously. “Hey, Fighter X. Between you and me, off the record, would you agree to a fighter’s union if EVERY single fighter were to be a part of it?” That’s how unions get started. It’s collective bargaining. If the last fighter saw that every other fighter in the UFC agreed to this, he would feel confident. The UFC can’t fire everybody. The UFC NEEDS the average fighter. They NEED the prelim fighter. If those fighters aren’t there, their business model dries up really quickly when the stars lose and they don’t have replacements.

Imagine if no fighters in the UFC had to have a second job. Imagine if they weren’t in danger of being cut for one bad fight in the UFC. In other sports, you have a season to work out your kinks. In MMA, all you have is your fight. Fighters should be able to speak their minds without being crushed by the UFC’s foot. Fighters should have a higher share of revenue, percentages in line with other professional sports. Imagine if Joe Shmo was able to work on his takedown defense instead of bouncing a local bar. He would be able to train better and harder, increasing his skill level. The UFC would benefit from this. Imagine if a fighter didn’t have to pay for two of his likely three cornermen to fly and room with him. Higher pay also attracts better athletes. A union is not a one sided affair here: both the UFC and fighters would benefit. Look at this image of Kobe Bryant and Anderson Silva. Look how massive Bryant is next to the greatest fighter of all time. If MMA became as mainstream as basketball, do you think an athlete of Kobe Bryant’s caliber is going to want to fight in MMA over basketball? Hell no. He’s going to pick the sport with way better pay and without risking your consciousness every game. MMA will never have the monster athletes other sports have if the pay is so lopsided. If that 6’3” awkward 16 year old starts going to a mixed martial arts gym instead of basketball or football practice after school, the quality of MMA is going to skyrocket.

Collective bargaining can accomplish these things. They’re not lofty goals: these are things workers should have. Iain Kidd estimates in another piece that the UFC can boost fighter pay to a minimum of $20,000 to show and $20,000 to win, along with a training stipend to lessen the burden fighters carry that other athletes do not, all at a cost of $9 million. That’s nothing to the UFC’s $150 million+ in revenue each year.

Asking all of the fighters to suddenly rise up as one is futile. It’s a logistical nightmare that humans cannot accomplish. We’re not a hive mind, and all of these fighters have lives to attend to.  Someone else has to bare that cross. Someone with a background in union work. Does this sound implausible? Certainly. Is it the only way fighters are going to enjoy better, more equal pay with better benefits? Absolutely. This is an outline for the creation of a Fighters Union. Until something like this happens, fighters will get dicked at every corner, and any talks of fighter pay increasing in any other way are pointless. MMA needs their Marvin Miller.

-Tim can be reached @TimBernier31