A massive settlement was reached earlier this month, as a class action group of MMA fighters agreed to receive $375 million from the UFC to put away an antitrust lawsuit.
The deal, which was granted preliminary approval by Nevada Judge Richard F. Boulware and awaits a final approval early next year, might finally close out a decade-long legal battle formally known as “Cung Le et al. v. Zuffa.”
While the deal expects to give a large number of fighters massive payouts – including more than 30 past UFC talents getting over $1 million each – some criticized the agreement for preventing the case from going to trial. Critics of the deal worried that a settlement would prevent the case from achieving much greater heights, like the $800 million to $1.6 billion in damages the class action group previously hoped to attain.
The lead lawyers behind the case, Eric Cramer and Michael Dell’Angelo of Berger Montague, explained their reasoning behind the settlement in a recent interview with John S. Nash of Hey Not The Face! Podcast. They mentioned that the settlement was taken due to the risks of waiting a long time for fighters to recover rewards, or a trial potentially giving fighters no financial relief.
“One thing we wanted to make sure to do, is to make sure that the fighters who fought between 2010 and 2017 recovered something real and tangible from the Le lawsuit,” Cramer said. “If you take a case to trial, one risk is you lose. Jury decides you get nothing. Another risk is that you win, but the other side appeals and takes two, three, or four years [to conclude]. The key advantage of settlement is you get something, and something significant, and you get it relatively soon.”
Cramer mentioned the importance of the more than 150 fighter declarations that were released in support of the settlement. In those filings, former UFC talents spoke about how money recovered through a settlement was needed urgently to cover medical bills, living expenses, and other funds.
In the declarations, former Pride FC and UFC talent Wanderlei Silva spoke about his need to obtain healthcare, and emphasized the urgency of needing money soon: “The sad reality is that funds years from now may be of no use to me.”
Another striking declaration saw former interim heavyweight champ Shane Carwin claim he is unable to hold a job in engineering despite having a degree from the Colorado School of Mines. “I face serious challenges in meeting basic everyday expenses for food, shelter, and transportation and in basic life skills necessary to function,” he said.
“What you saw from the declarations of fighters is that a lot of them need this money now,” Cramer explained. “They need the $50,000, $200,000, $500,000 now. And it will not do them any good five, six years from now and they don’t want to gamble it on a jury trial. That’s why you take a settlement … This is an extraordinary result for the fighters, and we wanted to lock that down, lock in that victory, and lock in that win.”
Another question raised to the legal team was why the settlement didn’t include any injunctive relief, meaning any changes to how UFC’s business model would be operated. A change to how the promotion operates was originally a pillar of the lawsuit, as stated on the class action group’s site.
Cramer mentioned that the case had information on UFC’s business tactics through 2016, but they would have to get more recent information in order to argue that changes should be made to how the promotion operates in the present day.
Cramer mentioned that a second class action lawsuit which is still active, “Kajan Johnson et al. v. Zuffa,” representing fighters from 2017 to the present, is now the firm’s way of pursuing injunctive relief in the future.
“We have to show that the UFC is continuing to violate the law today … We can’t show that in a trial in 2025 based on information we have through 2016,” Cramer said. “We would have to update all of that information. Le was all about damages, historical damages through 2017, and now Johnson, which is going to go from 2017 to the present, will focus more on what’s going on now. And that way, we can achieve, if we succeed, business changes and additional damages.”