As UFC antitrust payouts roll in, fighters face relief, regret and complicated reckonings

Late last week a retired MMA fighter named Danny Downes sent me a screenshot of an email he’d received that included some good news.

“This is a notice from Angelion Group, who is the Court-appointed Claims Administrator for the Settlement in the class action lawsuit Cung Le, et all v. Zuffa LLC d.b.a Ultimate Fighting Championship and UFC,” the email read. “We write concerning the upcoming distribution in this matter. The Payment Portal is now available on the Settlement website.”

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Downes went on to explain that, while he knew setting up a direct deposit to receive his money would be faster, he had “decided to have a paper check mailed to me because I’m a romantic.”

His payout for two UFC fights during the period of time covered by the antitrust suit against the UFC? Just over $33,000, he said. Not bad, considering he hasn’t fought professionally since 2011.

But it was also something of a strange feeling to receive news of this money now, so long after doing the actual fighting part of the equation. Downes has been retired from MMA for more than a decade. He’s no longer in contact with any of the friends or teammates he knew from the sport, he said. He lives a completely different life, with different goals and responsibilities.

And now here was this settlement money from one of several class-action lawsuits brought on behalf of fighters against the UFC. It’s money owed to an entirely different version of himself that he thought he’d left in the past, and it comes with certain reminders of who he was and who he’s become since then.

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“I like to think I’ve grown as a person since I was a fighter,” Downes said. “But it’s like, I remember thinking about what I’d do if I won [a UFC performance bonus]. We all thought we were going to get Knockout of the Night. The week of [the fight], we’re all thinking, 'Oh man, what am I going to do with the money?' I can remember thinking, 'I’m going to pay off my student loans!' And being excited about that. Now my student loans are paid off — no thanks to the money I made with Zuffa enterprises — and I get this money and I’m like, I guess this can go into my kid’s 529 [College Savings Plan].”

Start talking to some of the fighters who are due to receive these settlement payouts and you’ll find this is not an uncommon sentiment. Uncrowned reached out to multiple fighters for this story, some of whom declined to speak on the record about how much they’re due to receive. Expected payouts among those who responded ranged from around $30,000 on the low end to around half a million dollars.

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According to John Nash, who’s covered the antitrust suit extensively for Uncrowned as well as on his "Hey Not The Face" podcast, “the projected average payout is $230,792, with a median of $85,949. The smallest payment, for a fighter with a single $6,000 bout, is expected to be $16,122. On the other end of the spectrum, the highest payment will be $10.3 million.”

As one fighter who asked not to be named put it, “Once people find out you’re getting that chunk of money all at once, they start coming out of the woodwork asking for things. And it’s not like this is a life-changing amount that I can retire off of.”

Many said they planned to invest the money in their children’s college funds. Some said they would use it to pay down medical or credit card debt. A few said it would go back into the gyms or other businesses they own and operate.

But as two-time UFC title challenger Gray Maynard said, “We could have been doing that years ago if [the UFC] had paid us fairly at the time.”

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Maynard, like many fighters, couldn’t help but feel like his payout was smaller than it should have been, mainly owing to the time period covered in the settlement and the lackluster contract he had with the UFC.

“There were a couple fights that were just before the cutoff [for the class-action period], and also the contract I was on coming off ['The Ultimate Fighter' reality TV show],” Maynard said. “They just weren’t giving out great contracts to the lighter-weight guys back then.

"I mean, walking into a main event title fight making, on paper, only a guaranteed [$26,000] is pretty ridiculous.”

For some fighters, the money comes at a good time. Many are retired from the sport and are now firmly middle-aged. Some have found that the money they made inside the Octagon didn’t last as long as they thought it would. To get one more paycheck from a career they’d assumed was a thing of the past is a welcome surprise.

Former UFC middleweight Chris Leben was disappointed to see that, of his 22 bouts in the UFC, only eight counted toward his payout from this settlement. Still, as a gym-owner who works most weekends as an MMA referee and judge in both California and Nevada, the money offers him a way to right some of the financial wrongs from his time as a fighter.

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“I'm going to pay my taxes first,” Leben said. “That's the lesson I learned from my fighting years, so make sure I stay up on those. Then I'm going to try to invest the majority of it, not spending on anything fun.”

As Leben pointed out, even fighters who were staples on major UFC events for years don’t leave with a pension or a retirement fund. They don’t even leave with health insurance to cover the ongoing cost of the damage the sport almost inevitably does to all who enter it.

While he enjoys his current work as an official and gym-owner, Leben said, “this helps me put some money aside for the day when my body can’t handle being on the mat all day anymore.”

At the same time, Leben wasn’t among those who really pushed this class-action lawsuit forward. He didn’t necessarily feel that he was owed anything by the UFC when he exited following his final fight in 2013.

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“We can go back and forth about fighter pay and retirement and everything else,” Leben said. “The fact of the matter is every one of us agreed to sign the contract that we got. So for me, I didn't really expect anything. I wasn't one of the main guys in the lawsuit or anything like that. I'm certainly not going to not take the money, though. It wasn't something I tried to get. It wasn't something that I expected or really worked hard for. But I'm super stoked about it and I would like to see fighters get paid better and get taken care of. I do believe that there should be some sort of investment or retirement opportunity for guys that spend a decade or two in the sport and really dedicate their lives to it.”

One constant among those Uncrowned spoke to is that none of these fighters, whether they were a vocal proponent of the antitrust lawsuit or barely aware of its existence, had any plans of turning down the money. Even those who said they didn’t necessarily feel exploited by the UFC were happy to take their share of the settlement.

But for some of those who thought they’d left the life of a pro fighter behind, there was a certain whiplash effect that came from receiving the news of their final settlement total.

“I think I bounce back and forth from feelings,” said Julie Kedzie, who had two UFC fights at the tail end of a career that included memorable runs in Strikeforce and other promotions. “I’m grateful for sure, and with that comes anxiety about when the other shoe will drop and when I’m literally going to see the money and be able to pay off some debt. I’m in education research now and it’s not exactly a high-paying job. And with all of that comes the thought that probably comes to everyone in late-stage capitalism: Damn, I wish it was just a little bit more. Which of course makes me feel both guilty about being greedy and also opens up a bunch of the ‘old me’ kind of thoughts.”

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As Kedzie explained, it’s hard not to look back on those last two fights, both of which she lost via close split decision, and think about how things might have been different with a slight change on one judge’s scorecard. It might have prolonged her career, and even if not, it would at least have brought the extra cash that comes with a win bonus, which then would have netted her a higher payout from this settlement.

“But then I remember that I wouldn’t be the person I am now if I hadn’t left when I did,” Kedzie said. “Losing those specific fights wasn’t just about losing MMA fights. Then I get mad at myself for feeling ungrateful for the lawyers and fighters who put in the money and work to make this settlement happen. I’m sincerely hoping they got what they needed from this.

“But some people are getting millions from this, and nothing in the contracts was actually changed to prevent fighter exploitation in the future. To be honest, those thoughts kind of mess with my head. I don’t feel screwed over personally. But because I’ve come to some sort of uneasy peace with those memories, there are aspects of this whole thing that give me a kind of hangover from it all.”

With settlement payments set to start showing up in bank accounts any day now — except for those, like Downes, who were romantic enough to insist on a paper check — there are likely to be a lot of unresolved feelings coming with the money.

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But as one fighter who preferred to stay anonymous noted, those complicated feelings probably would have existed for many people with or without the money to soothe them. If you’re going to deal with all that anyway, you might as well not do it for free.