Twitter Mailbag: On UFC layoffs and high-profile contract challenges

In this week’s Twitter Mailbag, things are getting testy between the UFC and its greatest welterweight, but what could that mean for the entire business model?

Plus, layoffs abound under the WME-IMG reign, Bellator has some old guys primed for an intriguing fight, and much more.

To ask a question of your own, tweet it to @BenFowlkesMMA.

He’s definitely not the first person to suggest that certain aspects of the standard UFC contract wouldn’t stand up under a legal challenge. As you can see for yourself in this extensive examination, UFC contracts are weighted extremely heavily in favor of the promoter. There’s at least one clause that, according to a labor law professor, might be flat out unconstitutional. So I can see why Georges St-Pierre’s attorney might be eager for a court to weigh in.

The question is, would the UFC really let it get that far? St-Pierre (25-2 MMA, 19-2 UFC) has said he considers himself a free agent, but he’d be willing to sit down and negotiate a new deal with the UFC. The UFC, on the other hand, has said it believes it still has contractual rights to GSP, and is willing to make that case in court.

But if you’re the UFC and you go to trial and lose, it could be disastrous. What if a court decides that some of your standard contract provisions are illegal? What if it rules that the changes wrought by the Reebok deal are sufficient to nullify any contract signed prior to it? Then you’re not just dealing with GSP anymore. Suddenly you’ve got a problem that will ripple through your entire roster, maybe even upsetting the entire business model.

I can’t see the UFC taking that risk. Instead, seems more likely that the UFC will initiate a long, slow legal battle to keep GSP out of action for as long as possible, waiting while age and time eat away at his skills and popularity. Maybe St-Pierre will start to feel that pinch and be more amenable to returning to the UFC. Or, if the UFC doesn’t like its chances to win the case, maybe it’ll just give him what he wants and release him.

St-Pierre has said all the right things about standing up not just for himself, but for all fighters. And I believe that he believes it. But precedent suggests that when confronted with a painstaking legal battle, any avenue out of court and back into paying action starts to seem more and more appealing as time goes on.

Because it’s expensive. Because it’s time-consuming. Because you only have a limited window of opportunity as a pro athlete, and if you’re in court battling a promoter it means you’re not in the cage making money. Plus you might lose. You might do it all for nothing and end up worse off than you started.

And if you look around and see everyone else with some version of the same contract, maybe it all starts to seem normal. Best to keep your head down, win your fights, get the belt and then start worrying about reshaping your contract. That’s what most fighters tell themselves, anyway.

Good god, man. Don’t be a fool. Go to the Temple of the Dog concert. Pretend it’s 1991 again. Record UFC 205 on DVR and avoid social media so you can come home to a happy marriage and a night of fights that might as well be live to you.

That way you can fast-forward through all the talking and the hype packages. And you dramatically decrease your chances of being stabbed in your sleep.

Most of these layoffs aren’t about job performance. It’s WME-IMG looking at the sprawling international company it just bought and identifying redundancies and places where it can trim the fat. Why keep someone on the UFC payroll just to do a job that can be done by one of your own people?

For instance, look at what WME-IMG did with PBR, the bull riding company it bought in 2015. I spoke to PBR’s director of communications for this story earlier this year, and soon realized he was a longtime WME-IMG executive who’d been shuffled into a new role with this recent acquisition. So why wouldn’t WME-IMG do the same thing with the UFC? It must think it has some of the best people in the world. Why not put them to work for the new company you just bought?

But just because that’s how these things go doesn’t mean it isn’t still sad for a lot of the UFC employees who now find themselves out of work. The executive layoffs get the attention, but the cuts don’t stop there. A significant number of people who worked their tails off for the UFC are losing their jobs, and not because of anything they did or didn’t do. It’s just that the ground shifted under their feet, and now they’re out of work.

That may be standard operating procedure, but it still sucks when it happens to you.

I like where your head’s at, but I think the branding needs some help. “Seniors champ” sounds a little too PGA, not to mention too elderly. Why not do what they do in jiu-jitsu tournaments and create a “masters” division? You hear it, and it just sounds like the people in that division must be really, really good. It’s only when you take a closer look that you realize they’re also really, really old.

You know, that’s a really good question. You may recall that Lyoto Machida was last booked for a UFC fight in the spring, before he ran afoul of USADA when he admitted to taking a banned substance prior to his fight against Dan Henderson. He was pulled from that fight in April, then did that grappling benefit match against Jake Shields in August. Since then? Machida (22-7 MMA, 14-7 UFC) hasn’t been about too much.

His Facebook tells me he’s got a karate seminar coming up in November. It also tells me he’s been working on his piano game, though he still has a ways to go. Instagram seems to suggest he’s in the gym at Kings MMA on occasion. In training for what, I don’t know.

USADA’s website does not list Machida among those currently under suspension, but the UFC responded to my inquiry to say he is “provisionally suspended and the matter is pending.”

His case seems to be pretty straightforward. He admitted to taking a DHEA metabolite, which is how he got caught in the first place. If he’d gotten one of those six-month suspensions, it would have ended last week. If he’s still looking at the potential full two-year ban, however, could be a lot more karate seminars in his future. At least he’ll have time to practice the piano.

Unfortunately, that’s not how that works. There isn’t a great big pool of fighter money that gets distributed evenly. If there were fewer fighters to pay, the owners would most likely just use that extra money to pay themselves.

There might, however, be more open spots to fill on upcoming UFC events. That’s a complaint I hear more and more from managers. At this point they expect a little bit of hassle when trying to get a fight for their guys in organizations like WSOF. But to struggle for a fight even after signing a UFC contract? That’s sadly becoming the new normal for many fighters, and it’s usually the ones who are making so little per fight that they can’t afford to sit around and wait so long between bouts.

In that sense, roster cuts might make things easier. Of course, it would also make things easier on competitors like Bellator, which wouldn’t mind at all if the UFC decided to tie up fewer fighters at a time in exclusive deals.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.