Video: UFC holds 'Athlete Summit' for hand-picked group of veteran fighters

Taking a page from bigger, “mainstream” sports leagues, for years the UFC held an annual “Athlete Summit,” helping to educate the league’s fighters on important aspects of being a professional athlete.

While the UFC has, in the past, catered the event to all athletes – veteran and prospect – and covered a range of topics such as performance-enhancing drugs, athlete management, financial planning, social media and media duties, this year’s edition of the summit was for 20 hand-picked veteran fighters only.

The focus, according to UFC Director of Athlete Development James Kimball, is on preparing the veteran athletes to transition to their post-fighting life.

“This is a hand selected group, an intimate setting – a great setting for learning,” Kimball told MMAjunkie. “We’re educating them on financial management, entrepreneurship, impact to their community, and our goal is that they find one of those niches and take away something from that. It will help them transition out of their UFC careers eventually, at some point. Not today, not next month, not next year, but at some point, they’re going to need these fields. And hopefully, they can get it from these two days.”

Some of the presentations have come from athletes who have cashed in on lucrative contracts in other leagues.

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the mistakes made by athletes who have made far more money than a UFC fighter is likely to ever see.

“They have a whole bunch of NFL guys here, they’ve got some Hall of Famers, they’ve got some Olympians,” veteran lightweight Joe Lauzon said. “It’s great to kind of hear guys who have done much, much better than some of us and guys who some say they’re making $10 million a contract and it’s big, big money. Still, they’re running into problems and having shortcomings. Doing really, really well and there were still things they weren’t paying attention to. We’re learning from their experience and not making the same mistakes and not having the same failures.”

Check out the full video above to hear more on the 2016 UFC Athlete Summit.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.